Chips and computing
Every phone, laptop and AI system runs on transistors, tiny switches now built with features only a few nanometers across. Making them smaller, and finding new shapes and materials for them, is what lets each new generation of chips do more on less power.
5 technologies tracked here, by how far each has got.
From lab to your life
Where each one stands
Every technology sits on the step its dated, sourced milestones support, never where its makers hope it will be. Open one to see why it's there.
- 5Everyday lifeIt is probably already in your life.
- 4Approved or on saleYou can get it now, though it may not be common yet.
- Gate-all-around nanosheet transistorsTransistor designA transistor is a switch: a gate turns the flow of current through a channel on and off.Intel launched Core Ultra Series 3, its first chips made on its 18A process with its new RibbonFET transistors. Pre-orders for laptops…
- Nanoimprint lithography for chipsChipmaking machineInstead of projecting a circuit pattern with light, nanoimprint lithography presses a mask carrying the pattern into a coating on the wafer, like a stamp.Canon shipped a nanoimprint system to the Texas Institute for Electronics, a chipmaking consortium in Texas.
- 3Real-world testingCould reach you in a few years if the tests go well.
- Nothing we track here is at this step yet.
- 2Working prototypeStill years away; many prototypes stall here.
- 1Lab discoveryUsually 10 years or more from products, and most never get there.
On the record
The latest steps
The most recent dated events for everything in this topic, newest first, each with its source.
- On sale
Nanosheet transistors
Intel launched Core Ultra Series 3, its first chips made on its 18A process with its new RibbonFET transistors. Pre-orders for laptops opened on January 6, 2026, with more than 200 designs expected.
91mobiles, Jan 2026 - Production
Nanosheet transistors
TSMC said volume production of N2, its first process with nanosheet transistors, began in the last quarter of 2025 as planned, at its new Fab 22 near Kaohsiung.
TechSpot, Dec 2025 - On the record
EUV lithography
SK hynix finished assembling ASML's next-generation High-NA EUV machine, the Twinscan EXE:5200B, at its M16 fab in Icheon, South Korea, a sign it will soon be used in volume production.
Bits&Chips, 3 Sept 2025 - Published research
2D chips
A Fudan University team reported WUJI in Nature: a 32-bit processor built from 5,900 transistors made of atom-thin MoS2, far beyond the previous record of 115.
Shanghai government news, 3 Apr 2025 - Customer samplesCompany-reported
Nanoimprint
Canon shipped a nanoimprint system to the Texas Institute for Electronics, a chipmaking consortium in Texas.
Canon, 26 Sept 2024 - On saleCompany-reported
Nanoimprint
Canon released the FPA-1200NZ2C, the first commercial chipmaking system to use nanoimprint lithography.
Canon, 26 Sept 2024 - ProductionCompany-reported
Nanosheet transistors
Samsung started making chips on its 3-nanometer process, the first to use gate-all-around transistors.
Samsung, 30 June 2022 - Widely usedCompany-reported
EUV lithography
TSMC said N7+, the industry's first commercially available process using EUV, was delivering customer products to market in high volume.
TSMC, 7 Oct 2019
Who makes it
The companies behind it
Who is building what we track in this topic. Where a company's own filings say how much of its business is nano, we show it.
- TSMNYSETSMC
Began volume production of N2, its first process with nanosheet transistors, in late 2025.
We track:Nanosheet transistors
- 005930KRXSamsung Electronics
Began making chips with gate-all-around transistors in 2022, and sells quantum dot TVs.
We track:Nanosheet transistorsQuantum dot TVs
- INTCNasdaqIntel
Its Core Ultra Series 3 laptop chips, launched in January 2026, are its first built on the Intel 18A process.
We track:Nanosheet transistors
- SKYTNasdaqSkyWater Technology
A US chip foundry that in 2019, with MIT, made the first monolithic 3D chips built in a foundry, using carbon nanotube transistors.
We track:Nanotube chips
- ASMLNasdaqASML
The only maker of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines, used to print the smallest features on advanced chips.
We track:EUV lithography
- 7751TSECanon
The first company to sell a nanoimprint lithography machine for making chips.
We track:Nanoimprint
From the same team: Intelligence Progress, for what the AI running on these chips can actually do.