HPC News Bytes – 20260629

**Doug Black** (0:05)
Welcome to HPC News Bytes, a weekly show about important news in the world of supercomputing, AI, quantum computing and other advanced technologies. Hi everyone, welcome to HPC News Bytes. I'm Doug Black and with me is Shahin Khan.
IBM is not a commercial chip manufacturing company, but it has maintained very advanced research prowess in the microprocessor field and licenses its technology to chip manufacturers like Rapidus, Samsung and Intel, although not TSMC. Last week, it announced a serious semiconductor milestone. IBM says its new 0.7 nanometer or 7 angstrom nanostack architecture can nearly double the density of its earlier 2 nanometer research chip, packing close to 100 billion transistors onto a fingernail sized chip with projected gains of up to 50% more performance or 70% better energy efficiency versus IBM's 2 nanometer class technology. In 2021, IBM was first to produce a 2 nanometer test chip on a 300 millimeter wafer through what they called nanosheets. Then in 2022, it partnered with the Japan backed, high-end and well-funded advanced foundry startup Rapidus. To help transfer and jointly develop 2 nanometer technology for Japan's emerging advanced foundry effort. IBM also continues to work with Samsung Foundry, which manufactures IBM's recent mainframe chip, TELUM2 and accelerator chip, Spire, on Samsung's 5 nanometer technology.
So IBM's role is unusual but important. It sold its global microelectronics and fab business to global foundries in 2015, but kept the roadmap. New York State's Albany Nanotech, now expanding with a publicly accessible, high numerical aperture EUB center, gives IBM a place to shape future chip technology without owning high volume manufacturing. Strategically, we should continue to look at IBM as a research anchor in the US allied semiconductor ecosystem.

**Shahin Khan** (2:26)
You could say IBM has always been about being a trusted enterprise technology partner. These days, we could see seven strategic areas of focus. First, it's IBM Z and power systems and what I call, and maybe they should too, the high trust infrastructure market. Mainframes and power systems carry on as important infrastructure for banking, payments, governments and mission critical transaction processing. They also create IBM's need for secure, reliable, high-performance silicon.
Second is quantum computing. IBM has one of the most visible quantum roadmaps in the industry with hardware, software, cloud access, ecosystem development and now deeper fabrication ties to Albany Nanotech.
Quantum remains long-term, but it reinforces IBM's image as a deep computing company with a head start on the next wave. Third is enterprise AI, now centered on Watson X, or lower case, and agents with a strategy focused on governed, auditable enterprise-grade AI for banks, governments, insurers, healthcare, and regulated industries. Fourth is hybrid cloud with Red Hat and OpenShift at its center. If you see enterprise AI running across public cloud, private cloud, on-prem systems, edge environments, and regulated infrastructure, then a hybrid cloud as the deployment layer, and as provided by Red Hat, makes perfect sense. Fifth is cybersecurity, governance, and resilience, and especially as AI moves into business processes. Companies need identity, access control, auditability, data protection, model governance, and operational resilience, and this fits IBM's traditional strength, with big professional services and cybersecurity expertise. Speaking of which, the sixth is consulting and global enterprise execution. IBM consulting is the way many of these technologies reach customers. AI governance, cloud modernization, security, automation, and regulated industry transformation all require services and integration. The seventh is what we discussed, advanced chip research as strategic leverage in a broader research agenda. IBM develops frontier chip technologies such as two nanometer nanosheets and now sub one nanometer nanostack structures and partners with Samsung, Rapidus, Albany, Nanotech tool vendors and big customers. All of the above is also important in geopolitics and sovereign technology, which perhaps forms an eighth area.
IBM's global presence and focus on many of the places governments now care about can give it an advantage in AI governance, cyber security, quantum readiness, semiconductor research, hybrid cloud and critical infrastructure. So the significance of the sub one nanometer news is ultimately the reinforcement of being a trusted enterprise technology provider.

**Doug Black** (5:36)
The US government has issued a pair of quantum focused executive orders. One aimed at accelerating quantum innovation and the other aimed at securing federal systems against future quantum enabled cryptographic attacks. Reuters described the orders as targeting a powerful quantum computer by 2028 and moving key government systems toward post quantum cryptography by 2030 or 2031 The innovation order directs the government to push toward useful quantum systems including a quantum computer for application development and discovery science along with quantum sensing, networking, supply chain work, workforce development and international cooperation. The cybersecurity order is the more immediate operational mandate. It pushes federal agencies to migrate high value and high impact systems to NIST approved post quantum cryptography. The US deadlines are roughly 2030 for quantum resistant key establishment and 2031 for digital signatures. It also pushes federal contractors and vendors toward PQC readiness through procurement and compliance pressure. In practice, this means companies that sell into federal markets, support critical infrastructure or provide cryptographic products will need crypto inventories, migration plans, vendor roadmaps and eventually quantum safe implementations. This aligns with what Europeans are doing and it tightens what the US had in place. The UK roadmap is formulated as guidance and says organizations, not just government agencies, should plan by 2028, complete high priority migration by 2031 and complete broader migration by 2035