How Samsung and IBM could improve your smartphone’s battery life – Rashtra News : Tech News

When buying a smartphone, one of the biggest features that buyers look for is how good the battery life is. That’s why perhaps we have seen quite a few innovations in terms of fast charging, wireless charging over the years. However, it looks like Samsung and IBM may be working on something that could dramatically improve smartphone batteries.
According to a report by PhoneArena, the two tech giants are working on a new chip architecture that will be designed to reduce energy consumption by 85%. The new technology is called Vertical-Transport Nanosheet Field Effect Transistor (VTFET). Now it may sound rather confusing but the tech could make smartphones last for almost a week on a single charge.
The global semiconductor shortage has highlighted the critical role of investment in chip research and development and the importance of chips in everything from computing, to appliances, to communication devices, transportation systems, and critical infrastructure, the two companies said.
How will the tech work?
Currently, smartphone chips have lateral-transport field-effect transistors (finFET). To briefly explain, transistors have been built to lie flat upon the surface of a semiconductor, with the electric current flowing laterally, or side-to-side, through them. With new Vertical Transport Field-Effect Transistors or VTFET, IBM and Samsung claim to have successfully implemented transistors that are built perpendicular to the surface of the chip with a vertical, or up-and-down, current flow.
The VTFET process addresses many barriers to performance and limitations as chip designers attempt to pack more transistors into a fixed space. It also influences the contact points for the transistors, allowing for greater current flow with less wasted energy. Overall, the new design aims to deliver a two times improvement in performance or an 85 per cent reduction in energy use as compared to scaled finFET alternatives.