Flatter chips could mean smarter gadgets.

By squashing the components in a computer chip, IBM has found a way to dramatically boost their performance.

Mobile phones built with chips made up of the new components would have longer battery lives, and could cram all the functions of a top-of-the-range model into a package as small as a wristwatch.

Chips using the flatter components could be available within two years.

Transistor booster

IBM claims to have made a breakthrough in the design of transistors - the key component on silicon chips - that could produce smarter machines that use far less battery power.

Usually dramatic improvements in chip performance are achieved by making the horizontally laid out components of a transistor smaller in size and thereby reducing the distance electrons have to travel.

By contrast, IBM's fast transistor is arranged so that electrons flow vertically and it is faster because the stacked components have been made slimmer. IBM's prototype is about 25% of the thickness of current transistors of the same type. It also draws much less power.

IBM estimates that using the new transistors throughout a chip could produce a device that works at a speed of 210 GHz. However, it estimates that the first working devices created using this thin transistor will work at speeds of about 100 Ghz.

Soon to arrive

IBM said it was likely that chips made with the faster, flatter transistor would find their first uses in communications equipment such as mobile phones and devices driving fibre-optic networks.

It is already talking to the makers of networking equipment keen to use the novel chips.

However, it is unlikely they will find a use in the chips found inside desktop computers.

Useable versions of the chips could be available in two years. IBM said they would be ready so soon because they could be made using mundane materials such as silicon germanium rather than exotic substances such as gallium arsenide that are expensive, and can be hard to work with.