[caption id="" align="alignright" width="332"] PHOTO BY IBM VIA AP / DARRYL BAUTISTA SUNY College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering’s Michael Liehr, left, and IBM’s Bala Haranand look at wafer comprised of 7 nanometer chips in an NFX clean room at SUNY Poly CNSE in Albany, N.Y.[/caption]

NEW YORK -- IBM says it has achieved a breakthrough in making computer chips even smaller, creating a test version of the world's first semiconductor that shrinks down the circuitry by overcoming "one of the grand challenges" of the tech industry.

The microchip industry has consistently created smaller and more powerful semiconductors. However, the more chips shrink the greater the physical and technological hurdles become.

Companies are racing to create smaller, more powerful chips to perform the increasingly complex task that the wired lives of consumers demand. At the same time that computer chips have grown more powerful, though, they have also gotten smaller, to the point that hand-sized computers exist that are many times more powerful than computers that used to fill a room.

Today's servers are powered by microprocessors that use 22-nanometer or 14-nanometer node chips.

IBM, working with a development partners at SUNY Polytechnic Institute, says it figured out how to create 7-nanometer chips.

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