Tiny holes could prove to be the biggest advance in computer chip design in 40 years.

IBM, the technology giant, today unveiled a new technique for manufacturing computer processors that uses “nanoscale self-assembled materials” for the first time.

The process, which IBM says boosts a chip’s processing power by more than a third, uses a plastic-like polymer that spontaneously falls into a microscopic sieve-type structure – mimicking the way a snowflake forms.

The airless holes formed in the material have a width of 20 nanometres, or billionths of a metre – far smaller than could be formed by conventional machining techniques.

These vacuums, discussed in academic papers but never before employed, are used to insulate the copper wires that run through the chips more efficiently than silicon. Insulation is crucial to prevent "electrical leakage" and to stop unintended transmission between wires, which are being pushed closer togather as engineers strive to build smaller, faster semiconductors.

According to IBM, the technology, called Airgap, yields a 35 per cent increase in chip performance – or a cut in power consumption of 15 per cent.

It added that the advance is set to drive the equivalent of two generations of Moore's Law – the formulation that says, roughly, that computer power doubles per cost unit every two years – in a single step.

Such disruptive technologies are the must-have silver bullets of the chip sector – an area where margins are under massive pressure and Intel and AMD, the two biggest players, are locked in a fierce price war.

IBM said the technology could be added to existing manufacturing lines and applied to current chips. It expects to start using the technique in 2009, first on chips used in Its own servers and later on components it makes for other companies.

The results could also be included in the powerful Cell processor already used in Sony’s PlayStation 3 games console.

IBM said they the technology will be licensed to semiconductor partners including Advanced Micro Devices, the world’s second-largest chip maker, and Toshiba. It did not comment on whether Intel, the market leader, was involved in licensing talks.

The breakthrough was led by Dr Daniel Edelstein, one of IBM's engineering fellows and a pioneer in the semiconductor sector. He was a key figure in the industry's migration to copper wiring from aluminum a decade ago.

Dr Edelstein said: "This is the first time anyone has proven the ability to synthesize mass quantities of these self-assembled polymers."

The secret of IBM's latest breakthrough lies in moving the self-assembly process from the laboratory to a manufacturing environment in a way that can potentially yield millions of chips with consistent, high performance results.

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