Texas Instruments (TI) claimed it had made a breakthrough on chip technology by developing a method to create much smaller semiconductors. According to the company, over 400 million will fit on a chip the size of a human fingernail. They will support both analogue and digital technologies. The semiconductors will use a .07 micron process, and when productions starts will be used in applications where speed, weight and power consumption are at a premium. The chips are also likely to be used in the storage market to help speed up data access at speeds of several Gigabits per second. Bell Labs, a subsidiary of Lucent, announced it was working on similar technology last year. ®