Scientists in China have developed the world’s most complex two-dimensional (2D) semiconductor microprocessor, which is less than one nanometre thick.

Scientists across the world are turning to 2D materials like molybdenum disulphide and tungsten diselenide for microprocessors at a time when silicon-based integrated circuits approach the physical limits of miniaturization.

These materials are usually only one atom thick and exhibit remarkable physical properties for game-changer functionality in next-generation circuits.

Named the Lingyu CPU, the microprocessor is developed by RiVAI Technologies. The chip is also China’s first fully self-developed high-performance RISC-V server chip.

Designed to support high-performance computing, the RISC-V server chip can also support large open-source language models like DeepSeek.

Published in journal Nature, the research reveals that Chinese scientists introduced a reduced instruction set computing architecture (RISC-V) microprocessor capable of executing standard 32-bit instructions on 5,900 MoS2 transistors and a complete standard cell library based on 2D semiconductor technology.

The library contains 25 types of logic units. In alignment with advances in
silicon integrated circuits, researchers also co-optimized the process flow and design of the 2D logic circuits.

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