In trying to tackle some of the semiconductor industry’s biggest technical hurdles, IBM Corp took inspiration from seashells and snowflakes. IBM announced on Thursday a breakthrough in chip-making technology that the company said would keep the 27 miles of copper wiring wedged into a thumbnail-sized piece of silicon from generating interference, which slows the processing speed and creates heat.

The Armonk, New York, company supplies the chips used in the top three video-game consoles. Its solution is to create insulation between the wires by tapping the same process that allows seashells, snowflakes and bubbles in a bubble bath to form in a pattern.

IBM said it created a new chemical compound, which it declined to identify, that assembles itself in a uniform system of holes after being poured onto a silicon wafer with a wired chip pattern and baked. A vacuum is created in each hole, resulting in better insulation of the wires. “The compound itself is the secret sauce,” said Adalio Sanchez, general manager of IBM’s global engineering solutions, systems and technology group. “You are using the Periodic Table in this industry like you’ve never used it before.”

IBM said its new process would launch the development of chips forward by two years, allowing them to run 35 percent faster or consume 15 percent less energy compared with other advanced chips. IBM expects chips that take advantage of the process to be manufactured in a range of products, starting in 2009. “Your cell phone will be able to do a lot more than it can do now,” or the battery will last longer, said Dan Sokol, an analyst with the Envisioneering Group, a consulting company in Seaford, New York.

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