IBM Research is the

research and development Research and development (R&D or R+D), known in some countries as OKB, experiment and design, is the set of innovative activities undertaken by corporations or governments in developing new services or products. R&D constitutes the first stage ...

division for

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

, an American multinational

information technology Information technology (IT) is a set of related fields within information and communications technology (ICT), that encompass computer systems, software, programming languages, data processing, data and information processing, and storage. Inf ...

company. IBM Research is headquartered at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in

Yorktown Heights, New York Yorktown Heights is a census-designated place (CDP) in the town of Yorktown in Westchester County, New York, United States. The population was 1,781 at the 2010 census. History Yorktown Heights is in the town of Yorktown, New York, in northe ...

, near IBM headquarters in

Armonk, New York Armonk is a Hamlet (New York), hamlet and census-designated place (CDP) in the Administrative divisions of New York#Town, town of North Castle, New York, North Castle, located in Westchester County, New York, United States. The corporate headquar ...

. It is the largest industrial research organization in the world with operations in over 170 countries and twelve labs on six continents. IBM employees have garnered six

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; ; ) are awards administered by the Nobel Foundation and granted in accordance with the principle of "for the greatest benefit to humankind". The prizes were first awarded in 1901, marking the fifth anniversary of Alfred N ...

s, six

Turing Award The ACM A. M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science. It is generally recognized as the highest distinction in the fi ...

s, 20 inductees into the U.S. National Inventors Hall of Fame, 19 National Medals of Technology, five National Medals of Science and three Kavli Prizes. , the company has generated more

patents A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

than any other business in each of 25 consecutive years, which is a record.

History

The roots of today's IBM Research began with the 1945 opening of the Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory at

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

. This was the first IBM laboratory devoted to pure science and later expanded into additional IBM Research locations in

Westchester County, New York Westchester County is a County (United States), county located in the southeastern portion of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, bordering the Long Island Sound and the Byram River to its east and the Hudson River on its west. The c ...

, starting in the 1950s,Beatty, Jack, (editor
''Colussus: how the corporation changed America''
New York : Random House, 2001. . Cf. chapter "Making the 'R' Yield 'D': The IBM Labs" by Robert Buderi.IBM
"Watson Research Center: Watson Facility History"
including the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in 1961. Notable company inventions include the

floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, a diskette, or a disk) is a type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined with a ...

, the

hard disk drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating hard disk drive platter, pla ...

, the

magnetic stripe card The term digital card can refer to a physical item, such as a memory card on a camera, or, increasingly since 2017, to the digital content hosted as a virtual card or cloud card, as a digital virtual representation of a physical card. They shar ...

, the

relational database A relational database (RDB) is a database based on the relational model of data, as proposed by E. F. Codd in 1970. A Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) is a type of database management system that stores data in a structured for ...

, the Universal Product Code (UPC), the financial swap, the Fortran programming language, SABRE airline reservation system,

DRAM Dram, DRAM, or drams may refer to: Technology and engineering * Dram (unit), a unit of mass and volume, and an informal name for a small amount of liquor, especially whisky or whiskey * Dynamic random-access memory, a type of electronic semicondu ...

, copper wiring in

semiconductor A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity between that of a conductor and an insulator. Its conductivity can be modified by adding impurities (" doping") to its crystal structure. When two regions with different doping level ...

s, the

smartphone A smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing, email, and social media, as well as multi ...

, the

portable computer A portable computer is a computer designed to be easily moved from one place to another, as opposed to those designed to remain stationary at a single location such as desktops and workstations. These computers usually include a display a ...

, the

Automated Teller Machine An automated teller machine (ATM) is an electronic telecommunications device that enables customers of financial institutions to perform financial transactions, such as cash withdrawals, deposits, funds transfers, balance inquiries or account ...

(ATM), the silicon-on-insulator (SOI) semiconductor manufacturing process, Watson artificial intelligence and the

Quantum Experience IBM Quantum Platform (previously known as IBM Quantum Experience) is an online platform allowing public and premium access to cloud-based quantum computing services provided by IBM. This includes access to a set of IBM's quantum processors, a se ...

. Advances in

nanotechnology Nanotechnology is the manipulation of matter with at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometers (nm). At this scale, commonly known as the nanoscale, surface area and quantum mechanical effects become important in describing propertie ...

include IBM in atoms, where a

scanning tunneling microscope A scanning tunneling microscope (STM) is a type of scanning probe microscope used for imaging surfaces at the atomic level. Its development in 1981 earned its inventors, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, then at IBM Zürich, the Nobel Prize in ...

was used to arrange 35 individual

xenon Xenon is a chemical element; it has symbol Xe and atomic number 54. It is a dense, colorless, odorless noble gas found in Earth's atmosphere in trace amounts. Although generally unreactive, it can undergo a few chemical reactions such as the ...

atoms on a substrate of chilled crystal of

nickel Nickel is a chemical element; it has symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel is a hard and ductile transition metal. Pure nickel is chemically reactive, but large pieces are slo ...

to spell out the three letter company

acronym An acronym is a type of abbreviation consisting of a phrase whose only pronounced elements are the initial letters or initial sounds of words inside that phrase. Acronyms are often spelled with the initial Letter (alphabet), letter of each wor ...

. It was the first time atoms had been precisely positioned on a flat surface. Major undertakings at IBM Research have included the invention of innovative materials and structures, high-performance microprocessors and computers, analytical methods and tools,

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of Rigour#Mathematics, mathematically rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algo ...

software architecture Software architecture is the set of structures needed to reason about a software system and the discipline of creating such structures and systems. Each structure comprises software elements, relations among them, and properties of both elements a ...

s, methods for managing, searching and deriving meaning from data and in turning IBM's advanced services methodologies into reusable assets. IBM Research's numerous contributions to physical and computer sciences include the

Scanning Tunneling Microscope A scanning tunneling microscope (STM) is a type of scanning probe microscope used for imaging surfaces at the atomic level. Its development in 1981 earned its inventors, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, then at IBM Zürich, the Nobel Prize in ...

and

high-temperature superconductivity High-temperature superconductivity (high-c or HTS) is superconductivity in materials with a critical temperature (the temperature below which the material behaves as a superconductor) above , the boiling point of liquid nitrogen. They are "high- ...

, both of which were awarded the

. IBM Research was behind the inventions of the

SABRE A sabre or saber ( ) is a type of backsword with a curved blade associated with the light cavalry of the Early Modern warfare, early modern and Napoleonic period, Napoleonic periods. Originally associated with Central European cavalry such a ...

travel reservation system, the technology of

laser eye surgery Eye surgery, also known as ophthalmic surgery or ocular surgery, is surgery performed on the eye or its adnexa. Eye surgery is part of ophthalmology and is performed by an ophthalmologist or eye surgeon. The eye is a fragile organ, and requires ...

, magnetic storage, the

, UPC barcodes and Watson, the question-answering computing system that won a match against human champions on the

Jeopardy! ''Jeopardy!'' is an American television game show created by Merv Griffin. The show is a quiz competition that reverses the traditional question-and-answer format of many quiz shows. Rather than being given questions, contestants are instead g ...

television quiz show. The Watson technology is now being commercialized as part of a project with healthcare company Anthem Inc. Other notable developments include the

Data Encryption Standard The Data Encryption Standard (DES ) is a symmetric-key algorithm for the encryption of digital data. Although its short key length of 56 bits makes it too insecure for modern applications, it has been highly influential in the advancement of cryp ...

(DES),

fast Fourier transform A fast Fourier transform (FFT) is an algorithm that computes the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) of a sequence, or its inverse (IDFT). A Fourier transform converts a signal from its original domain (often time or space) to a representation in ...

(FFT),

Benoît Mandelbrot Benoit B. Mandelbrot (20 November 1924 – 14 October 2010) was a Polish-born French-American mathematician and polymath with broad interests in the practical sciences, especially regarding what he labeled as "the art of #Fractals and the ...

's introduction of

fractal In mathematics, a fractal is a Shape, geometric shape containing detailed structure at arbitrarily small scales, usually having a fractal dimension strictly exceeding the topological dimension. Many fractals appear similar at various scale ...

s, magnetic disk storage (

hard disk A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating hard disk drive platter, pla ...

s), the

MELD-Plus MELD-Plus is a risk score to assess severity of chronic liver disease that was resulted from a collaboration between Massachusetts General Hospital and IBM. The score includes nine variables as effective predictors for 90-day mortality after a dis ...

risk score, the one-transistor

dynamic random-access memory Dynamics (from Greek language, Greek δυναμικός ''dynamikos'' "powerful", from δύναμις ''dynamis'' "power (disambiguation), power") or dynamic may refer to: Physics and engineering * Dynamics (mechanics), the study of forces and t ...

(DRAM), the

reduced instruction set computer In electronics and computer science, a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) is a computer architecture designed to simplify the individual instructions given to the computer to accomplish tasks. Compared to the instructions given to a com ...

(RISC) architecture,

s, and Deep Blue ( grandmaster-level

chess Chess is a board game for two players. It is an abstract strategy game that involves Perfect information, no hidden information and no elements of game of chance, chance. It is played on a square chessboard, board consisting of 64 squares arran ...

-playing computer).

Notable IBM researchers

There are a number of computer scientists "who made IBM Research famous." These include Frances E. Allen, Marc Auslander,

John Backus John Warner Backus (December 3, 1924 – March 17, 2007) was an American computer scientist. He led the team that invented and implemented FORTRAN, the first widely used high-level programming language, and was the inventor of the Backus–N ...

, Charles H. Bennett (computer scientist),

Erich Bloch Erich Bloch (January 9, 1925 – November 25, 2016) was a German-born American electrical engineer and administrator. He was involved with developing IBM's first transistorized supercomputer, 7030 Stretch, and mainframe computer, System/360. He ...

Grady Booch Grady Booch (born February 27, 1955) is an American software engineer, best known for developing the Unified Modeling Language (UML) with Ivar Jacobson and James Rumbaugh. He is recognized internationally for his innovative work in software archit ...

Fred Brooks Frederick Phillips Brooks Jr. (April 19, 1931 – November 17, 2022) was an American computer architect, software engineer, and computer scientist, best known for managing development of IBM's System/360 family of mainframe computers and the ...

(known for his book ''

The Mythical Man-Month ''The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering'' is a book on software engineering and project management by Fred Brooks first published in 1975, with subsequent editions in 1982 and 1995. Its central theme is that adding manpower to a s ...

''), Peter Brown, Larry Carter,

Gregory Chaitin Gregory John Chaitin ( ; born 25 June 1947) is an Argentina, Argentine-United States, American mathematician and computer scientist. Beginning in the late 1960s, Chaitin made contributions to algorithmic information theory and metamathematics, ...

, John Cocke, Alan Cobham,

Edgar F. Codd Edgar Frank "Ted" Codd (19 August 1923 – 18 April 2003) was a British computer scientist who, while working for IBM, invented the relational model for database management, the theoretical basis for relational databases and relational database ...

Don Coppersmith Don Coppersmith (born 1950) is a cryptographer and mathematician. He was involved in the design of the Data Encryption Standard block cipher at IBM, particularly the design of the S-boxes, strengthening them against differential cryptanalysis. ...

, Wallace Eckert,

Ronald Fagin Ronald Fagin (born 1945) is an American mathematician and computer scientist, and IBM Fellow at the IBM Almaden Research Center. He is known for his work in database theory, finite model theory, and reasoning about knowledge. Biography Ron F ...

Horst Feistel Horst Feistel (January 30, 1915 – November 14, 1990) was a German-American cryptographer who worked on the design of ciphers at IBM, initiating research that culminated in the development of the Data Encryption Standard (DES) in the 1970s. The ...

Jeanne Ferrante Jeanne Ferrante (born January 3, 1949) is an American computer scientist active in the field of compiler technology. As a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, San Diego's Jacobs School of Engineering, Ferr ...

, Zvi Galil, Ralph E. Gomory, Jim Gray,

Joseph Halpern Joseph Yehuda Halpern (born May 29, 1953) is an Israeli-American professor of computer science at Cornell University. Most of his research is on reasoning about knowledge and uncertainty. Biography Halpern graduated in 1975 from University of To ...

, Kenneth E. Iverson,

Frederick Jelinek Frederick Jelinek (18 November 1932 – 14 September 2010) was a Czech-American researcher in information theory, automatic speech recognition, and natural language processing. He is well known for his oft-quoted statement, "Every time I fire ...

, Reynold B. Johnson,

Benoit Mandelbrot Benoit B. Mandelbrot (20 November 1924 – 14 October 2010) was a Polish-born French-American mathematician and polymath with broad interests in the practical sciences, especially regarding what he labeled as "the art of roughness" of phy ...

, Robert Mercer,

C. Mohan Chandrasekaran Mohan is an Indian-born American computer scientist. He was born on 3 August 1955 in Tamil Nadu, India. After growing up there and finishing his undergraduate studies in Chennai, he moved to the United States in 1977 for graduat ...

, Kirsten Moselund,

Michael O. Rabin Michael Oser Rabin (; born September 1, 1931) is an Israeli mathematician, computer scientist, and recipient of the Turing Award. Biography Early life and education Rabin was born in 1931 in Breslau, Germany (today Wrocław, in Poland), th ...

, Arthur Samuel, Barbara Simons,

Alfred Spector Alfred Zalmon Spector is an American computer scientist and research manager. He is a Professor of Practice in the MIT EECS Department and was previously CTO of Two Sigma Investments. Before that, he was Vice President of Research and Special Ini ...

, Gardiner Tucker, Moshe Vardi, John Vlissides, Mark N. Wegman and

Shmuel Winograd __NOTOC__ Shmuel Winograd (; January 4, 1936 – March 25, 2019) was an Israeli-American computer scientist, noted for his contributions to computational complexity. He has proved several major results regarding the computational aspects of arit ...

Laboratories

IBM currently has 19 research facilities spread across 12 laboratories on six continents: * Africa (Nairobi, Kenya, and Johannesburg, South Africa) * Almaden (San Jose, California, US) * Australia (Melbourne) * Brazil (São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro) * Cambridge – IBM Research and MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab (Cambridge, Massachusetts, US) * China (Beijing) * Israel (Haifa) * Ireland (Dublin) * India (Delhi and Bengaluru) * Japan (Tokyo and Shin-Kawasaki) * Switzerland (Zürich) * IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center (Yorktown Heights and Albany, New York, US) Historic research centers for IBM also include IBM La Gaude (

Nice Nice ( ; ) is a city in and the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes department in France. The Nice agglomeration extends far beyond the administrative city limits, with a population of nearly one millionCambridge Scientific Center, the IBM New York Scientific Center, 330 North Wabash (

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

), IBM Austin Research Laboratory, and IBM Laboratory Vienna. In 2017, IBM invested $240 million to create the MIT–IBM Watson AI Lab. Headquartered in Cambridge, MA, the Lab is a unique joint research venture in artificial intelligence established by IBM and MIT and brings together researchers in academia and industry to advance AI that has a real world impact for business, academic and society. The Lab funds approximately 50 projects per year, which are co-led by principal investigators from MIT and IBM Research, with results published regularly at top peer-reviewed journals and conferences. Projects range from computer vision, natural language processing and reinforcement learning, to devising new ways to ensure that AI systems are fair, reliable and secure.

Almaden in Silicon Valley

IBM Research – Almaden is in

Almaden Valley, San Jose Almaden Valley (Spanish: ''Valle de Almadén''), commonly known simply as Almaden (Spanish: ''Almadén''), is a valley and neighborhood of San Jose, California, located in South San Jose. It is nestled between the Santa Cruz Mountains to the we ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. Its scientists perform basic and applied research in

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

, services, storage systems, physical sciences, and materials science and technology. IBM Research – Almaden occupies part of a site owned by IBM at 650 Harry Road on nearly of land in the Santa Teresa Hills above

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...

. The site, built in 1985 for the research center, was chosen because of its close proximity to

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

UC Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California, United States. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located in Monterey Bay ...

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkele ...

and other collaborative academic institutions. Today, the research division is still the largest tenant of the site, but the majority of occupants work for other divisions of IBM. IBM opened its first West Coast research center, the San Jose Research Laboratory in 1952, managed by Reynold B. Johnson. Among its first developments was the

IBM 350 IBM manufactured magnetic disk storage devices from 1956 to 2003, when it sold its hard disk drive business to Hitachi. Both the hard disk drive (HDD) and floppy disk drive (FDD) were invented by IBM and as such IBM's employees were responsible for ...

, the first commercial moving head hard disk drive. Launched in 1956, this saw use in the

IBM 305 RAMAC The IBM 305 RAMAC was the first commercial computer that used a moving-head hard disk drive (magnetic disk storage) for secondary storage. The system was publicly announced on September 14, 1956,

computer system. Subdivisions included the Advanced Systems Development Division. Directors of the center include hard disc drive developer Jack Harker. Prompted by a need for additional space, the center moved to its present Almaden location in 1986. Scientists at IBM Almaden have contributed to several scientific discoveries such as the development of

photoresist A photoresist (also known simply as a resist) is a light-sensitive material used in several processes, such as photolithography and photoengraving, to form a patterned coating on a surface. This process is crucial in the electronics industry. T ...

s and the quantum mirage effect. The following are some of the famous scientists who have worked in the past or are currently working in this laboratory: Rakesh Agrawal, Miklos Ajtai, Rama Akkiraju,

, Raymond F. Boyce, Donald D. Chamberlin, Ashok K. Chandra,

, Mark Dean,

Cynthia Dwork Cynthia Dwork (born June 27, 1958) is an American computer scientist renowned for her contributions to cryptography, distributed computing, and algorithmic fairness. She is one of the inventors of differential privacy and proof-of-work. Dwork w ...

, Don Eigler,

, Jim Gray, Laura M. Haas, Jean Paul Jacob,

, Andreas J. Heinrich, Reynold B. Johnson,

Maria Klawe Maria Margaret Klawe ( ; born 1951) is a Canadian-American computer scientist and served as the fifth president of Harvey Mudd College from 2006 to 2023. Born in Toronto in 1951, she became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2009. She was previously ...

, Jaishankar Menon, Dharmendra Modha, William E. Moerner,

, Stuart Parkin, Nick Pippenger, Dan Russell, Patricia Selinger, Ted Selker, Barbara Simons, Malcolm Slaney, Arnold Spielberg, Ramakrishnan Srikant,

Larry Stockmeyer Larry Joseph Stockmeyer (1948 – 31 July 2004) was an American computer scientist. He was one of the pioneers in the field of computational complexity theory, and he also worked in the field of distributed computing. He died of pancreatic cance ...

, Moshe Vardi,

Jennifer Widom Jennifer Widom (born ) is an American computer scientist known for her work in database systems and data management. She is notable for foundational contributions to semi-structured data management and data stream management systems. Since 2017 ...

, Shumin Zhai.

Australia

IBM Research – Australia was a research and development laboratory established by IBM Research in 2009 in

Melbourne Melbourne ( , ; Boonwurrung language, Boonwurrung/ or ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city of the States and territories of Australia, Australian state of Victori ...

. It was involved in

social media Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the Content creation, creation, information exchange, sharing and news aggregator, aggregation of Content (media), content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongs ...

, interactive content, healthcare analytics and services research, multimedia analytics, and genomics. The lab was headed by several directors over its 10 years lifespan, including Vice President, Joanna Batstone and Professor Iven Mareels. It was to be the company’s first laboratory combining research and development in a single organisation. The opening of the Melbourne lab in 2011 received an injection of $22 million in

Australian Federal Government The Australian Government, also known as the Commonwealth Government or simply as the federal government, is the national Executive (government), executive government of Australia, a federalism, federal Parliamentary system, parliamentary con ...

funding and an undisclosed amount provided by the

State Government A state government is the government that controls a subdivision of a country in a federal form of government, which shares political power with the federal or national government. A state government may have some level of political autonom ...

. The Melbourne Research lab was closed in 2021, approximately at the same time as the deal for tax breaks from the

ended. Approximately 80 full-time researchers were made redundant.

Brazil

IBM Research – Brazil is one of twelve

research laboratories A research institute, research centre, or research organization is an establishment founded for doing research. Research institutes may specialize in basic research or may be oriented to applied research. Although the term often implies natural ...

comprising IBM Research, its first in

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

. It was established in 2011, with locations in

São Paulo São Paulo (; ; Portuguese for 'Paul the Apostle, Saint Paul') is the capital of the São Paulo (state), state of São Paulo, as well as the List of cities in Brazil by population, most populous city in Brazil, the List of largest cities in the ...

and

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro, or simply Rio, is the capital of the Rio de Janeiro (state), state of Rio de Janeiro. It is the List of cities in Brazil by population, second-most-populous city in Brazil (after São Paulo) and the Largest cities in the America ...

. Research focuses on Industrial Technology and Science, Systems of Engagement and Insight, Social Data

Analytics Analytics is the systematic computational analysis of data or statistics. It is used for the discovery, interpretation, and communication of meaningful patterns in data, which also falls under and directly relates to the umbrella term, data sc ...

and

Natural Resources Natural resources are resources that are drawn from nature and used with few modifications. This includes the sources of valued characteristics such as commercial and industrial use, aesthetic value, scientific interest, and cultural value. ...

Solutions. The new lab,

's ninth at the time of opening and first in 12 years, underscores the growing importance of emerging markets and the globalization of innovation. In collaboration with Brazil's government, it will help IBM to develop technology systems around natural resource development and large-scale events such as the

2016 Summer Olympics The 2016 Summer Olympics (), officially the Games of the XXXI Olympiad () and officially branded as Rio 2016, were an international multi-sport event held from 5 to 21 August 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with preliminary events i ...

. Engineer and associate lab director Ulisses Mello explains that IBM has four priority areas in Brazil: "The main area is related to natural resources management, involving oil and gas, mining and agricultural sectors. The second is the social data analytics segment that comprises the analysis of data generated from

social networking A social network is a social structure consisting of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), networks of Dyad (sociology), dyadic ties, and other Social relation, social interactions between actors. The social network per ...

sites uch as Twitter or Facebook which can be applied, for example, to financial analysis. The third strategic area is

applied to the development of the smarter devices for the intermittent production industry. This technology can be applied to, for example, blood testing or recovering oil from existing fields. And the last one is smarter cities."

Japan

The IBM Research – Tokyo, which was called IBM Tokyo Research Laboratory (TRL) before January 2009, is one of IBM's twelve major worldwide research laboratories. It is a branch of IBM Research, and about 200 researchers work for TRL. Established in 1982 as the Japan Science Institute (JSI) in

Tokyo Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...

, it was renamed to IBM Tokyo Research Laboratory in 1986, and moved to

Yamato was originally the area around today's Sakurai, Nara, Sakurai City in Nara Prefecture of Japan, which became Yamato Province and by extension a Names of Japan, name for the whole of Japan. Yamato is also the dynastic name of the ruling Imperial ...

in 1992 and back to

in 2012. IBM Tokyo Research Laboratory was established in 1982 as the Japan Science Institute (JSI) in Sanbanchō,

. It was IBM's first research laboratory in Asia. Hisashi Kobayashi was appointed the founding director of TRL in 1982; he served as director until 1986. JSI was renamed to the IBM Tokyo Research Laboratory in 1986. In 1988, English-to-Japanese machine translation system called "System for Human-Assisted Language Translation" (SHALT) was developed at TRL. It was used to translate IBM manuals.

History

TRL was shifted from downtown Tokyo to the suburbs to share a building with IBM Yamato Facility in

Kanagawa Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Kanagawa Prefecture is the List of Japanese prefectures by population, second-most populous prefecture of Japan at 9,221,129 (1 April 2022) and third-dens ...

in 1993. In 1993, world record was accomplished for generation of continuous coherent

Ultraviolet Ultraviolet radiation, also known as simply UV, is electromagnetic radiation of wavelengths of 10–400 nanometers, shorter than that of visible light, but longer than X-rays. UV radiation is present in sunlight and constitutes about 10% of ...

rays. In 1996, Java JIT compiler was developed at TRL, and it was released for major IBM platforms. Numerous other technological breakthroughs were made at TRL. The team led by Chieko Asakawa ( :ja:浅川智恵子),

IBM Fellow An IBM Fellow is a position at IBM appointed by the CEO. Typically only four to nine (eleven in 2014) IBM Fellows are appointed each year, in May or June. Fellow is the highest honor a scientist, engineer, or programmer at IBM can achieve. Over ...

since 2009, provided basic technology for IBM's software programs for the visually handicapped, IBM Home Page Reader in 1997 and IBM aiBrowser ( :ja:aiBrowser) in 2007. TRL moved back to Tokyo in 2012, this time at IBM Toyosu Facility.

Research

TRL researchers are responsible for numerous breakthroughs in sciences and engineering. The researchers have presented multiple papers at international conferences, and published numerous papers in international journals. They have also contributed to the products and services of IBM, and patent filings. TRL conducts research in microdevices,

system software System software is software designed to provide a platform for other software. An example of system software is an operating system (OS) (like macOS, Linux, Android, and Microsoft Windows). Application software is software that allows users to d ...

security Security is protection from, or resilience against, potential harm (or other unwanted coercion). Beneficiaries (technically referents) of security may be persons and social groups, objects and institutions, ecosystems, or any other entity or ...

and

privacy Privacy (, ) is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively. The domain of privacy partially overlaps with security, which can include the concepts of a ...

analytics Analytics is the systematic computational analysis of data or statistics. It is used for the discovery, interpretation, and communication of meaningful patterns in data, which also falls under and directly relates to the umbrella term, data sc ...

and

optimization Mathematical optimization (alternatively spelled ''optimisation'') or mathematical programming is the selection of a best element, with regard to some criteria, from some set of available alternatives. It is generally divided into two subfiel ...

human computer interaction Humans (''Homo sapiens'') or modern humans are the most common and widespread species of primate, and the last surviving species of the genus ''Homo''. They are great apes characterized by their hairlessness, bipedalism, and high intelligen ...

embedded systems An embedded system is a specialized computer system—a combination of a computer processor, computer memory, and input/output peripheral devices—that has a dedicated function within a larger mechanical or electronic system. It is em ...

, and services sciences.

Other activities

TRL collaborates with the Japanese universities, and support their research programs. IBM donates its equipment such as servers, storage systems, and so forth to the Japanese universities to support their research programs under the Shared University Research (SUR) program. In 1987, IBM Japan Science Prize was created to recognize researchers, who are not over 45 years old, working at Japanese universities or public research institutes. It is awarded in

physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...

chemistry Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a physical science within the natural sciences that studies the chemical elements that make up matter and chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules a ...

, and

electronics Electronics is a scientific and engineering discipline that studies and applies the principles of physics to design, create, and operate devices that manipulate electrons and other Electric charge, electrically charged particles. It is a subfield ...

Israel

IBM Research – Haifa, previously known as the Haifa Research Lab (HRL) was founded as a small scientific center in 1972. Since then, it has grown into a major lab that leads the development of innovative technologies and solutions for the IBM corporation. The lab’s offices are situated in three locations across Israel:

Haifa Haifa ( ; , ; ) is the List of cities in Israel, third-largest city in Israel—after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—with a population of in . The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area, the third-most populous metropolitan area i ...

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( or , ; ), sometimes rendered as Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and usually referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the Gush Dan metropolitan area of Israel. Located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline and with a popula ...

, and

Beer Sheva Beersheba ( / ; ), officially Be'er-Sheva, is the largest city in the Negev desert of southern Israel. Often referred to as the "Capital of the Negev", it is the centre of the fourth-most populous metropolitan area in Israel, the eighth-most po ...

. IBM Research – Haifa employs researchers in a range of areas. Research projects are being executed today in areas such as artificial intelligence, hybrid cloud, quantum computing, blockchain, IoT, quality, cybersecurity, and industry domains such as healthcare. Aya Soffer is IBM vice president of AI technology and serves as the director of the IBM Research Lab in Haifa, Israel.

History

In its 30th year, the IBM Haifa Research Lab in Israel moved to a new home on the University of Haifa campus. The researchers at the Lab are involved in special projects with academic institutions across Israel, the United States, and Europe, and actively participate in numerous consortiums as part of the EU Horizon 2020 programme. Today in 2020, the Lab describes itself as having the highest number of employees in Israel's hi-tech industry who hold advanced degrees in science, electrical engineering, mathematics, or related fields. Researchers participate in international conferences and are published in professional publications. In 2014, IBM Research announced the Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (CCoE) in Beer Sheva in collaboration with

Ben-Gurion University Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) (, ''Universitat Ben-Guriyon baNegev'') is a public research university in Beersheba, Israel. Named after Israeli national founder David Ben-Gurion, the university was founded in 1969 and currently has f ...

of the Negev.

Switzerland

IBM Research – Zurich (previously called IBM Zurich Research Laboratory, ZRL) is the European branch of IBM Research. It was opened in 1956 and is located in

Rüschlikon Rüschlikon is a Municipalities of Switzerland, municipality in the district of Horgen District, Horgen in the Cantons of Switzerland, canton of Zürich (canton), Zürich in Switzerland. It is located on the west shore of Lake Zürich. Coat of ar ...

near

Zürich Zurich (; ) is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. , the municipality had 448,664 inhabitants. The ...

, Switzerland. In 1956, IBM opened their first European research laboratory in

Adliswil Adliswil is a town and a municipality in the district of Horgen in the canton of Zürich in Switzerland. The official language of Adliswil is (the Swiss variety of Standard) German, but the main spoken language is the local variant of the A ...

, Switzerland. The lab moved to its own campus in neighboring Rüschlikon in 1962. The Zürich lab is staffed by a multicultural and interdisciplinary team of a few hundred permanent research staff members, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, representing about 45 nationalities. Collocated with the lab is a ''Client Center'' (formerly the ''Industry Solutions Lab''), an executive briefing facility demonstrating technology prototypes and solutions. The Zürich lab is world-renowned for its scientific achievements—most notably Nobel Prizes in physics in 1986 and 1987 for the invention of the

and the discovery of

, respectively. Other key inventions include

trellis modulation Trellis coded modulation (TCM) is a modulation scheme that transmits information with high efficiency over band-limited channels such as telephone lines. Gottfried Ungerboeck invented trellis modulation while working for IBM in the 1970s, and fi ...

, which revolutionized data transmission over telephone lines;

Token Ring Token Ring is a Physical layer, physical and data link layer computer networking technology used to build local area networks. It was introduced by IBM in 1984, and standardized in 1989 as IEEE Standards Association, IEEE 802.5. It uses a sp ...

, which became a standard for

local area network A local area network (LAN) is a computer network that interconnects computers within a limited area such as a residence, campus, or building, and has its network equipment and interconnects locally managed. LANs facilitate the distribution of da ...

s and a highly successful IBM product; the

Secure Electronic Transaction Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) is a communications protocol standard for securing credit card transactions over networks, specifically, the Internet. SET was not itself a payment system, but rather a set of security protocols and formats that ...

(SET) standard used for highly secure payments; and the Java Card OpenPlatform (JCOP), a

smart card A smart card (SC), chip card, or integrated circuit card (ICC or IC card), is a card used to control access to a resource. It is typically a plastic credit card-sized card with an Embedded system, embedded integrated circuit (IC) chip. Many smart ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

. Most recently the lab was involved in the development of SuperMUC, a supercomputer that is cooled using hot water. The Zürich lab focus areas are future chip technologies; nanotechnology; data storage; quantum computing, brain-inspired computing; security and privacy; risk and compliance; business optimization and transformation; server systems. The Zürich laboratory is involved in many joint projects with universities throughout Europe, in research programs established by the European Union and the Swiss government, and in cooperation agreements with research institutes of industrial partners. One of the lab's most high-profile projects is called

DOME A dome () is an architectural element similar to the hollow upper half of a sphere. There is significant overlap with the term cupola, which may also refer to a dome or a structure on top of a dome. The precise definition of a dome has been a m ...

, which is based on developing an IT roadmap for the Square Kilometer Array. The research projects pursued at the IBM Zürich lab are organized into four scientific and technical departments: Science & Technology, Cloud and AI Systems Research, Cognitive Computing & Industry Solutions and Security Research. The lab is currently managed by Alessandro Curioni. On 17 May 2011, IBM and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich opened the Binnig and Rohrer Nanotechnology Center, which is located on the same campus in Rüschlikon.

IBM Scientific Centers

In addition to the IBM Research Division, the IBM Scientific Centers, which were active in various functions from 1964 to the early 1990s, were another remarkable research unit. In contrast to the central control of the Research Division from the headquarters in Armonk in the USA, the IBM Scientific Centers were structured in a decentralized manner. Each center functioned as an integral part of the IBM organization in its respective region or country. This organization also financed the center and ultimately determined its content and strategic direction. The task of an IBM Scientific Center was to contribute with its research, its expertise and its cooperation projects for the benefit of the respective country and thus to contribute to the reputation of IBM in this country or this region. While the research laboratories of the IBM Research Division had to be very restrictive with regard to scientific cooperation projects with non-IBM institutions for patent reasons and other reasons, technical-scientific and application-oriented cooperation projects with universities and other public research institutions were an important part of IBM's mission for the scientific centers. Because of this, the spectrum of activities of such a center was often very broad. For example, some research groups could deal with topics that can be assigned to basic or product-oriented research, while others dealt with application-oriented research topics, for example satellite-based soil classification. Descriptions of the thematic focus and research projects as well as a selection of references to the scientific publications of the individual centers, as far as they were still alive in 1989, can be found in. A comprehensive description of the evolution, projects, and success stories of the IBM Heidelberg Scientific Center from its very beginning and to shortly before its end can be found in. The history of the IBM Scientific Centers began in 1964 with the founding of the first four centers in the USA (marked with * in the list below) and has subsequently grown to 26 centers worldwide in 1989. Their story ended in the early 1990s. * Bari, Italy (1969–1979) * Bergen, Norway (since 1986) * Brasilia, Brazil (1980–1986) * Cairo, Egypt (since 1983) * Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA (since 1964) * * Caracas, Venezuela (since 1983) * Grenoble, France (1967–1973) * Haifa, Israel (since 1972) * Heidelberg, Germany (since 1968) * Houston, Texas (1966–1974) * Kuwait City, Kuwait (since 1980) * Los Angeles, California, USA (since 1964) * * Madrid, Spain (since 1972) * Mexico City, Mexico (since 1971) * New York City (1964–1972) * * Palo Alto, California, USA (since 1964) * * Paris, France (since 1977) * Peterlee, United Kingdom (1969–1979) * Pisa, Italy (since 1971) * Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA (1972–1974) * Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (since 1986) * Rome, Italy (since 1979) * Tokyo, Japan (since 1970) * Venice, Italy (1969–1979) * Wheaton, Maryland, USA (1967–1969) * Winchester, United Kingdom (since 1979)

Publications

*
IBM Journal of Research and Development
'

References

External links

* of IBM Research

(archived 10 December 2005)
Research History Highlights
(''Top Innovations'')
Research history by year

Oral history interview with Martin Schwarzschild
head of Watson Scientific Computation Laboratory at Columbia University, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota (archived 12 August 2002)
IBM Research's technical journals
{{authority control IBM facilities Computer science organizations Research and development organizations

History

Notable IBM researchers

Laboratories

Almaden in Silicon Valley

Australia

Brazil

Japan

History

Research

Other activities

Israel

History

Switzerland

IBM Scientific Centers

Publications

References

Further reading

External links