History of IBM Research 2005
Latin American Grid computing initiative
Building on the company's effort to foster world class research and create leadership opportunities for Hispanic students in IT and engineering, IBM teamed with Florida International University, University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez, University of Miami, Barcelona Supercomputing Center and Monterrey Tech to invest in the Latin American Grid initiative. The LA Grid program will link faculty, students and researchers from Watson Research Centers across the United States, Latin America and Spain to collaborate on innovative industry projects
More than a petaflop of computing power
The world's foremost supercomputing authority, the TOP500 Organization, named an IBM supercomputing system as the most powerful supercomputer in the world. IBM's Blue Gene/L tops the list with an unprecedented sustained performance of 280.6 teraflops, or trillions of floating point calculations per second.
Collaboration with world's top cancer centers to accelerate research, diagnosis and treatment
IBM joined forces with Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the Molecular Profiling Institute and the CHU Sainte-Justine Research Center - Mother and Child University Hospital Center, under separate agreements, to help accelerate cancer research, diagnosis and treatment.
Helping federal agencies assess organizational needs for managing wildland fire
IBM was contracted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service to develop a system which will be used for fire planning, budget development and budget allocation for the five federal wildland fire agencies. The Fire Program Analysis , provides these agencies with a common system to support wildland fire preparedness analysis, planning, and budgeting.
Scientists harness "slow light" for optical communications
IBM scientists were able to slow light down to less than 1/300th of its usual speed by directing it down a carefully designed channel of perforated silicon called a "photonic crystal waveguide." The unique design of the device allows the light's speed to be varied over a wide range by applying an electrical voltage to the waveguide. This represents a big advance toward the eventual use of light in place of electricity in the connection of electric components, potentially leading to vast improvements in the performance of computers and other electronic systems.
Contribution to Genographic Project
IBM began deploying new customized data gathering software technologies as part of its contribution to the Genographic Project. The field collection technology is revolutionizing the geneticists' ability to collect, manage, store and securely transmit background data on sample participants in every corner of the globe.
Open source technology for analysis of unstructured information
IBM’s Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA) supports a new breed of software applications that can process text within documents and other content sources to understand the latent meaning, relationship and relevant facts buried within. UIMA has received significant support from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the central research and development organization for the Department of Defense.
Next generation silicon germanium technology
IBM introduced its fourth generation silicon germanium foundry technology, named 8HP -- with over 2X performance of the previous generation. The 130 nanometer silicon germanium bipolar complementary metal oxide semiconductor foundry technology can reduce the cost of mobile consumer products, advance high-bandwidth wireless communications, and help enable innovative new applications such as collision-avoidance automobile radar.
World's largest privately owned supercomputer
IBM launched the world's most powerful privately owned supercomputer, the Watson Blue Gene system, nicknamed BGW, installed at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. With a processing speed of 91.29 teraflops, the system joins its sister machine -- the Blue Gene/L supercomputer installed at Lawrence Livermore National Lab and currently the world's fastest -- as one of the top three supercomputers in the world.
Uncovering the secrets of cognitive intelligence with EPFL
Scientists from IBM and The Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne joined together to use the huge computational capacity of IBM's eServer Blue Gene supercomputer to create a detailed model of the circuitry in the neocortex -- the largest and most complex part of the human brain. By expanding the project to model other areas of the brain, scientists hope to eventually build an accurate, computer-based model of the entire brain.
Modernizing pharmaceutical development and manufacturing
In an attempt to modernize pharmaceutical development and manufacturing, IBM Healthcare & Life Sciences developed a proof of concept that demonstrates how the FDA’s Science of Design and Manufacturing Science concepts can be enabled in a Service Oriented Architecture.
Exploratory research initiative on phase change memory technology
IBM, Infineon, and Macronix joined together in a research initiative to explore the potential of phase-change memory. While in its early stages, the technology shows potential for high speed, high density storage of data, while retaining data even when power is turned off. Such attributes could be beneficial in applications ranging from high performance servers to consumer electronics.
Research repository for data mining using Indigo BioSystems’ True Blue
IBM and Indigo BioSystems initiated a collaboration to host a global warehouse, based on Indigo BioSystems’ True Blue Archive technology, capable of storing raw human proteomics data. The result is a public database of information designed to help global researchers reduce time spent and costs by re-mining existing data to develop new conclusions.
Mapping how humankind populated the planet
The National Geographic Society and IBM launched a groundbreaking research initiative that will trace the migratory history of the human species. The Genographic Project, a five-year research partnership, uses sophisticated laboratory and computer analysis of DNA contributed by hundreds of thousands of people, including indigenous peoples and members of the general public, to map how the Earth was populated.
