Innovations lead IBM back to leadership

By Our Corporate Bureau | 13 Feb 2004

Armonk: Over the years, IBM has received international recognition for its discoveries and has produced 38,000 patent — more than its nearest competitor. Innovations at IBM have led to five of its researchers being conferred the Nobel Prize and 11 years of patent leadership through its pool of around 3,000 scientists, working in the company''s eight research laboratories.

But what''s more important than the statistics is the effect these discoveries and patents have in the marketplace and that is what makes something "innovative."

IBM Research has played a critical role in the development and application of new technologies that have revolutionised information technology and science. Its continued innovation from some of the sharpest, creative minds, has had an indelible impact on the global IT industry.

IBM''s rich history of discovery and innovation has brought international recognition. In addition to five Nobel prizes, IBM researchers have been recognized with four US national medals of technology, three national medals of science and 19 memberships in the National Academy of Sciences. IBM Research has more than 46 members of the National Academy of Engineering and well over 300 industry organization fellows.

Some leading innovations that IBM Research has pioneered, illustrates the scientific and technological advances of the company during the past fifty years.

• Carbon nanotube technology
• Copper chip technology
• Giant magnetoresistive head (GMR)
• Deep blue
• Speech recognition technology
• High-temperature superconductivity (Nobel prize)
• Fractal
• Scanning tunnelling microscope (STM) (Nobel prize)
• Formula translation system (FORTRAN)
• Reduced instruction set computer (RISC) architecture
• Magnetic disk storage
• One-transistor dynamic RAM (DRAM)