|
 IBM announced the plan a week before its widely anticipated second
quarter earnings. Last quarter, sales in its hardware sector plunged
23 percent from a year earlier and the company posted its lowest
quarterly revenue in five years.
IBM hopes to find ways to scale and shrink silicon chips to make
them more efficient, and research new materials to use in making
chips, such as carbon nanotubes, which are more stable than silicon
and are also heat resistant and can provide faster connections.
"The message to our investors is that we are committed to this
space, we believe there is great innovation possible that will be
necessary in world of big data analytics, said Tom Rosamilia, senior
vice president of IBM's Systems and Technology Group.
"These are essential ingredients in delivering the kind of
performance the world will demand. The world is demanding it now and
will continue to demand it for the next 10 years," he said.
The investment is equal to half of all IBM's research and
development last year. The company is preparing to divest its chip
manufacturing business to focus on intellectual property. The
company is rumored to be close to a deal with chipmaker
Globalfoundries Inc.
At an investor briefing in May, IBM's Chief Financial Officer Martin
Schroeter said new research and development was essential to
refreshing the hardware sector, which he expects to stabilize in
2014 and grow in 2015.
Silicon chips, which have been made smaller every year, are reaching
a point of diminishing returns, preventing chips from delivering
performance improvements demanded by new technology, the company
said.
"You might say this is not a good time to be in the silicon chip
business, but it is a great time to be ready for the next thing.
This is the next thing," said Richard Doherty a research director at
The Envisioneering Group in Seaford, NY.
[to top of second column] |
IBM is the only major company investing in carbon chip research. As
demand grows for faster speeds, the investment could put it miles
ahead of competitors like Oracle and HP, said Doherty.
Most electricity going through silicon chips gets released as heat,
said Doherty, with only 30 percent going toward electricity.
"Silicon-electron mobility is like moving through snow. You can't
run as fast," he said.
One substance IBM has already done some research on is graphene, a
pure carbon through which IBM says electrons can move 10 times
faster than in silicon. The company plans to invest more on research
in this area.
The new chips would allow for faster computing processes that could
lead to artificial intelligence and high power cognitive computing.
The company hopes the investment will lead to technology that allows
computer systems to emulate the brain's efficiency, size and power
usage, it said.
((Refiled to fix garble in paragraph 11)
(Reporting By Marina Lopes; Editing by David Gregorio)
[© 2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright
2014 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
