Category Archives: R&D measures

12 atoms per bit vs 35 bits per electron

Posted on January 17, 2012 by Ray

Read a story today in Technology Review on Magnetic Memory Miniaturized to Just 12 Atoms by a team at  IBM Research that created a (spin) magnetic “storage device” that used 12 iron atoms  to record a single bit (near absolute … Continue reading →

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Making hardware-software systems design easier

Posted on December 13, 2011 by Ray

Recent research from MIT on a Streamlining Chip Design was in the news today.  The report described work was done  by Nyrav Dave PhD and Myron King to create a new programming language, BlueSpec that can convert specifications into hardware chip design (Verilog) or … Continue reading →

Posted in Decision making, Energy efficiency, R&D measures, Storage architecture, Strategic Inflection Points, System effectiveness | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

How has IBM research changed?

Posted on December 7, 2011 by Ray

What does Watson, Neuromorphic chips and race track memory have in common. They have all emerged out of IBM research labs. I have been wondering for some time now how it is that a company known for it’s cutting edge … Continue reading →

Posted in Corporate growth, Data science, Executive leadership, Information economy, R&D measures, SSD storage, Strategic Inflection Points, Strategic planning, Strategy, Visionary leadershp | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Commodity hardware debate heats up again

Posted on September 27, 2011 by Ray

A post by Chris M. Evans, in his The Storage Architect blog (Intel inside storage arrays) re-invigorated the discussion we had last year on commodity hardware always loses. But buried in the comments was one from Michael Hay (HDS) which pointed … Continue reading →

Posted in Distributed computing, Market dynamics, R&D measures, Strategic Inflection Points, System effectiveness, System quality | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

HDS buys BlueArc

Posted on September 8, 2011 by Ray

Yesterday, HDS announced that they had closed on the purchase of BlueArc their NAS supplier for the past 5 years or so.  Many commentators mentioned that this was a logical evolution of their ongoing OEM agreement, how the timing was … Continue reading →

Posted in data access, File Storage, R&D measures, Storage, Storage performance, System effectiveness | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Technology innovation

Posted on April 22, 2011 by Ray

A recent post by Mark Lewis on innovation in large companies (see Episode 105: Innovation – a process problem?) brought to mind some ideas that have been intriguing me for quite awhile now.  While Mark’s post is only the start … Continue reading →

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R&D effectiveness

Posted on March 9, 2010 by Ray

A recent Gizmodo blog post compared a decade of R&D at Sony, Microsoft and Apple.  There were some interesting charts but mostly it showed that R&D as a percent of revenue, fluctuates from year to year and R&D spend has been … Continue reading →

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