IBM, Samsung, and Sony were awarded more than 14,000 patents in the U.S. during 2012.
IBM's newest mainframe server, the zEnterprise EC12, is purportedly the most powerful and technologically advanced enterprise system Big Blue has ever assembled. It sports the world's fastest processor, a six-core 32nm part running at 5.5GHz, that offers 25 percent more performance per core than the 45nm quad-core chip used in the previous generation zEnterprise 196. According to IBM, zEC12 is the result of an investment of more than $1 billion in research and development.
November 2009 was the last time a United States supercomputer sat on top of the TOP500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers, and thanks to Sequoia, an IBM BlueGene/Q system residing at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the U.S. is back out in front of the pack after it achieved 16.32 petaflop/s on the Linpack benchmark. Over a million and a half cores (1,572,864, to be exact) comprise Sequoia, which TOP500 describes as one of the most energy efficient systems on the list.
Punching a hole through your TV isn't generally regarded as a wise move, but as it turns out, punching holes -- 48 of them, to be exact -- through standard 90nm silicon CMOS chips is a decent first step towards superfast supercomputing. Sound crazy? Apparently, it isn't. Today, IBM announced it did just that with the awesomely named "Holey Optochip," a prototype optical chip that can transfer data at a blistering fast 1 terabit (1 trillion bits) per second rates.
Computers are getting smaller. Processors are getting smaller. Why shouldn’t hard drives get smaller, too? Don’t worry – IBM’s working on it. Late last week, the company announced that its researchers had “successfully demonstrated the ability to store information in as few as 12 magnetic atoms.” In comparison, it takes close to a million atoms for current HDDs to store a bit. Apparently, being dense is a good thing!
IBM was awarded 6,180 patents in all of 2011, more than any other company in the world and nearly 1,300 more than Samsung, which was granted the second most patents with 4,894. After that, the Top 50 list compiled by IFI Claims Patent Services starts to drop off with Canon (No. 3) having added 2,821 patents to its portfolio last year, followed by Panasonic (No. 4) with 2,559 and Toshiba (No. 5) with 2,483. IBM has led the pack for 19 years straight, but don't hate the player, hate the game.
It looks as though Google decided to treat itself to a holiday bonus by splurging on over 200 patents belonging to IBM. The latest round of patents run the gamut from wireless phone technologies to JavaScript widgets, as well as one that could be used to bolster its social networking service, Google+. This particular patent -- U.S. Patent 7,865,592 -- describes "Using semantic networks to develop a social network."
Within five years, IBM believes we'll begin to see early applications of mind reading technology that up to now have been little more than science fiction fantasies. The geeks in blue are, at this very moment, researching ways to link your brain to electronic devices so, for example, you could simply think about calling someone on your smartphone and it would happen. And looking longer term, IBM believes brain control will take over manual typing.
The European Union's competition watchdog has decided to end its antitrust investigation of International Business Machines (IBM) after accepting a series of concessions by IBM, according to reports. IBM agreed to provide spare parts and technical information to other companies that will make it easier for the competition to perform mainframe hardware and software maintenance.
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