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By James Finnan
I read recently that IBM has spent more than $100 Billion in the last ten years on both research and development as well as paying out stock dividends. Quite a sum of money to invest in new product development most will agree. The yield from this R&D spending frenzy has been to position IBM as the perennial leader in patent applications in the US for the last 3 decades or so. Many of these patents are leading to new inventions, especially in the field of cloud computing.
This research has lead to the recent announcement by IBM that their scientists have succeeded in developing chips powered by a relatively new memory technology known as phase-change memory or (PCM). The new chips can reliably store multiple data bits per cell over extended periods of time. Up to now only single bit-per-cell PCM exhibits the desired reliability in data storage over a period of time and no such results on multi-bit PCM have been reported.
IBM said that they have successfully developed the multi-bit chips by doubling the density of a chip and reducing the number of errors when reading data.These amazing chips can store data 100x faster than existing NAND flash technology. They also have high storage capacities and the power to retain data even when the power supply is cut off. Unlike flash, these chips are very durable. They can endure at least 10 million write cycles, compared to current enterprise class flash at 30,000 cycles or consumer class flash at 3,000 cycles. IBM plans to license the technology and expects the chips to be widely available by 2016.
PCM has most recently been looked upon as a green memory alternative for its ability to rapidly store large amounts of data without consuming much power. PCM is made of the same material as CD disks and not classic transistors like flash memory. To write data on it, heat is applied to a memory cell. When it cools, the bit re-solidifies into one of two crystalline structures, depending on how fast the cooling takes place. The two different crystalline structures exhibit different levels of resistance to electrical current. These differing levels of resistance are ultimately read as "1s" or "0s" by the computer.
However, a drift occurs due to resistance changes as the chip's alloy material shifts phases from the crystalline (low resistance) to the amorphous (high resistance) state, resulting in PCM errors. To overcome the drift issue, IBM scientists have applied an advanced modulation coding technique that is inherently drift-tolerant. Using the technique, the IBM scientists were able to mitigate drift and demonstrate long-term retention of bits stored in a sub-array of 200,000 cells of their PCM test chip that was fabricated using 90-nanometer CMOS technology.
What will this technology introduction mean for IBM in the future? The short answer is More efficient cloud based computing.
With the increasing adoption of IT solutions globally, growth in data consumption has been tremendous. This trend will continue as we continue to increase our digital footprints with an increasing number of transactions and activities that are metered by the service providers. This digital data is increasingly stored in a cloud based data warehouse by one of the many cloud vendors. This trend has led to bigger storage facilities and datacenters, which consumes an increasing amount of power and space.
According to one survey by Gartner in late 2010, data volume growth was the biggest data center hardware infrastructure challenge for large enterprises, as 47.0% of the respondents ranked data growth among their top three challenges.
With the increasing spending on IT and rapid growth of virtualization and cloud computing, huge data centers have become a necessity to remain competitive in the global IT environment. Worldwide IT spending is expected to total $3.67 trillion in 2011, a 7.1% increase from $3.43 trillion in 2010, according to the latest outlook from Gartner. Spending on public cloud services are expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 19% for the 2010-2015 period.
According to some analysts, North American enterprises plan to increase their data center infrastructure spending by an average of 25% in 2011. Cloud technologies will play a major role in this expansion, and are among the top 3 expected data center changes.
The increasing adoption of PCM technology will most likely help in reducing the space and power required to maintain big data centers. This can therefore help drive profitability for companies engaged in cloud computing ( provided they adopt new PCM like technologies). IBM will achieve revenue growth by licensing this PCM technology to data center operators and vendors.
All of that research at IBM will continue to lead them to new initiatives like smarter planet, business analytics and optimization, and more efficient cloud computing over the long term. This is yet another example of IBM innovating and leading the way for cost and operational savings for an emerging industry based on cloud computing.
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