Shark tales from IBM's labs

Situated atop rolling hills in the middle of 700 acres of undeveloped land in California, IBM's research centre is an unlikely setting for some of the world's finest technology brains.

Although just a short drive from the heart of Silicon Valley, the Almaden site feels remote, with nothing but open country all around.

But within its walls, more than 400 scientists, programmers and researchers are busy working on a diverse range of cutting-edge technologies and applications.
Staff at Almaden, which is one of eight such IBM centres around the world, spend their time working on basic science research and the continued development of existing technologies.

Dr Robert Shelby, a research staff member at the centre, is investigating new technologies for memory devices.

Having spent the past 25 years working in electro-optics, Shelby tests various composite materials to determine their properties when rapidly heated and cooled.
Using a laser test station that he threw together with old components in the lab, he fires green and red laser beams into a range of germanium and antimony composites. The green laser heats the material while the red laser measures its reflectivity, which is how data is read by the system.

The research is part of the centre's work on a new phase change memory (PCM) technology, which aims to store data by changing the state of various materials from an amorphous to a crystalline structure, rather than as an electrical charge.
It is a slow process, because the right composite materials need to be found that can cope with being heated and cooled millions of times at temperatures suitable for use in desktop computers.

Phase change is already used in some technologies, such as rewriteable CDs and DVDs. But if his research succeeds, Shelby will help to develop high-capacity memory that lasts longer, is more stable and operates faster than existing Flash memory, with read speeds measured in nanoseconds rather than micr oseconds.

'Flash memory is terrible,' says Shelby. 'Both read and write speeds are too slow. And because Flash memories degrade over time, they need to include lots of error-checking software to compensate.'

In May, IBM announced that it will work with researchers at Infineon and Macronix to further develop PCM technology.

The potential pay-off from PCM is huge, as this kind of memory could replace existing technologies such as DRam and Flash, powering a new generation of iPods and other consumer devices.

'Flash memory is key, especially for use in mobile phones, digital cameras, MP3 players and so on,' says Dr Gian-Luca Bona, group manager for science and technology at Almaden.

'It's the fastest-growing market for memory in the world and its needs are increasingly demanding as users swallow up more and more capacity and want it faster and more reliable.'

PCM technology is just one aspect of the storage research carried out at the centre, with other scientists working on tape technology and other types of storage.

'Tape technology is especially important, as new regulations demand that data be retained by firms and airports and so on for lengthy periods of time. Tape is the most cost-effective tool for doing this,' says Bona.

One of the more unusual areas of research is in the magnetic race-track, a type of three-dimensional memory with the capacity of a typical hard disk drive and the performance of solid state memory.

Still only a proof of concept, the basic science is being tested by the lab led by Dr Stuart Parkin, an IBM Fellow responsible for numerous breakthroughs in experimental physics.

But storage is just one of several technologies being explored.

Researchers are working on technologies from healthcare systems and computer interfaces to better techniques for protecting digital content.

Although the focus is on the basic science, a lot of attention is also paid to bringing new technologies to market. One example is an application called Shark.

Aimed at improving the techniques for writing on small mobile devices, the concept relies on tracing letters with a stylus, rather than tapping them out individually.
The software's trick lies in accurately predicting the word users want to write from the line that they trace.

If it is unable to decide immediately which word the user might want, it provides a list of options.

Unrecognised words can be entered by simply tapping the right letters on the pad, which are then automatically added to the system's dictionary.

With some practice, Shark allows users to 'write' at speeds of between 50 and 80 words per minute, faster than any other existing input system excluding a computer keyboard. IBM says writing longhand has a theoretical maximum speed of 24 words per minute.

'It is a trial platform at the moment, but we can port it rapidly to any other platform should the right hardware partner express a desire to work with us,' says Dr Shumin Zhai, the research staff member leading the project.

Shark is one of several human-machine interfaces being developed at the labs, as scientists investigate ways of improving the way we interact with computers.
'The user experience is terrible at the moment. We are working on trying to change that here,' says Dr Daniel Russell, a senior research assistant in user sciences and experience research at Almaden.

Russell is finalising a system that tracks the movement of a user's eyes to see where and for how long they focus their attention on a specific point, which will be used as a kiosk-based exhibit at a local technology museum.

It combines a non-obtrusive eye tracker with recording and analysis software developed in IBM Research.

Russell says one practical application for the software could be for ecommerce firms wanting to see how much attention customers pay to various elements on a site, such as price, the product's image, specifications and so on.

IBM has already worked with retailer Lands' End for an online shopping study, and is now working with its consulting arm to deploy the system for ecommerce usability studies.