5 ms·

If you consider the number of papers published over the lifetime of IBM, and the fact that IBM Research does work in all levels of computing (materials science

by Cyph0n 10y ago

If you consider the number of papers published over the lifetime of IBM, and the fact that IBM Research does work in all levels of computing (materials science -> software), Microsoft's research output looks minuscule in comparison. But if you're considering only CS research, then you might be right. Here is a nice snapshot of the major contributions that came out of IBM Research over the past 60 years: http://www.research.ibm.com/featured/history/ http://www.research.ibm.com/featured/history/. Edit: the invention of copper interconnects is enough for me to be frank (http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/copperchip/ http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/copperc...). On a similar note, Intel is another company that is very active in research and has published a significant amount of peer-reviewed publications. Samsung Research is yet another; they have an amazing presence at circuit design conferences, for instance.

AndrewKemendo 10y ago
Intel is also 13 years older, has roots in research and basically started with HUGE projects like the Apollo missions. Class of their own IMO.
- dekhn 10y ago
  intel started with huge projects like missles. The Air Force was their largest and most demanding customer.
j1vms 10y ago
And all of these, in terms of quality of research output, pale by about an order of magnitude in comparison to Bell Labs for much of its existence (particularly in the era ~1940 to mid 1980s). They were the R&D benchmark for most improvements to IBM Research from the 1960s onward. Additionally IBM sought out its alumni and populated their ranks with notable management and research minds from the Bell Labs stable.
- Cyph0n 10y ago
  You could probably bundle all of the achievements of the aforementioned companies into a single decade of research output from Bell Labs. It's not a fair comparison at all.
  - j1vms 10y ago
    > It's not a fair comparison at all. Especially since Bell Labs sat within a state-sponsored (enforced?) monopoly until the mid-80s, so there was no direct concern about revenue. Which is not to belittle them in the least as they made outstanding organizational decisions, and had the most enviable pure research->development->production pipeline to this day. In terms of the R&D USA, the closest comparison is IBM (which also enjoyed a monopoly for some of its existence). MS's monopoly, with the benefit of hindsight, was feeble in comparison even to IBM's -- though they, like IBM, are absolutely one of the greats and have redeemed themselves particularly in the past few years.
- airesQ 10y ago
  Not sure if anything can be considered successful when compared with Bell Labs. It is a very high bar to meet (given they mostly invented transistors, information theory, unix and c). The modern world is to great extent a byproduct of the experiment that was Bell Labs. Some laugh, and say that it was experiment that has gone awry.
  - leereeves 10y ago
    And yet it didn't work out well for the company that funded it. Much like Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (inventors of the mouse, GUI, and object oriented programming), which Xerox failed to profit from.
    - seeekr 10y ago
      > And yet it didn't work out well for the company that funded it. I get that point. We're all interested in building great and successful companies on here, so of course it's a bummer when there is success from one perspective, but the whole thing kinda doesn't work out overall. But I also want to ask: As a society, don't we benefit so much from any advancements made in the open, through publicly shared research as well as the open source movement, that sometimes we would do well to just bask in the glory of those advancements and never mind what individual entities (financially, structurally) stuck around or not, profited or not, in the procuring of said advancements? It's also very clear of course that it is beneficial to look at the past in a discerning way, learn from it, make it better now and in the future. Still, there's something about the thought in the paragraph above that I wanted to bring up.
      - leereeves 10y ago
        I just meant that, in the context of this post, and given the poor history of corporate research turning into corporate profits, I can understand Apple's reluctance to fund blue sky research. I do admire a company that contributes in that way, recognizing that it's a contribution to humanity rather than investment for future profits.
    - ZenoArrow 10y ago
- EGreg 10y ago
  I once read a Microsoft research paper. I think its central premise had a fatal flaw: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/buridan.pdf http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/b... The author confused continuity of the DECISION FUNCTION with continuity of the OUTCOME CURVE. In other words, an algorithm such as "keep trying to make a decision until you notice that t > C, after which always pick the left one" will in fact NOT have a continuous outcome curve, despite the decision function being continuous.
  - tunesmith 10y ago
    That's Leslie Lamport, winner of the 2013 Turing Award.
  - cscurmudgeon 10y ago
    Even the best scientists are not machines. It is naïve to think that the best papers are flawless. (I used to think so when starting grad school.) They is not.
  - krenoten 10y ago
    That's a great example of how even some of the most influential minds are fallible. Lamport is sort of the god of distributed systems, having invented vector clocks, paxos which is how there is any sanity in modern data centers (chubby, ZK, etcd, etc... are based on the core ideas of this), TLA+ for reasoning about correctness, so much great stuff. Check out some of these! http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/time-clocks.pdf http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/t... http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/paxos-simple.pdf http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/p...
    - EGreg 10y ago
      Amazing work :-)
  - EGreg 10y ago
    I should admit that after writing this, I went back and forth with him over email and he convinced me he was right, after all. That continuity assumption he made is there in Newtonian Mechanics and other very widely accepted models. Something just feels off about the whole assumption. maybe I spent too much time with digital computers. Those models have a hard time explaining the non-reversibility of time also.
agumonkey 10y ago
Beware of the sheer count, IBM is quite trigger happy on Patent submission. There can be lots of "parking" papers for low complexity or novelty stuff.

by Cyph0n 10y ago

AndrewKemendo 10y ago

Intel is also 13 years older, has roots in research and basically started with HUGE projects like the Apollo missions. Class of their own IMO.

dekhn 10y ago
intel started with huge projects like missles. The Air Force was their largest and most demanding customer.

j1vms 10y ago

And all of these, in terms of quality of research output, pale by about an order of magnitude in comparison to Bell Labs for much of its existence (particularly in the era ~1940 to mid 1980s). They were the R&D benchmark for most improvements to IBM Research from the 1960s onward. Additionally IBM sought out its alumni and populated their ranks with notable management and research minds from the Bell Labs stable.

Cyph0n 10y ago
You could probably bundle all of the achievements of the aforementioned companies into a single decade of research output from Bell Labs. It's not a fair comparison at all.
- j1vms 10y ago
  > It's not a fair comparison at all. Especially since Bell Labs sat within a state-sponsored (enforced?) monopoly until the mid-80s, so there was no direct concern about revenue. Which is not to belittle them in the least as they made outstanding organizational decisions, and had the most enviable pure research->development->production pipeline to this day. In terms of the R&D USA, the closest comparison is IBM (which also enjoyed a monopoly for some of its existence). MS's monopoly, with the benefit of hindsight, was feeble in comparison even to IBM's -- though they, like IBM, are absolutely one of the greats and have redeemed themselves particularly in the past few years.
airesQ 10y ago
Not sure if anything can be considered successful when compared with Bell Labs. It is a very high bar to meet (given they mostly invented transistors, information theory, unix and c). The modern world is to great extent a byproduct of the experiment that was Bell Labs. Some laugh, and say that it was experiment that has gone awry.
- leereeves 10y ago
  And yet it didn't work out well for the company that funded it. Much like Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (inventors of the mouse, GUI, and object oriented programming), which Xerox failed to profit from.
  - seeekr 10y ago
    > And yet it didn't work out well for the company that funded it. I get that point. We're all interested in building great and successful companies on here, so of course it's a bummer when there is success from one perspective, but the whole thing kinda doesn't work out overall. But I also want to ask: As a society, don't we benefit so much from any advancements made in the open, through publicly shared research as well as the open source movement, that sometimes we would do well to just bask in the glory of those advancements and never mind what individual entities (financially, structurally) stuck around or not, profited or not, in the procuring of said advancements? It's also very clear of course that it is beneficial to look at the past in a discerning way, learn from it, make it better now and in the future. Still, there's something about the thought in the paragraph above that I wanted to bring up.
    - leereeves 10y ago
      I just meant that, in the context of this post, and given the poor history of corporate research turning into corporate profits, I can understand Apple's reluctance to fund blue sky research. I do admire a company that contributes in that way, recognizing that it's a contribution to humanity rather than investment for future profits.
  - ZenoArrow 10y ago
EGreg 10y ago
I once read a Microsoft research paper. I think its central premise had a fatal flaw: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/buridan.pdf http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/b... The author confused continuity of the DECISION FUNCTION with continuity of the OUTCOME CURVE. In other words, an algorithm such as "keep trying to make a decision until you notice that t > C, after which always pick the left one" will in fact NOT have a continuous outcome curve, despite the decision function being continuous.
- tunesmith 10y ago
  That's Leslie Lamport, winner of the 2013 Turing Award.
- cscurmudgeon 10y ago
  Even the best scientists are not machines. It is naïve to think that the best papers are flawless. (I used to think so when starting grad school.) They is not.
- krenoten 10y ago
  That's a great example of how even some of the most influential minds are fallible. Lamport is sort of the god of distributed systems, having invented vector clocks, paxos which is how there is any sanity in modern data centers (chubby, ZK, etcd, etc... are based on the core ideas of this), TLA+ for reasoning about correctness, so much great stuff. Check out some of these! http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/time-clocks.pdf http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/t... http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/paxos-simple.pdf http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/p...
  - EGreg 10y ago
    Amazing work :-)
- EGreg 10y ago
  I should admit that after writing this, I went back and forth with him over email and he convinced me he was right, after all. That continuity assumption he made is there in Newtonian Mechanics and other very widely accepted models. Something just feels off about the whole assumption. maybe I spent too much time with digital computers. Those models have a hard time explaining the non-reversibility of time also.

agumonkey 10y ago

Beware of the sheer count, IBM is quite trigger happy on Patent submission. There can be lots of "parking" papers for low complexity or novelty stuff.