IBM Germany Research & Development
| IBM Germany Research & Development GmbH
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|---|---|
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| legal form | Company with limited liability |
| founding | 1953 |
| Seat | Headquarters Böblingen , Germany |
| management | Dirk Wittkopp |
| Branch | Information technology |
| Website | IBM Germany Research & Development GmbH |
The IBM Germany Research & Development GmbH is the German Research and Development Center of IBM and the IBM Germany GmbH is assigned.
The range of development projects ranges from hardware and firmware as well as operating systems for mainframes to storage technologies to software solutions for cloud, data & AI, security, the Internet of Things, blockchain and components in the field of quantum computers.
The head office is in Böblingen near Stuttgart. Other teams also work in St. Leon-Rot (Baden) , Kelsterbach , Urbar (near Koblenz) , Kassel , Munich and Berlin . Dirk Wittkopp has been the managing director since November 2009.
In November 2018 it was announced that the location at Schönaicher First in Böblingen will be given up. A so-called Technology Campus is planned in Ehningen , under the roof of which the IBM headquarters for Germany, Austria and Switzerland as well as the research and development center will be housed.
history
Founded in 1953
The research and development facility was founded in 1953 by Professor Karl E. Ganzhorn and seven employees as the German research and development center of IBM in Böblingen . A mechanical design department of IBM already existed in Böblingen, which was concerned with the further development of punched card machines.
During the 1950s, developers worked on the first electronic projects under local management at various European research and development centers in France , Great Britain , Germany , the Netherlands and Sweden . It was not until 1958 that all European IBM development centers were finally brought together under the management of RG Mork. The future development areas of the European development centers were delimited and defined.
The German location should take care of the development of small and medium-sized data processing systems as well as peripheral devices, especially high-speed printers. The creation of a semiconductor development as a starting point for later semiconductor production in Germany was established as a further task . The existing mechanical construction area was integrated into the development center. Dr. Ganzhorn was officially appointed as the first director of the IBM development center in Böblingen.
In addition, it was decided to build a separate building for the development center. The decision was made in favor of the Schönaicher First near Böblingen, within reach of the Sindelfingen production site . In November 1959, the first construction work began. In December 1960 the first engineers started their work at the new location of the Böblingen development center.
1960-1969
At the end of the decade there were 700 employees. In 1962 the software development began, for which a data center was set up. At that time, physicists and electronics technicians at the development center wrote software for the System / 360 Model 20 developed in Böblingen. The scope of their work was initially limited by the extremely scarce memory resources at the time.
In the area of the SLT module (Solid Logic Technology), the basic technology for the / 360 systems, the development center is engaged in research on semiconductor materials (e.g. GaAs ) and integrated circuits in silicon technology. In 1965, IBM developed the first integrated circuit, a "cross point switch", consisting of three integrated components. In 1968 the development center received the long-term contract for the development of integrated semiconductor components.
In semiconductor development, a pilot line for the production of prototypes was designed. This was operated from the mid-1960s to the early 1990s.
1970-1979
With the IBM DOS / VS release versions 28 and 29, the development center made some functional enhancements to DOS, known as Extended DOS. From 1978 one took over the sole responsibility for DOS / VSE. In 1971 the development and production of the 2048 bit RIESLING chip began. The chip, implemented in n-FET technology , fitted the main memory in practically all IBM computers during the 1970s. The Riesling chip was designed with a minimum structure of 4 µm and had around 15,000 transistors.
Böblingen-based semiconductor development took on a leading role in the further development of the DRAM memory cell and the memory based on it. They contributed to the products of the 18 kBit CONCORDE family, the 64 kBit COMMON_E chip and the development of a 256 kBit MÜLLER chip prototype.
1980-1989
In 1980 the fully automatic cash dispenser 4731 was developed. More than 15,000 of the 4731 and the successor models have been sold worldwide.
In the mid-1980s, an entire / 370 processing unit (PU) was integrated on a CMOS chip. In 1988 this chipset called CAPITOL was ready for the market. The PU, cache and floating point functions were implemented on a total of three chips in 1µ CMOS technology and built into the 9370 system. The Capitol Chip marked the beginning of an ongoing commitment to the development of chip design tools. As part of this, a cooperation agreement was signed with the University of Bonn in 1987 .
1990-1999
MQSeries Workflow MERVA, software for controlling business processes, was developed in Böblingen. In the area of data mining , the research and development center created the products Intelligent Miner for Data and the DB2 Scoring Service . In the database environment , software was supplied for designing logical and physical data models, such as DataAtlas . In addition, the translation software Translation Manager was developed in Böblingen. In their free time, employees ported the Linux operating system to the IBM System / 390 . The Böblinger processor development made a technology shift from bipolar to CMOS . From the beginning of the 90s, the microprocessor chip sets RENOIR, PICASSO, MONET-J and MONET and the / 390 systems based on them were developed.
The CMOS processors from Böblingen reduced the performance gap to the much larger and more expensive bipolar processors. As a result, from 1993 onwards, the entire IBM / 390 development was switched from bipolar to CMOS. The subsequent / 390 processor chip sets were later developed together with the IBM Poughkeepsie site . These were the ALLIANCE, the SYMPHONY and the OPERA chip sets. A total of seven generations of / 390 CMOS processors were developed in the 1990s, which achieved an approximately 200-fold increase in performance at the university processor level. At the end of the 1990s an ASIC Design Center was founded. ASICs were developed according to customer specifications for major European customers, primarily from the telecommunications industry.
2000-2009
In 2000, IBM opened a total of seven ISV support centers in Europe . The IBM research and development center in Böblingen was designated as the Linux Center of Competence. A close cooperation developed with the IBM locations Endicott (z / VM) and Tucson (Storage Systems).
During this decade, software development in Böblingen for DB2 software and WebSphere software was continued. The projects were in the area of search technologies, data mining , tools for databases such as the archiving software CommonStore and Workflow . A new addition was the responsibility of the Böblingen-based software developers for customer service (in the area of DB2 and tools, SAP R / 3 , WebSphere , MQSeries family including workflow, ASF, DocumentConnect) and the support of third-party providers (ISVs) to use IBM technology in their products .
2009-2019
Over the past ten years, the center has expanded its competencies in the direction of the new strategic growth areas of the IBM Corporation such as cloud, AI, security, analytics, IoT and blockchain. In addition, the further development of the IBM mainframe architecture is still in the foreground.
In 2013, the then fourth IBM (design) studio of the corporation was opened. There developers, designers and other experts work together on the next generations of IBM products.
Projects
Mainframes, firmware and processors
The German IBM research and development center develops central technology components for the future generations of the IBM Z and IBM Power Systems. This includes chip, packaging and firmware as well as systems management.
One of the teams for central components of the leading IBM operating system for mainframes, z / OS, is based in Böblingen.
The Storage Software Development Team in Kelsterbach near Frankfurt is a leader in the development of software-defined storage solutions for file and object-based data. This is the Spectrum Scale file system that is used on the largest supercomputers in the world, among others. The portfolio also includes Spectrum Protect, a solution for protecting and restoring data in physical, cloud-based and software-defined environments.
Open source
The German IBM research and development center is the birthplace for the adaptation of the free and open Linux operating system to the IBM z Systems mainframe architecture. The German experts are working on the further development of the two operating systems Linux on z Systems and z / VSE as well as on the virtualization technologies z / VM and KVM for IBM z Systems. There is also a close cooperation with Red Hat.
Cloud
The German R&D team develops various components for IBM Cloud, among other things. There, companies can easily access services from IBM and business partners in order to develop their own cloud-based applications and apps.
Security
The developers at the Kassel location work, among other things, in the IBM X-Force environment: They observe and analyze the constantly changing landscape of IT security and develop technologies for better protection of IT networks in companies. This also includes the provision of information for IBM X-Force Exchange. Based on IBM Cloud, the platform offers the most up-to-date information on IT risk potential as well as the opportunity to share relevant experiences and news with others. In addition to their work for IBM X-Force, the experts also focus their attention on the integration and distribution of threat protection in order to make IBM products even more secure and more robust against possible security attacks.
Cognitive technologies
Development projects in this context are IBM Data Science Experience, IBM Watson Data Platform, Stream Computing and IBM Counter Fraud Management for Safer Payments.
Internet of things
A joint development team from the R&D Center and the IBM Watson IoT Center in Munich are working on solutions with cognitive components. In addition, they develop special IoT platforms for various industries such as automotive and retail.
IBM Client Center Boeblingen
The IBM Client Center in the IBM Research and Development Center is the link between the sales team and the developers. Among other things, briefings are held in which technologies are demonstrated and so-called proofs of concept are created.
Competencies
- Customer / sales portal for IBM Research & Development
- Support with the market launch of new products, technologies and solutions
- Demonstrating the customer value of IBM technologies
- Advice on the implementation of concepts to improve customers' business
Products / projects
- IBM mainframes (z Systems)
- System p
- IBM Cloud
- Analytics / information management
- Security
- Counter Fraud Protection
- Open technologies
service
- "IT Conference & Business Show" support
- Live solution demo
- Customer briefings & workshops
- Technology consulting / Proofs of Concept / Proofs of Technology
- ISV enablement support
Worth mentioning
- The first director of the Böblingen development center, Karl E. Ganzhorn, played a major role in ensuring that the Böblingen research and development center was able to carry out the development described. During a visit by the founder of IBM, Mr. Thomas J. Watson senior, in May 1953, he presented approaches and ideas for electronic development in data processing. Subsequently, Mr. Watson gave the German management the simple instruction: "Give the young man what he wants." This was a lasting license for building up the development in the years to come.
- The IBM Research and Development Center maintains close contacts with a number of chairs and research institutions in Germany. In addition, a number of employees teach at technical colleges and universities.
literature
- Karl E. Ganzhorn: The IBM laboratories Boeblingen: Foundation and build-up. Röhm Verlag, Sindelfingen 2000.
- Herbert Kircher (Ed.): IT, technologies, solutions, innovations. Springer-Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-540-46164-7 .
- Helmut Painke (Hrsg.): The IBM Laboratorien Böblingen: System development. Sindelfingen 2003, ISBN 3-937267-00-X
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Karl E. Ganzhorn: The IBM laboratories Boeblingen: Foundation and build-up. Röhm Verlag, Sindelfingen 2000, p. 7ff.
- ↑ The IBM research and development center in Germany.
- ↑ IBM history in 1953. ( Memento of the original from August 17, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
