STM Molecule Manipulation Scheme
Identifies Chemical Structures
Concealed Antenna Supports Portable Terminals
Research Strives for Olympian Heights
Research Makes Connections
for Internet Phone
High-Speed Chip Moves into Products
STM Molecule Manipulation Scheme
Identifies Chemical Structures
Invented at the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory in 1981, the scanning
tunneling microscope (STM) has had spectacular success in elucidating the
atomic-scale structure and chemistry of surfaces. It has been used, for
example, to unerringly identify the exact surface site where a chemical
reaction takes place. However, because the STM cannot directly identify the
atoms it is imaging, it has been very difficult to determine the nature of
the products of the reaction.
Now, scientists Phaedon Avouris, Richard Martel and In-Whan Lyo at the
Thomas J. Watson Research Center have successfully combined STM imaging and
a new chemical-bond-breaking process as a means of identifying the nature
of surface chemical structures. They describe their work on this chemically
specific STM atomic manipulation scheme in Science (April 19,
1996).
Avouris and his team applied this approach to a long-standing problem
involving the formation of molecular-oxygen-containing products during the
early steps in the oxidation of silicon. While initially it was thought
that these were only short-lived transients, new evidence indicates that
there are long-lived products of the oxidation. However, their exact
location and structure on the silicon surface have remained unknown.
Their scheme involved tuning the energy of the electrons emitted from the
STM's tip to match the energy of particular electron orbitals of adsorbed
oxygen molecules. With the energies matched, the electrons can be trapped
in this orbital for very brief periods of time, during which they can cause
specific chemical bonds in this type of oxygen to break. By probing the
various oxidation sites with the STM tip, Avouris and his coworkers were
able to find the location and determine the chemical behavior of two kinds
of products containing molecular oxygen, one of which bonds to the
first-layer atoms of the silicon crystal, and the other to the second-layer
atoms.
The work not only represents an advance in STM molecular manipulation
techniques, allowing the dissociation or desorption of individual
molecules, but provides new chemical information about the mechanism of
silicon oxidation.
Concealed Antenna Supports Portable Terminals
Research has made a key contribution to the Aruba line of handheld
point-of-sale (PoS) terminals just released by IBM Store Systems, in the
form of a rectangular antenna that fits neatly into the device's housing.
The terminal's mobility is enabled by a wireless adapter card. The antenna
gives the terminals access to networks by linking them to back-room
servers.
The Aruba is expected to find major application as a "line buster" for
retail stores. It will permit staff to open a new, temporary checkout point
when permanent checkouts have long lines.
Research took on the task of designing the Aruba antenna about a year ago.
According to Bill Pence, manager of communications technology at the Thomas
J. Watson Research Center, Store Systems specified four criteria. The
antenna had to fit under the PoS housing, because external "whip" antennas
often break; it had to work with a variety of different radio cards; it had
to cost much less than the $20 typical for large external antennas; and it
had to provide the same performance as those antennas.
To work out the design and placement of the antenna, the team used a
"method-of-moments" electromagnetic modeling tool, originally developed at
Watson by Saila Ponnapalli. "The art was in setting up the tool to emulate
a real-world device," explains Modest Oprysko, manager of communications
subsystems.
The work led to an antenna that takes the form of a 1.3 x 2.35 x 0.059-inch
glass- epoxy printed circuit board. It fits neatly into Aruba's housing and
operates at a range of 100 to 300 feet.
The team took the enterprise a step further than usual Research projects.
Team member Frank Canova refined the antenna for mass production. The
adapted design can accommodate variations in tolerances during production,
so that the antennas come off the production line ready for immediate use,
without having to be tuned. The team also had prototypes fabricated at the
vendors that would actually manufacture the devices, thereby eliminating a
step in the typical product development cycle.
Research Strives for Olympian Heights
On July 19, 1996, when the centennial Olympic Games begin in Atlanta,
Georgia, IBM will unveil some $40 million worth of software, hardware,
networks and services that will serve 150,000 users on-site and millions of
customers worldwide.
A CAD's-eye view
When the Atlanta Committee on the Olympic Games (ACOG), Olympic
sponsors, builders, media and other groups wanted to visualize layout,
sight lines and traffic patterns of the stadia, they called on Paul Borrel
and Bob Wolfe at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center. Using IBM 3D
Interaction Accelerator (3DIX) - a workstation-based interactive software
product developed at Watson - the researchers provided unique animations
and simulations.
By importing geometric descriptions of the stadia from the AutoCAD models
created by the ACOG designers, the system allowed users to navigate through
these complex models in real time. Television crews chose camera positions,
ACOG gained large numbers of seats originally believed to have obstructed
views and major sponsors were sold on the designs of the stadia.
Mesoscale weather prediction
Weather forecasting is always a challenge, but predicting the weather at
specific times and varying Olympic sites required refinement of existing
technology. Meteorologist Zaphiris Christidis, a Watson researcher, worked
with the Forecast Systems Laboratory and the National Weather Service (NWS)
- the Olympics' official forecaster - to reduce NWS's 29-kilometer
forecasting grid to 2 kilometers (or about 1 1/4 miles). That's a big plus
to Olympic divers concerned about prevailing wind direction or to kayak
competitors seeking to avoid storms. Christidis is also optimizing the
Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS), a popular mesoscale prediction
system that runs on an IBM RS/6000(TM) SP(TM) at NWS's Atlanta weather
center, which provides updates at three-hour intervals.
NWS selected IBM Visualization Data Explorer(TM) (DX) as the official
visualization software package for weather forecasting at the Olympics.
Watson's Lloyd Treinish has built a set of applications with DX that will
interface with output from RAMS and give the NWS forecasters the ability to
interact with the data and create animations, which will help them produce
forecasts and explain them to the public. The techniques include various
2-D graphics and imaging methods that portray surface temperature and
precipitation - as well as 3-D representations of cloud data - over Olympic
venues and terrains, ranging from diving in downtown Atlanta to baseball in
Columbus.
Web meets WOM
Fans seeking to follow the Olympics on the World Wide Web will confront
an explosion of information. IBM's Olympic-sized challenge lies in handling
that huge amount of information and presenting it in an easily accessible,
highly appealing and rapid way to Internet users.
A worldwide, interdivisional team has built an object-oriented Web server
to meet that challenge. "The Web Object Management, or WOM, technology
being used by the Olympic team was the brainchild of Sean Martin of IBM's
Hursley Development Laboratory," says Watson's Scott Penberthy, who is
helping to lead the effort.
The idea behind WOM is to treat a Web site as a collection of objects; the
WOM technology both creates the objects and manages them. "When first
introduced, the technology was too slow, so Andrew Stanford-Clarke of
Hursley moved WOM to an SP, combining Interactive Session Support with
software from Watson for load balancing," says Penberthy. The WOM server
has already been used in more than a dozen public events.
Real-time results
The scores of the 37 sports are perhaps the most critical information about
the Olympics. In response to the desire of IBM and ACOG to make real-time
results of the Olympic Games available to the world via the Internet,
Watson's Paul Dantzig and his team developed a results system and a server
technology to handle the expected large number of hits. "This is the first
time in the history of the Olympics that there will be real-time results on
the Internet," says Dantzig.
When fans click on any activity to learn about the day's events, they will
enjoy interfaces and programs custom-designed for that sport. The programs
will relay not only results and last-minute lists of participants, but also
information on the preliminary qualification rounds, changes in the
schedule and official rules for each sport, as well as photos, including
photo finishes.
The information will be sent from the IBM Olympic results system over
high-speed leased lines to IBM SPs. Others in Research have developed new
technology to ensure the reliability of the communication links and the
integrity of the data, which will be mirrored in other locations -
including Europe and Japan - in such a way that all users will receive the
information only a few minutes after online fans in the United States.
Research Makes Connections
for Internet Phone
Aptivas(TM) from the IBM PC Company now contain a new bundled item: an
Internet phone based on technology developed by IBM's Haifa Research
Laboratory. The device permits users to make voice phone calls via the
Internet and thereby avoid long-distance charges.
The Internet phone isn't a new idea. However, says Haifa researcher Yoav
Medan, the IBM technology has two basic advantages: a hands-free speaker
phone attachment and higher-quality reception than rivals' products.
The project had its origin in the IBM ThinkPad® 850. Announced in Japan
last June, it has a built-in camera for personal videoconferencing, using
regular phone lines to carry voice and video signals. The Haifa lab
developed the device's voice- and data-compression software.
The next obvious step was to adapt the technology to allow voice signals to
be sent over the Internet, which is not designed for voice messages.
"Unlike a telephone network, the Internet does not set up a dedicated
connection between two parties," explains Medan, who is also manager of the
Haifa Internet Center, a branch of IBM's new Internet division.
Medan suggested that the IBM PC Company bundle the technology in its
products. He also went to Advantis Corp., a joint venture of IBM and Sears
based in Schaumberg, Illinois, to obtain access to the Internet. Advantis
provides a directory service that, in effect, locates the individuals being
called based on their e-mail addresses, the only information the caller
needs to know.
Leaving messages
If individuals called on an Internet phone are already online, they can
take the call immediately. However, the system permits callers to leave
voice messages for individuals who aren't. Another twist is the
incorporation of DTMail (DirectTalk® Mail), developed by the IBM
Hursley Development Laboratory in England. DTMail collects voicemail over
the Internet. "From anywhere you are, you can access your voice mail on the
Internet without making a long-distance call," says Medan.
The technology has strong potential for use by call-in help centers.
Customers won't have to wait for a response. They will simply leave a
message to which help desk personnel will respond. With additional
developments at Watson, by a group headed by Tetsu Fujisaki, the system can
be designed to give prompts that help the customer indicate what's wrong.
Beyond Internet telephony
Other Watson researchers are working on further integration of Internet
services with conventional telephony. Through their Universal Gateway,
Internet phone users can make phone calls to, and receive them from, any
regular telephone. In addition, regular telephone users will have access to
Internet services.
The Universal Gateway also opens up several powerful classes of services
and new market environments, says Watson researcher Leon Lumelsky, who
leads the project. For instance, it will expand the scope of electronic
merchandising and will help services by allowing Internet users to place
real-time voice calls directly to sellers or consultants by simple
point-and-click GUI interfaces. The gateway's unique scalable architecture
and powerful signal processing also make a rich new world of applications
available to Internet and telephone users.
Replacing the PBX
Meanwhile, a group headed by Hong Ling Truong at the Zurich Research Labora-
tory plans to extend Haifa's technology
into the corporate, or local area network, environment. "In the long run,
the technology could potentially replace the PBX," says Truong. A PBX, or
private branch exchange, is a private switchboard.
The concept is to use Internet phone technology first as a complement to,
and ultimately as a replacement for, the desk phone. The target is a single
corporate phone system, incorporated in workstations, with one directory.
The idea has several advantages. System operators, Truong explains, could
provide several quality-of-service (QoS) options, from which individuals
would select when they make a call.
The concept needs work. "You'd have to adapt the networks for voice
quality," explains Port, because corporate networks are designed for data.
A promising technical means to do this is asynchronous transfer mode (ATM)
technology, which sends data in packets. Because it is designed for
multimedia and supports QoS for individual calls, ATM permits mixing of
data and voice streams. Corporate networks equipped with ATM could, for
example, route calls automatically to any workstation at which the user is
logged on to the network.
The Zurich laboratory is also collaborating with Haifa, Watson and IBM
product divisions to develop technology for an enterprise voice solution on
a campus network. This project, known as Campus Telephony, is led by
Zurich's Colin Harrison.
High-Speed Chip Moves into Products
Researchers at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center have helped adapt
silicon germanium chips (SiGe) for new applications in high-speed wireless
and sensing products. The new SiGe chips will form the basis of high-speed
communications products that IBM and Hughes Electronics Companies will
create as part of a recently announced multiyear agreement.
The chips are application-specific integrated circuits (ASICS), for analog
and mixed-signal use. The SiGe technology makes possible circuit speeds
above 20 gigahertz. "That's a factor of 10 or 20 beyond anything done
before," says IBM Fellow Bernie Meyerson, who has overseen much of
Research's work on the chips. "It's far beyond anything executed in any
prior implementation of silicon." The addition of germanium, another
semiconducting element, gives silicon chips the speed to compete with the
far more complex and expensive gallium arsenide technology.
The chips offer dramatic improvements over today's silicon circuits in two
ways: they can increase circuit speeds by 200 to 400 percent or reduce the
power consumption in circuits to a similar extent. IBM has also developed a
manufacturing process that enables the chips to be produced on the existing
lines used to fabricate silicon chips.
"Due to this new material, stunning improvements in the speed and
versatility of electronics will continue to progress into the 21st
century," says Meyerson. "The extension of silicon technology into the
future by modifying its composition expands its capabilities far beyond
what we recently thought imaginable."
Beyond perceived limits
Watson researchers, headed by Meyerson, started work on silicon
germanium in 1982, in an effort to take the performance of silicon
technology beyond its perceived limits and extend the useful life of
silicon transistors. They found that the two elements in combination formed
the basis of exceptionally high-speed transistors that attained switching
speeds well beyond traditional semiconductor capabilities. A key
development milestone was the invention of an innovative crystal-growing
system that could combine the two elements into high-quality thin films at
relatively low temperatures. Film quality had previously been the major
stumbling block in producing successful silicon germanium devices.
"Currently, IBM is in the final process of qualifying silicon germanium
technology for volume production," says Paul Cunningham, SiGe product line
manager for IBM Microelectronics. "We see great potential for this newtechnology in high-speed commercial applications."
Under the joint agreement,
several Hughes companies plan to integrate SiGe technology into such
products as automobile radar systems, interactive television and wireless
networks. "Our collaborative efforts with IBM are expected to lead to the
availability, as early as 1997, of the fastest silicon integrated circuits
used in communication applications to date," says Ron Finnila, director of
technology, Strategic Alliances for Hughes. "The use of silicon germanium
in consumer products should set a new price and performance standard for
the industry."
