(The Guardian)—IBM is to invest $3bn (£1.7bn) over the next five years in chip research and development in hopes of finding a game-changing breakthrough that can help revive its slumping hardware unit.
IBM announced the plan a week before its widely anticipated second quarter earnings. Last quarter, sales in its hardware sector plunged 23% from a year earlier and the company posted its lowest quarterly revenue in five years.
IBM hopes to find ways to scale and shrink silicon chips to make them more efficient, and research new materials to use in making chips, such as carbon nanotubes, which are more stable than silicon and are also heat resistant and can provide faster connections.
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