Thomas J. Watson Research Center

The Thomas J. Watson Research Center is the headquarters for IBM Research. Its main laboratory is in Yorktown Heights, New York, 38 miles (61 km) north of New York City. It also operates facilities in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Albany, New York.

History

20th century

The center, headquarters of IBM's Research division, is named for both Thomas J. Watson, Sr. and Thomas Watson, Jr., who led IBM as president and CEO, respectively, from 1915 when it was known as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, to 1971.

The research is intended to improve hardware (physical sciences and semiconductors research), services (business modeling, consulting, and operations research), software (programming languages, security, speech recognition, data management, and collaboration tools), computer systems (operating systems and server design), and the mathematics and science that support the information technology industry.

The center was founded at

Buildings

Yorktown Heights

The Yorktown Heights building, housing the headquarters of IBM Research, was designed by the architect Eero Saarinen and built in 1956–1961. Situated on private land not generally accessible to the public, it is a large crescent-shaped structure consisting of three levels with 40 aisles each, radiating out from the center of the circle described by the crescent. Due to this construction, none of the offices have windows. The lowest level is partially underground in some areas toward the shorter side of the crescent, which also leads to the employee parking lots. A large overhang protrudes from the front entryway of the building, and faces the visitor parking lot. The building houses a library, an auditorium and a cafeteria. The original building named Mohansic, for the area, was in Yorktown Heights; this building is in Yorktown proper. The Mohansic building was the temporary area for Research while the TJ Watson building was being constructed.

Albany NanoTech

The facility can be found at 257 Fuller Rd, Albany, New York; it is located in facilities owned by the State University of New York's Polytechnic Institute's Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (SUNY-CNSE) which also hosts the Center for Semiconductor Research (CSR).[9] The IBM occupied portion of the site is the main facility of IBM Research's Semiconductor Group. The group focuses on next generation semiconductor technology research, and is the group most associated with a number of innovations related to semiconductor scaling, including the introduction of a 7 nm test chip in 2015,[10] a 5 nm test chip in 2017.[11] and a 2 nm test chip in 2021.[12] This group operates an advanced extreme ultraviolet lithography enabled research line which is used to support their research both in support of and beyond traditional scaling. This work is done in a collaborative ecosystem based environment which includes academic and industrial partners.[13][14]

Cambridge, Massachusetts

The Cambridge research lab can be found at 75 Binney Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts; it is located in the IBM Watson Health HQ. Research at Cambridge focuses on AI.

Hawthorne

The Hawthorne building was a leased facility located on Skyline Drive, which is part of an industrial park shared by several area businesses. In 2012 the Hawthorne lease was closed by IBM and remaining employees were relocated to the Yorktown Heights site. The Hawthorne building (located at 19 Skyline Drive) is easily recognizable by its mirrored facade and large blue pole. Located approximately 25 miles north of New York City, the Hawthorne site was smaller than its sister site at Yorktown Heights (with none of the wet lab space found in the Yorktown Heights facility). The primary focus at Hawthorne was software- and services-related research, whereas Yorktown Heights focuses on chemistry, mathematics, physics, silicon technology, and electrical engineering research, as well as some software and services. The building also contained a cafeteria, presentation center and library. The site, opened in 1984, was designed by Michael Harris Spector. The building is now part of New York Medical College.[15]

status	Completed
building type	Computer science research laboratory and divisional headquarters
architectural style	Modernist
address	Kitchawan Road
location city	Yorktown Heights, New York
location country	U.S.
namesake	Thomas J. Watson, Sr. Thomas Watson, Jr.
years built	19561961
owner	IBM Research
architect	Eero Saarinen

Thomas J. Watson Research Center

History

20th century

21st century

Supercomputers

Buildings

Yorktown Heights

Albany NanoTech

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Hawthorne

See also

Bibliography

External links

References