posted on Monday, July 31, 2006 4:43 PM by Jonathan Hodgson

Microsoft Research making it into products

Back in 2002, Microsoft said it would spend $5.3 billion on R&D over the coming year and a large part of that going to Microsoft Research.

But has that paid off? Some look at the R&D investment by major technology companies since 2000, especially when comparing market capitalization during the same period.

So it was with interest I read Alain's post on the Microsoft Research - It does pay off! and especially the link to the products Microsoft Research has contributed to:

Windows XP

  • ClearType display technology allows a crisper, higher-resolution display of text on ordinary LCD screens.
  • IPv6 is an implementation of the Internet Protocol version 6 that is fully supported in the shipping version of the operating system.
  • Source code analysis tool advancements allow developers to find more subtle and complex bugs.
  • Performance optimization tool advancements optimize the load time, memory requirements and overall performance of the operating system. 

XBox

  • True Skill, developed by the Machine Learning and Perception group, is a new ranking and matchmaking system that uses a mathematical model of uncertainty to address weaknesses in existing ranking systems. Bayesian analysis enables the True Skill ranking systems to identify player skill with great speed, to the extent that a new player joining a league consisting of a million players can be ranked accurately in fewer than 20 games.
  • IP network probing Xbox Live provides online gaming and uses Microsoft Research technology to help ensure that gamers get the best online experience. This technology measures the connection quality between gamers players, pairing them with others who have similar connection speeds, which ensures a more equal gaming experience. 
  • Graphics. Xbox focuses on very realistic images and uses Microsoft Research graphics technology specifically for modeling animal fur.
  • Audio codecs. Just as in Windows, similar audio compression technologies are provided by Microsoft Research.

Visual Studio 2005 / .Net Framework 2.0

  • Generics is an extension to the .NET Common Intermediary Language that anables object-oriented code to be annotated with parameters that indicate how the code can be resused in different ways. It lets developers write more of their code in a way that is more reliable (has stronger static checking) without sacrificing efficiency or code flexibility. Generics metadata is understood by C#, Visual Basic, C++, and other .NET language compilers.

 

Let's how more ideas move from the labs into real shipping products, including Photosynth, check out these videos.

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