IBM has announced that it's plowing $3 billion into two R&D programs that will hopefully make it the authority on 7-nanometer-and-beyond chip technologies. One R&D project will look at pushing conventional silicon chips as far as they will go (around 7nm), and the other will be tasked with finding new materials and techniques that can take us even further (quantum computing, carbon nanotubes, graphene, III-V). IBM also took the opportunity to remind everyone that it's already the biggest player in 7nm-and-beyond technology, with over 500 applicable patents (more than double the nearest competitor).