HP Labs
| Company type | Research division |
|---|---|
| Industry | Research and development |
| Founded | March 3, 1966 |
| Founder | Bill Hewlett, David Packard |
| Headquarters | Palo Alto, California , United States |
Area served | Global |
| Products | Research in laptops, tablets, desktops, printers, ink and toner cartridges, display peripherals, enterprise business solutions, 3D printing technologies, microfluidics, security technologies |
Number of employees | Slightly above 200 (2018) |
| Parent | HP Inc. |
| Website | www |
HP Labs serves as the advanced research and innovation division of HP Inc., with its main headquarters located in Palo Alto, California and supplementary research centers situated in Bristol, UK. This laboratory is recognized for pioneering developments including programmable desktop calculators, inkjet printing technology, and advancements in 3D graphics.
Established on March 3, 1966, by the founders of Hewlett-Packard, Bill Hewlett and David Packard, HP Labs was designed to pursue long-term scientific research that extends beyond the immediate commercial objectives of the company.
Over the years, the lab has undergone significant reductions; in August 2007, the number of active projects was scaled back from 150 to just 30. By 2018, the workforce had decreased to slightly above 200 researchers from a former high of approximately 500 employees.
After the corporate split on November 1, 2015, which resulted in the creation of Hewlett Packard Enterprise and the rebranding of the remaining entity as HP Inc., the original research division was also divided. The research group known as Hewlett Packard Labs transitioned to Hewlett Packard Enterprise, while HP Labs continued as part of HP Inc.
History
Mohamed Atalla, who served as the inaugural manager of the Semiconductor Lab, initiated foundational material science investigations that led to technologies involving gallium arsenide, gallium arsenide phosphide, and indium arsenide components. These materials became integral to HP's Microwave Division, facilitating devices such as sweepers and network analyzers operating within the 20–40 GHz frequency range, which secured HP a dominant share exceeding 90% of the military communications sector by the 1970s.
Between 1966 and 1969, HP Labs contributed substantially to HP’s research on practical applications of light-emitting diodes (LEDs). The first commercially available LED displays originated from Atalla’s Semiconductor Lab, culminating in the introduction of the HP Model 5082-7000 Numeric Indicator in 1969—the first intelligent LED display. This breakthrough transformed digital display technologies by replacing the Nixie tube and laying groundwork for future LED display innovations.
In 1977, HP Labs developed prototypes for the DMOS (double-diffused MOSFET), which proved superior to the earlier VMOS devices by offering reduced on-resistance alongside higher breakdown voltages. The DMOS transistor subsequently became predominant within power electronics for power transistor applications.
During the early 1990s, HP Labs conceived the concept behind an Explicitly parallel instruction computing (EPIC) instruction set architecture that influenced Intel's development of the Intel Itanium architecture. By the late 1990s, HP Labs introduced e-Speak, an early framework that anticipated contemporary web services.
In collaboration with UCLA in 1999, HP Labs engineered the world's first molecular logic gate aimed at chemically assembled nano-computers. Throughout the 2000s, HP Labs’ Bristol facility created Jena, a semantic web framework designed to enhance sophisticated data integration and management capabilities.
Research areas
The primary focus of HP Labs encompasses development related to laptops, tablets, desktops, printers, ink and toner cartridges, display peripherals, and enterprise business solutions.
3D printing
HP Labs has dedicated substantial resources toward advancing HP MultiJet Fusion technology. In partnership with its 3D Printing division, it co-developed MetalJet technology to support innovative metal applications within the realm of 3D printing.
Microfluidics
The laboratory focuses on developing microfluidic and imaging solutions aimed at industries beyond traditional office and home printing, such as flexible packaging, life sciences, and sensing applications. It has also been at the forefront of techniques for isolating rare cancer cells.
Security
HP Labs has been a leader in security research since the 1990s, playing a key role in establishing the TCPA alliance, now known as the Trusted Computing Group. In 2001, it introduced a Trusted Linux operating system and created trusted computing innovations including Virus Throttle, HP SureStart, Printer Runtime Intrusion Detection, HP Connection Inspector, and HP SureAdmin.
Industrial Digital Printing Press – HP Indigo
HP Labs revolutionized the charging mechanism for HP Indigo liquid electrophotography (LEP) presses by substituting three double scorotron units with a single charge roller. This advancement paved the way for the third-generation HP Indigo 6000 and 7000 presses released in 2008, resulting in a 76% productivity increase through enhanced marking engine speeds.
Directors
Since its founding in 1966, HP Labs has been directed by the following individuals:
- Barney Oliver (1966–1981)
- John Doyle (1981–1984)
- Joel Birnbaum (1984–1986, 1991–1999)
- Don Hammond (1986–1987)
- Frank Carrubba (1987–1991)
- Ed Karrer (1999)
- Dick Lampman (1999–2007)
- Prith Banerjee (2007–2012)
- Chandrakant Patel (interim; April–November 2012)
- Martin Fink (2012–2016)
- Shane Wall (2016–2021)
- Tolga Kurtoglu (2021–2022)
Lab locations
HP Labs maintains principal research centers in:
Previous sites have included:
- Haifa, Israel (1984)
- St Petersburg, Russia (2007)
- Beijing, China (2005)
- Fusionopolis, Singapore (2010)
- Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA (former DEC research facility)
- Bangalore, India (2002)
- Princeton, New Jersey, USA
- Tokyo, Japan (1990)
Notable people
HP Labs has been home to numerous prominent innovators and researchers such as:
- Alan Kay – pioneer in object-oriented programming and graphical user interface development
- Mohamed M. Atalla – creator of the MOSFET transistor and founder of the hardware security module industry
- Colin Needham – founder of IMDb
- R. Stanley Williams – recognized for re-discovering the memristor
- Norman Jouppi – computer architect associated with Stanford's MIPS project
- Jim Gettys – original architect of the X Window System
- Joel S. Birnbaum – contributor to RISC and EPIC processor architectures
- Prith Banerjee – technology executive and chief technology officer at multiple organizations
- Kay-Yut Chen – specialist in behavioral economics
- Bernard M. Oliver – inventor of Pulse-code modulation (PCM)
- Mark S. Miller – creator of the E programming language
- Alexander Stepanov – designer of the C++ Standard Template Library
- James B. Saxe – expert in automated theorem proving
- Kimberly Keeton – innovator in advanced database and storage systems
- Josh Fisher – known for work on VLIW architectures and instruction-level parallelism
- Marc Stiegler – researcher in planetary scale computing
- Bernardo Huberman – studied computational economics and ecology
- Abraham Lempel – developed foundational data compression algorithms including LZ77 and LZ78
- Phillip Kuekes – inventor in semiconductor crossbar latch technologies
- Dave Cliff – creator of the ZIP algorithmic trading platform
- Steve Simske – pioneer in printing and forensic science technologies