IBM - A Vibrant Force in Rochester

Date Modified: 03/05/2008 1:25 PM

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While their consoles bear names such as Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, video game players can also thank IBM for their entertainment.

Gamers may not realize key components of their Nintendo GameCube and Wii, Sony Playstation 3 and Microsoft Xbox video game systems were designed at Rochester’s IBM site.

That part of IBM’s history in Rochester is fairly recent; the Engineering & Technology Services division formed in 2002. IBM’s E&TS unit lends its expertise to other company’s projects as hired. Many E&TS designers are based in Rochester. Processing chips, the new Cell chip for Playstation 3, and other aspects of the systems are IBM-designed.

When IBM announced their new plant was to be built in Rochester in 1956, home building nearly doubled, from 261 permits in '56 to 501 in '57 (this record would not be broken until 1989). IBM settled into its "Big Blue" campus with 1,500 employees by 1958. The site today contains a major IBM development laboratory, a factory and various support buildings containing 3.5 million square feet of owned and leased space - the equivalent of about 78 football fields.

IBM Rochester is still today the largest IBM facility in the world under one roof.

The Rochester facility focused on manufacturing during its first few decades. Design has been increasingly emphasized here.

Today, the site’s predominant missions are development and manufacturing of IBM’s main business-oriented computers, the System i and System p.

The i-series is IBM’s largest series ever, with a broad set of functions to support customers’ e-business servers. The System i or iSeries, formerly the AS/400, has ranked among the most popular business computers for large corporate enterprises since the AS/400’s introduction in 1988. It has a place in the computing networks of many of the nation’s largest companies and is sold worldwide as well.

IBM Rochester’s assembly plant also manufactures most business servers and workstations in the pSeries family. The pSeries is IBM’s entry in the Unix marketplace, which is an operating system for data-intense uses.

While the facility continues to produce disk drives, as it has for decades, that aspect of production is controlled by a Hitachi subsidiary.

IBM Corp. employs 4,400 regular employees here, regularly hiring temporary workers and outside contractors to bolster that workforce.

Nationally, IBM is a leader in technical innovation. In 2006, IBM surpassed its own record for number of patents awarded. With 3,621, IBM earned more U.S. patents than any other company for the fourteenth consecutive year, exceeding the next closest patentee by 1,170.

The company’s Rochester location is responsible for about 10 percent of IBM’s patents.

IBM’s Rochester location also is home to the well-known Blue Gene supercomputing system. As the most powerful supercomputer with thousands of microprocessors, Blue Gene can perform 280 trillion operations per second. Customers and partners have had remote access to the Blue Gene system since 2005.

In celebrating IBM’s 50 years in Rochester, Mark Utz of Rochester Area Economic Development Inc. praised the business, saying, "IBM Rochester has consistently been recognized as one of IBM’s highest performing centers in relation to its productivity, low cost development, and profit margin contributions."

The local site was the first IBM location to receive a Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the nation’s highest award for quality and achievement.

As the city’s second-largest employer, after Mayo Clinic, IBM Rochester is involved in a number of philanthropy projects. The site and its employees are involved in local education through donations of technology, volunteering in the classroom and mentoring. For several years it has offered EXITE (Exploring Interests in Technology and Engineering) camps aimed at keeping girls interested in science. It also helps lead a consortium of area schools in continuous improvement processes.

IBM enjoyed a strong 2006 overall, though products from the Rochester complex didn’t perform as well as some other parts of the company.

Sales of the System i line dropped 10 percent in the fourth quarter of 2006 from the same quarter of 2005. The company expects a comeback as buyers run out of capacity on the systems already in place.

Meanwhile, System p was on its way up, though the trend was mainly due to sales of the most powerful models, which aren’t made in Rochester.