IBM Rochester MN

In 1956/57, Rochester, MN in a mysterious jump in the number of houses built. Permits for new housing almost doubled from 261 in 1956-501 approvals in 1957. What kind of phenomenon could lead to such a fast-growing home, a growth record that is not broken for another thirty years? The answer comes in the form of an announcement by International Business Machines, or IBM. In 1956, IBM announced that it is a new plant will be in Rochester. In 1958, the campus in 1500 employees.

Also known as "Big Blue", the Rochester plant was designed by Eero Sarrinen. He was inspired by the different shades of blue sky in Minnesota, so with blue panels to be represented. When the building first opened, there were approximately 576,000 square meters of space. The company has been strong, and now 3.5 million square meters of space. This site is a great development laboratory, a factory, several buildings and Rochester is the second largest employer, followed by the Mayo Clinic.

For the first decades of the economy, the Rochester plant primarily on production. In recent years, however, are increasingly emphasizing design. In 2006, IBM broke its own record for the number of patents, the patents in 3621st The company was in second place behind at least 1170 patents. Since 2006, IBM has more U.S. patents than any other company for fourteen years. The Rochester branch of IBM is responsible for about 10 percent of all patents.

Some important progress and performance of IBM in Rochester include the development of IBM, the most important production and business-oriented computers, the System i and System p machines. The system was officially known as the AS/400, which is probably what is best for the site known. The location of the Rochester Blue Gene supercomputer system. The Blue Gene is the most powerful supercomputer with thousands of microprocessors, capable of, 280 trillion operations per second. Remote access to Blue Gene is designed for customers and partners since 2005.

IBM products have a large influence on the gaming industry. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo to use all parts of IBM, for the Rochester in their gaming systems. This area of the company, known as Engineering and Technology Services, is brand new, was in 2002.

The Rochester site has a number of awards for his work as well. In 1990, the AS/400 division with the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. Also in 1990, the company was approved by the National Building Museum as one of the most important contributions to the IBM-built facilities of the United States. IBM Building in New York City and Atlanta, Georgia, are also included. In 2004 the site took top spot on the Top500 list of supercomputers with fast Blue Gene.

IBM has a critical component of Rochester's history. Before the company built a plant here, the population has been due to the rumors. Once the building was opened, the company has continued to grow, allowing the growth of the city even more. Today, IBM remains a very successful business in Rochester, and will continue to be a technological contributions it makes to its community and society in general.