IBM Rochester is the facility of IBM in Rochester, Minnesota. The initial structure was designed by Eero Saarinen, who clad the structure in blue panels of varying hues after being inspired by the Minnesota sky, as well as IBM's nickname of "Big Blue". These features and the facility's size has earned it the nickname "The Big Blue Zoo" from employees.
History
Early years
for the facility took place on July 31, 1956. When it was first completed, there was 576,000 square feet of floor space. There is 3.1 million square feet today on the main campus, more than half the size of the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. Rumors have appeared over the years suggesting that the structure was designed to look like a punched card from above, but this is more due to the facility's expansion over the years rather than an intention by Saarinen. The building was first dedicated in 1958, but has been expanded considerably since then.
Current developments
Employment at the site has gone through several cycles of growth and collapse, but is over twice what it was in the 1950s. On May 4, 2016, it was announced that IBM would be consolidating its remaining employees into the eight buildings on the east side of the complex, and selling the remaining facilitates to a separate entity. This occurred after years of IBM renting out its various facilities to companies it had spun or sold off such as HGST, as well as others. The site's employee count was reported to be 2,740 in 2013 and 2,791 in 2017, a steep decline from the high of over 8,000. In February 2018 the property was sold to Industrial Realty Group of Los Angeles. On April 24, 2018, it was announced during a presentation for the local community that the name of the site would be changed to the Rochester Technology Campus.
Products
The mile-long facility is best known as the plant that produced the AS/400 computer system, which later was rebranded as the iSeries and now System i. RS/6000, now System p, and hard disk development has also occurred at the site at points in the past. IBM Power Systems development is still done at the site. PureSystems were originally assembled at this site, but are now mainly assembled in New York and Mexico. The IBM 5110 personal computer was developed and manufactured in the facility. The IBM 3740Data Entry System was developed at the facility in 1973 and the follow-on IBM 5280 Distributed Data System had its beginnings there as well, but was transferred to the Austin, TX, facility in 1981 where it was released for production. The advent of personal computing swallowed up this type of data entry by 1990. IBM Rochester played an important in the Summit and Sierra supercomputers.
Distinctions
The AS/400 division at the plant received the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 1990. In November 2004, the facility claimed the top spot in the TOP500list of fast supercomputers with a prototype Blue Gene/L system containing 32,768 processors. It clocked in at 70.72 teraflops. The manufacturing output of the site is so great that if it were a separate company, it would be the world's third-largest computer producer. The plant, which is near U.S. Highway 52 in the northwestern part of Rochester, was recognized in 1990 by the National Building Museum as one of the significant contributions of IBM to the built environment of the United States, along with IBM's New York City headquarters and the IBM building in Atlanta, Georgia.
Tenants
, although having been spun off from IBM Storage Technology, remains on-site, leasing otherwise unused space from IBM. Along with the Mayo Clinic, the IBM plant is one of the biggest employers in the Rochester area, reportedly numbering around 5,000 in 2002.
