IBM to unveil newest processor made in East Fishkill

A new series of computers based on IBM Corp.'s POWER7 microprocessors that are made in East Fishkill is being introduced today.

The rollout of four new systems aimed at widening IBM's hefty share of the $14 billion Unix server market will take place at an event in New York City. But a good part of the hardware and software development work took place in Poughkeepsie, said Ross Mauri, general manager of Power Systems for IBM who is based in Poughkeepsie.

"They will come out of the (East) Fishkill plant," Mauri said, speaking of the chips. "They're busy cranking out wafers for us."As the name indicates, it's the seventh generation of this line of chips, which is at the heart of many of IBM's computer systems.

Mauri said this is the first use of the new series of chips in servers and that this is the first of a series of announcements that IBM plans throughout the year.One of those announcements will cover the very high end of the Unix line, which is made in Poughkeepsie.

Other announcements will cover the lower end, which is made in other plants."Poughkeepsie is the main high-end plant," Mauri said. "There's some in Europe. Poughkeepsie is like the center of the universe when it comes to high-end systems," both Power Systems and mainframes, as well as some supercomputers, he said.

As to this Unix line, Mauri said, "On launch day we launch the middle of the line. That's really the sweet spot."Unix growth has been an IBM success story mainly because the company made a commitment in 1998 to go after it with a serious research and development drive, Mauri said.Poughkeepsie and East Fishkill were part of it and remain a "very important part of this," he said.

In 2001, the POWER4 line came out and that was what really started IBM's growth in this segment of the market, Mauri said.IBM has taken market share from both Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard Co., among others, totaling 12 percentage points since 2005.These systems are optimized for the kinds of workloads that customers are increasingly having, such as running smart electrical grids.

Source:-http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com