IBM Opens £19m Green Mainframe Factory

IBM has opened a $30 million (£19m) manufacturing facility in New York that will produce the next generation of high-end Power and System z mainframe systems.

The Poughkeepsie, N.Y., facility, which opened on 13 April, also will feature an energy-efficient design. The 56,000-square-foot building, housed within a larger building on IBM’s 400-acre campus, is a testament to the company’s commitment to the Mid-Valley

Hudson River area of New York, according to Mike Desens, Poughkeepsie senior location executive with IBM’s Systems and Technology Group. “The new manufacturing facility in Poughkeepsie reflects IBM innovation in the design, testing and assembly of its mainframes and high-end servers,” Desens said in a statement.

Products will begin rolling out of the manufacturing site later this year, IBM says. The facility was three years in the making.

The power-saving features in the facility are similar to those found in data centres, according to the company. Cooling is done through a closed-loop system that circulates chilled water. The cool air is used for such tasks as air conditioning and keeping systems cool. The facility has a cooling capacity of 1,700 tons.

In addition, it also uses IBM’s Cool Blue Rear Door Heat eXchangers to cool the systems inside the facility. The technology is a water-cooled door that attaches to the back of IBM servers, cooling the hot air that exits out the back of the system. The hot air is cooled before it gets back into the data centre.

The facility also uses a hot-aisle, cool-aisle system for its servers, and such power-saving methods as energy-efficient fluorescent lights and occupancy sensors.

There also are such features as noise-reducing materials, such as ceiling tiles to minimize noise and dust retention.