Vermont IBM plant to supply Defense Department, Mayo

ESSEX JUNCTION, Vt. -- IBM's plant in Vermont has been tapped to provide
thousands of processors in high-powered technology the company is selling to
the Department of Defense and the Mayo Clinic.

IBM will supply the Naval Oceanographic Office Major Shared Resource Center
with the fastest supercomputer in the U.S. military and one of the fastest
in the world, capable of performing 20 trillion mathematical operations per
second.

The system, which IBM spokesman Jeff Couture said will mostly provide
detailed weather and ocean data, will use about 3,000 processors
manufactured at the IBM plant in Essex Junction.

The naval office is engaged in research and development activities that
include coming up with vehicle, ship, aircraft and missile designs as well
as researching meteorological data.

Wednesday, the computer giant also announced a contract with the Mayo Clinic
based in Rochester, Minn., in which the clinic would be able to tap into an
IBM supercomputer, dubbed "Blue Gene."

The clinic is the first medical institution to use IBM's Blue Gene
supercomputer.

Couture said he was unsure how many Essex Junction processors would be
manufactured for that contract.

The Mayo Clinic will use the technology to build virus models, study new
ways of curing various diseases and keep track of patient information.

Taken together, the two contracts are valued at more than $100 million, he said.

The Essex Junction plant employs about 6,000 workers. No new jobs are
planned as a direct result of landing the contracts, Couture said.

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