IBM's Poughkeepsie, New York, facility remains unharmed following a 4.8 magnitude earthquake that hit the East Coast of the US, reports NetworkWorld.
One of the company's engineers, Pasquale Catalano posted on X, formerly known as Twitter: “Am happy to report that all 200 mainframes in Poughkeepsie, NY, have successfully passed this FREE earthquake test! Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, is about 100 miles SW of our test facility.”
According to IBM's mainframe general manager Ross Mauri, the company simulates a magnitude 7 earthquake as a standard testing procedure for its mainframes.
The earthquake hit the northeastern region of the US at 10:23 am on April 6. The New York Times reported that it sent tremors from Philadelphia to Boston, and jolted buildings in Manhattan and other New York boroughs.
Mainframes are designed to withstand events such as earthquakes. The boxes are built with a strong chassis able to handle shock and vibrations, and users can have added seismic isolation systems around the mainframes to protect them further.
The Poughkeepsie location has been home to IBM operations since 1941, where it developed and manufactured rifles, electric typewriters, keypunch machines, calculators, tape drives, large system software, and mainframe computers.
In 2010, it became the home to manufacturing System Z Mainframe and Power Systems, after $30m in investment from the company. According to a press release at the time, the facility spans 56,000 sq ft (5,200 sqm), with the 400-acre site owned by IBM.
It was at this location that the z16 mainframe, IBM's latest iteration of zSystems mainframes, was launched in March 2022. The z16 features on-chip AI inferencing and industry-first quantum-safe technologies.
In October 2022, President Biden visited the Poughkeepsie facility. During this visit, IBM announced plans to invest $20bn across the Hudson Valley region over the next 10 years in order to "expand the vibrant technology ecosystem in New York to unlock new discoveries and opportunities in semiconductors, computers, hybrid cloud, artificial intelligence, and quantum computers.
The site is also home to IBM's first Quantum Computation Center.
