Power pull
Supercomputer drawing drug firm to Butte
By Tim Trainor - 07/08/2009
A yet-to-be-announced company is expected to locate in Butte to take advantage of the Rocky Mountain Supercomputer — and anticipates creating new jobs as well.
Dan Harrington, director of development at the Butte-based Interactive Technology Group Inc., and others made the announcement during a presentation Wednesday in the Thornton Building in Uptown Butte.
Harrington has formed a consortium of software engineers from companies in Seattle, Atlanta and Vancouver, British Columbia. That consortium, in turn, anticipates signing a contract with a "major U.S. pharmaceutical company" within the next week to work on a feasibility study for a new product. He did not name the company or the product.
If all goes well, Harrington said, the study could blossom into a 5- to 10-year contract with the pharmaceutical company. He said he hopes the newly formed business will open an office inside or near the Thornton Building and begin to hire employees.
"Hopefully this will help create lots of jobs," Harrington said. "Good-paying jobs for Butte people who then can find work in their hometown in their field." During Wednesday's presentation, the consortium also highlighted the uses of "associative memory" technology.
Associative memory is a non-numerical type of computerization — more along the lines of how a human brain thinks. This kind of computerization can provide exhaustive information in a vast array of areas — such as the stock market, oil production or pharmaceutical testing, he said.
"There are very few limits to this technology," Harrington said. "It's useful to just about any manufacturing process." Wednesday's presenters included Larry Lafferty of SoftPro Technologies Inc., an Atlanta software company that works with oil and gas companies, and Alan Wagner and Camilo Rostoker from the University of British Columbia, who have developed an intricate system to track the stock market.
They noted that the Rocky Mountain Supercomputer is a useful tool for their work, and that its speed and power are why they came to Butte.
Reporter Tim Trainor may be reached via e-mail at tim.trainor@lee.net or call 496-5519.
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