Northern Data AG, a global developer/operator of global infrastructure solutions in the field of High-Performance Computing (HPC), headquartered in Germany, is commissioning its latest HPC data center near Maastricht in the southern part of the Netherlands.
This new data center facility in the Netherlands is the first of several new locations for Northern Data AG, which also intends to establish HPC data centers in Germany, Scandinavia and Canada.
This new data center facility would entail one of the largest GPU clusters worldwide. It will be Northern Data’s first data center location in the European Union. The company will begin installing the first hardware for its GPU-based Distributed Computing Cluster from the beginning of December.
This new GPU cluster is one of Northern Data AG’s most significant expansion steps. It is expected to be scaled up by the end of Q1/2021 to achieve computing power of 404 Petaflops (FP64). With this level of power, it would be one of the largest GPU clusters of its kind worldwide. The world’s most powerful supercomputer, Japan’s Fugaku, has a computing capacity of 442 Petaflops.
PUE: 1.04 – 1.05
“With the smooth and rapid expansion of our GPU cluster, now including our first European location, we are moving to meet the very high demand for stable, reliable and cost-efficient High-Performance Computing infrastructure,” said Aroosh Thillainathan, CEO of Northern Data AG.
“Our highly specialized teams have done an excellent job over the past few months to lay this foundation for future growth in a very short time-span. We are well on course, and thanks to our GPU cluster, we shall be offering HPC services in the fields of artificial intelligence, deep learning, research and rendering as early as the first half of next year, with maximum scalability and optimum time- and cost-efficiency.”
The cooling technology to be deployed in this data center in the Netherlands is based on an air-cooling system developed by Northern Data AG itself. It would deliver an extremely energy efficient PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) figure of between 1.05 and 1.04. The PUE value indicates the level of energy being consumed by a computing facility relative to the energy actually delivered to the computing equipment.
HPC Data Center Management Software
In addition to the proprietary cooling technology, this new data center will make use of Northern Data’s own management software. It would enable the documentation and rapid configuration and commissioning of the server hardware. The software automates the entire process of continuously optimizing the operating parameters of the servers and the entire HPC data center itself.
The internationally active company was formed from the merger of the German company Northern Bitcoin AG and the American company Whinstone US, Inc. and is today a leading provider of HPC solutions worldwide. Northern Data offers its HPC solutions both in large, stationary data centers and in mobile high-tech data centers that can be set up at any location worldwide. The company combines self-developed software and hardware with intelligent concepts for a sustainable energy supply. The Northern Data group currently employs around 150 people.
