Toshiba’s Social Infrastructure Systems Division held a Completion Ceremony of its Modular Data Centre at Nanyang Technological University of Singapore (NTU).
Modular Data Centre (MDC) is a pilot project between Toshiba and NTU to demonstrate the practicality and cost-effectiveness for the Green Data Centre Innovation Challenge, a competition initiated by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) to promote innovations in energy efficiency that cut the high costs of cooling data centres in tropical climates.
As of 6th Sept 2012, Toshiba has completed the construction of “space- and energy-efficient modular data centre”. The innovative test-bed aims to provide a sustainable solution for data centres operating in South-East Asia’s tropical climate. This is done by using cutting-edge modular structure – container-sized modules which can stand alone or be combined together for more computing power – coupled with a smart cooling system. This new modular date centre prototype is managed by an international research team from Toshiba, energy Research Institute @ NTU (ERI@N), and the university’s School of Computer Engineering (SCE).
The Completion Ceremony ribbon-cutting ceremony was honored by the attendance of our Guest of Honor Mr Leong Mum Yuen, Chief Technology Officer of Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, together with him from Toshiba are Mr Ryuji Maruyama, General Manager of Smart Community Division of Toshiba Corporation, Mr Fumio Otani, Corporate Representative Asia and Managing Director of Toshiba Asia Pacific Pte Ltd., from NTU, they are Professor Subodh Mhaisalkar, Executive Director ERI@N and Professor Thambipillai Srikanthan, Chair of SCE NTU.
After the ribbon-cutting ceremony, business partners that attended the event were given a tour inside the Modular Data Center (MDC) to experience the cooling system and the space efficient layout. Explanatory was also provided to share the technology behind MDC.
Professor Subodh Mhaisalkar, Executive Director of ERI@N, said that energy efficiency solutions for residential and industrial sectors are one of the key areas of research for his centre.
“Data centres, essential for our IT-intensive telecommunications, data transmission and financial sectors, represent one of the highest levels of energy utilisation in Singapore,” Prof Mhaisalkar said. “These co-developed cooling solutions, leveraging NTU’s expertise in sustainability engineering and technology, will allow us to significantly reduce the energy consumption in modern data centres. I believe that similar approaches and solutions will be adopted for use quite readily in our push to develop green and more energy efficient buildings.”
Mr. Ryuji Maruyama, General Manager of Toshiba’s Smart Community Division, welcomed the start of the test-bedding, as the transition to Big Data and cloud computing is bringing with it huge demands for energy needed to power and cool data centres.
“The Singapore Infocomm Development Authority has recognised that our modular data centre solution with outside air cooling technology can make a significant contribution to solving this problem. We are confident that our collaboration with NTU will result in a successful demonstration of our technology and position us to contribute to the development of the data centre sector in Singapore and its expansion throughout South-East Asia,” Mr Maruyama added.
Associate Professor Ng Wee Keong, Associate Chair of Research from NTU’s School of Computer Engineering, said that this is one of the first academia-operated green data centre in the world used for research purposes.
“The technologies under development for this test bed will spearhead Singapore’s research in green data centre technological know-how. The data collected will be available to researchers all over the world for further analysis, and to further establish Singapore an international hub for data centre research and deployment.”
Pictures of Green Modular Data Centre Completion Ceremony
Click on each image to enlarge viewing.
