ICEOTOPE’S LAUNCH MARKS NEW GENERATION IN LIQUID COOLING FOR SERVERS

Iceotope’s innovative solution tackles the energy costs and environmental footprint associated with data centre cooling

 Iceotope, the producer of the first truly scalable Data Centre ready integrated cooling and compute solution, is today launching at CeBIT.  This innovative approach to tackling energy costs and environmental footprints combines industry standard ICT, with next generation liquid cooling, to deliver 24/7 free cooling for ICT, anywhere on the planet.  This results in saving 97% of the energy cost of cooling and more than 75% of the mechanical costs.

 

With Iceotope’s unique liquid cooling system, all electronics are encapsulated in a sealed unit containing 3M’s Novec as the inert coolant. This reduces the power consumed at a server level by eliminating the need for any fans.  Novec rapidly convects the heat away from the electronics, and then transfers it to a sealed low pressure gravity fed sub system.  The heat can then be passively cooled or repurposed to centrally heat or provide hot water to other buildings, facilities or office spaces. No chillers, no CRAC, no Waste.

Commenting on Novec’s suitability for use in Iceotope servers, Adrian Hyner, sales manager at 3M said, “Novec’s safe, sustainable chemistry provides an excellent balance between performance, safety and the environment.”  By using an inert chemical coolant as opposed to potentially flammable solutions as used in alternative liquid cooling platforms, data centre owners can improve safety while making a dramatic overall reduction in electricity costs.

 

Jon Summers, senior lecturer and researcher, institute of thermofluids, at Leeds University, has been instrumental in the research into Iceotope’s new system.  "It is time that efforts were focused on the efficiency of internal cooling of information systems in data centres,” said Summers.  “Using air is an easy engineering option, but certainly not efficient. Therefore the use liquid encapsulation of the electronics in the Iceotope system offers an elegant engineering solution with a definite efficiency gain."

 “Researchers predict that the world’s data centres will consume 19% more energy in the next 12 months than they have in the past year,” said Peter Hopton, founder and CTO of Iceotope.  “In order to try to combat this increase in power consumption, we need to start looking to technology that will help to not only reduce environmental footprint, but also help reduce the costs associated with power and cooling in data centre and HPC environments.  Through our research with Leeds University and 3M, we’re excited about the impact our solution will have on data centre design and location and we’re looking forward to demonstrating the new product at this year’s CeBIT.” 

 

3M’s Mark Nursall and Leeds University’s Jon Summers are both presenting with Iceotope at CeBIT to demonstrate and discuss the benefits of this unique modular liquid cooling system.  Iceotope will be demonstrating its new technology at stand A47 in hall 11 at CeBIT 2012, Hannover, Germany, March 6-10.

Press contacts

Mike Marquiss / Fiona Halkerston
Johnson King
+44 207 401 7968

IceotopeTeam@johsnonking.co.uk

 

Pricing

Iceotope liquid cooled cabinets have a list price of £19,995 ($31,500), which includes hot swap redundant pump/heat exchangers and 6 Iceotope module centres ready to house a total of 48 modules.  Customers need only add suitable PDUs to match their infrastructure, plus modules, power supplies or the optional cable management system.

Server modules start from a list price of £3,995 ($6,300), for a fully configured server with Two 6 Core Xeon 'Romley' E5 Processors, 64GB RAM, 40Gb Infiniband and high endurance SSD Storage. Various other specifications are available including custom configurations and high-end processors.

 

About Iceotope

Iceotope Ltd, registered in Guernsey has been established to develop and deliver 'full time free cooling for ICT anywhere'.  This is done by combining next generation liquid cooling technology, industry standard ICT and Iceotope’s own I.P.  Designed with environmental impact in mind, this is the first truly sustainable and resource efficient solution to ICT cooling. Iceotope’s energy efficient technology is designed, engineered and manufactured in Great Britain.  

 

Iceotope at CeBIT
The DataChain

06 March 2012

Iceotope's launch marks new generation in liquid cooling for servers

Iceotope’s innovative solution tackles the energy costs and environmental footprint associated with data centre cooling

Iceotope, the producer of the first truly scalable data centre ready integrated cooling and compute solution, is today launching at CeBIT. This innovative approach to tackling energy costs and environmental footprints, combines industry standard ICT with next generation liquid cooling to deliver 24/7 free cooling for ICT, anywhere on the planet. This results in saving 97% of the energy cost of cooling and more than 75% of the mechanical costs.

With Iceotope’s unique liquid cooling system, all electronics are encapsulated in a sealed unit containing 3M’s Novec as the inert coolant. This reduces the power consumed at a server level by eliminating the need for any fans. Novec rapidly convects the heat away from the electronics, and then transfers it to a sealed low pressure gravity fed sub system. The heat can then be passively cooled or repurposed to centrally heat or provide hot water to other buildings, facilities or office spaces. No chillers, no CRAC, no waste.

Commenting on Novec’s suitability for use in Iceotope servers, Adrian Hyner, sales manager at 3M said, “Novec’s safe, sustainable chemistry provides an excellent balance between performance, safety and the environment.”

By using an inert chemical coolant as opposed to potentially flammable solutions as used in alternative liquid cooling platforms, data centre owners can improve safety while making a dramatic overall reduction in electricity costs.

Jon Summers, senior lecturer and researcher, institute of thermofluids, at Leeds University, has been instrumental in the research into Iceotope’s new system. "It is time that efforts were focused on the efficiency of internal cooling of information systems in data centres,” said Summers. “Using air is an easy engineering option, but certainly not efficient. Therefore the use liquid encapsulation of the electronics in the Iceotope system offers an elegant engineering solution with a definite efficiency gain."

“Researchers predict that the world’s data centres will consume 19% more energy in the next 12 months than they have in the past year,” said Peter Hopton, founder and CTO of Iceotope. “In order to try to combat this increase in power consumption, we need to start looking to technology that will help to not only reduce environmental footprint, but also help reduce the costs associated with power and cooling in data centre and HPC environments. Through our research with Leeds University and 3M, we’re excited about the impact our solution will have on data centre design and location, and we’re looking forward to demonstrating the new product at this year’s CeBIT.”

3M’s Mark Nursall and Leeds University’s Jon Summers are both presenting with Iceotope at CeBIT to demonstrate and discuss the benefits of this unique modular liquid cooling system. Iceotope will be demonstrating its new technology at stand A47 in hall 11 at CeBIT 2012, Hannover, Germany, March 6-10.

Topics: Energy Efficiency; Power & Cooling;

The Datachain (Web)

06 March 2012

Iceotope touts super liquid cooling for data centres

Iceotope today announced a new technique of cooling servers, which it claims can make fans redundant and cooling costs non-existent.

The launch happened at this year’s CeBIT conference in Hanover, Germany, with the company also saying the solution cuts 75 per cent of the mechanical costs associated with cooling servers.

Cost savings on the maintaining side might be plentiful, but the set-up price is no drop in the ocean

The product uses 3M’s Novec liquid as a coolant, which Peter Hopton, founder and chief technology officer (CTO) of Iceotope, called the “environmentally friendly little brother” of Fluoroinert – 3M’s previous coolant incarnation.

A water jacket containing Novec wraps around components and travels through the servers in fast currents at a rate of centimetres per second. With its low surface tension, the coolant “gets into all the cracks” to absorb the heat from servers and take it away to heat exchanges, where the liquid can either be cooled or used to heat other buildings and water within the complex.

The technology can not be incorporated into existing servers, however, and businesses would have to buy new servers – or modules as Iceotope refers to them – to install the technology.

Cost savings on the maintaining side might be plentiful, but the set-up price is no drop in the ocean.

Customers can buy cabinets, featuring six server modules – which look like blades – as well as the pump and heat exchanges, for £19,995. However, the cabinets can house up to 48 modules, which start at £3,995 for fully configured servers containing two six core Xeon E5 processors, 64GB RAM, 40Gb Infiniband and SSD storage.

Users are able to choose between AMD and Intel processors.

Hopton told IT Pro the technology could soon roll-out across the data centre, with products for switches, routers and GPUs in the pipeline. He defended the upfront prices though, saying the overall benefits would save a lot more money in the long term.

“No chiller equipment is needed so when you are kitting out a new data centre, you don’t need to buy it,” he said.

“It is not massively expensive and if you need new servers… it is cost effective when you start to look at the money saved on energy consumption.”

Although he couldn’t confirm any UK customers yet, Hopton did say it was being implemented within UK data centres and the test company would be revealed soon.
 

IT Pro.co.uk (Web)

06 March 2012

Iceotope liquid cools cabinets and servers with 3M's Novec

Says new solutions offer a safer way to liquid cool components and brings savings to the data center

Iceotope liquid cooled platform modules

UK company Iceotope, that patented liquid cooling for servers in the data center back in 2009, has released new products to market that use 3M’s Novec, an engineered non-flammable solvent it says makes the cooling process safer.

Liquid cooling of IT equipment has been around for some time and Iceotope first announced its modular liquid cooling invention in 2009.

3M’s Novec is used in a number of heat transfer applications. The environmentally friendly inert chemical coolant is currently used in fire sprinklers for environments containing expensive equipment such as museums, hospitals and banks as it becomes a gas immediately after discharge.

Iceotope said that in the data center, Novec can rapidly convect heat away from electronics, transferring it to a sealed low-pressure gravity fed tube system to provide 24/7 free cooling for ICT at any place and any time.

It can then be repurposed to provide central heating or district heading for other facilities.
“Our system is ‘hot swap’, clean and dry, using our unique Iceotope valve technology,” Iceotope said on its website.

Overall, it claims the solution can reduce cooling costs by 97% and compute power load by 20% by removing the need for air handling and refrigeration, with no chillers or CRAC units required.

Iceotope has worked closely with Leeds University on the technology. Late last year its founder and CTO Peter Hopton, who invented the technology, bought the company with a consortium backed by a seven figure investment sum.

Leeds University senior lecturer and researcher for the institute of thermofluids Jon Summers said liquid cooling can provider more efficiency than air-cooled infrastructure.
“Using air is an easy engineering option, but certainly not efficient,” Summers said.

“The use of liquid encapsulation of the electronics in the Iceotope system offers an elegant engineering solution with a definite efficiency gain.”

Icetope offers a range of solutions using Intel, AMD and other vendors.

Its high-density, 2N cabinets have a list price of £19,995 (US$31,500) which includes hot swap redundant pump/heat exchangers and six Iceotope module centers for housing 48 modules.
The server modules start at a price of £3,995 (US$6,300) for a fully configured server with Two 6 Core Xion Romley E5 Processors, 64GB RAM and 40Gb Infiniband and high endurance SSD storage.

DatacenterDynamic's FOCUS magazine will contain a special Insert on Cooling in edition 21, out in May.

 

Datacenter Dynamics (Web)

06 March 2012

Video debate: Green skills for the green economy

Brian Runciman MBCS hosted a debate discussing some of the issues raised by the ‘Skills for the Green Economy’ report from UK government, which identified that there are some massive potential savings to UK businesses, just by using raw materials, energy and water more efficiently.

The panel consisted of green consultant John Booth, Colin Pattinson, Head of School of Computing, Leeds Metropolitan University, Kate Craig-Wood, Managing Director of Memset, Bob Crooks, Green ICT Lead for Defra and Chair of the BCS Green Specialist Group and Peter Hopton, CTO of Iceotope.

British Computer Society (Web)

22 February 2012

SMEs miss out on vital growth

Yorkshire's hi-tech small firms could be missing out on two opportunities for major growth
Forgotten projects and a failure to consider overseas growth is undermining the financial health and prospects of many local firms, according to business advisers and potential investors.

That was the verdict of panellists taking part in a debate sponsored by Sheffield law firm Nabarro and the Yorkshire Association of Business Angels as part of a series of debates on entrepreneurship that Nabarro is staging in the region.

The debate was held as part of the annual Venturefest event, which aims to showcase Yorkshire’s most inspiring science, technology and innovative entrepreneurs.

Ed French of Finance Yorkshire pleaded with small technical companies in the region to consider ways of pressing ahead with innovative and exciting new projects that had been shelved because of the pressures of day-to-day work.

“In the US it’s common to “spin-out” these products into new enterprises; keeping the bulk of the value but allowing new people and capital to move them forward rapidly,” said Mr French.

“Maybe it’s cultural but we don’t do this in Britain. It could be transformative; generating wealth for the parent company without risking its own viability.”

Andrea Cropley, partner and head of regional strategy at Nabarro in Sheffield, said: “Part of the essence of successful entrepreneurs is being able to spot opportunities.

“Making the most of once-shelved ideas, is important. But, increasingly, small businesses across Yorkshire need to think bigger when it comes to markets overseas. UK Trade and Investment can play a vital part in broadening business horizons and opening doors.
“Nabarro is increasingly dealing with firms with the ambition to grow beyond these shores and through our office in Singapore and networks throughout Europe and in China, we have a the reach to help them get deals done.”

Other speakers at the event included Mike Maddock from Advanced Manufacturing Park-based start-up, Performance Engineered Solutions and Peter Hopton, founder of Sheffield-based eco-friendly PC developer Very PC, and Iceotope, which develops eco friendly server cooling system.

Mr Maddock called on financial institutions and the Government to have the courage to back innovation and research and to remove the red tape, costs and restrictions that stifle start-ups and small businesses.

Sheffield Star (Web)

17 February 2012

Liquid-cooled cabinets

Iceotope

UK-based liquid cooling specialist Iceotope has launched what it describes as ‘free cooling for ICT, anywhere’ at the Cebit trade event in Hanover, Germany. The company’s unique system encapsulates all electronics in a sealed unit containing 3M’s Novec as the inert chemical coolant. Heat is transferred away from the electronics to a sealed low pressure gravity fed sub system where it can be passively cooled or repurposed to centrally heat or provide hot water to other buildings or facilities.
Eliminating the need for fans, the power consumed at server level is reduced, addressing both the energy costs and environmental footprint of data centres and HPC facilities. Iceotope reports that this approach can save 97 per cent of the energy cost of cooling and more than 75 per cent of the mechanical costs of such facilities.

Iceotope liquid-cooled cabinets have a list price of £19,995 ($31,500), which includes hot swap redundant pump/heat exchangers and six Iceotope module centres ready to house a total of 48 modules. Fully-configured server modules with two of Intel’s six-core Xeon Romley E5 processors, 64GB RAM, 40Gb Infiniband and high endurance SSD Storage start from a list price of £3,995 ($6,300).

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