At the forefront in Europe, expanded, enhanced and sustainable. The Green Data Center of the University of Pisa doubles to support new challenges in the field of scientific research and teaching and to support the digital transition of the territory. A leap into the future sanctioned with a symbolic ribbon cutting which, on Tuesday 16 April, officially inaugurated the new room of the Data Center of San Pietro a Grado, which now makes 38 additional racks available to its Pisan University community which, when added to the 66 already present in the structure, brings their total to 104. Numbers that make it the largest university data center in Italy, as well as being the only one to have obtained the “A” classification from AgID.
“The University of Pisa aspires to a cutting-edge position in the development of digitalisation processes, necessary to best face the new challenges regarding training, research and technological transfer. In this, the investment made in the University’s Green Data Center is strategic for us – commented the rector, Riccardo Zucchi – The expansion of this structure, in fact, allows us to make a leap in quality in high-level competitive projects and in frontier contexts, such as 5G, Artificial Intelligence, quantum computing or the topic of high performance computing in the context of the National Center funded in the PNRR”.
“A data center at university level is a fundamental competitive tool for research in the fields of science and engineering – explained the deputy vice-rector of the University of Pisa, Giuseppe Iannaccone – If well managed it is the most efficient solution from the point of view of from an operational and economic point of view, while from an environmental point of view it is superior to a situation in which the resources are distributed among the various laboratories of the university”.
In fact, the expansion of the Green Data Center will significantly increase the computing power available to UniPi’s scientific research, which currently can already count on around 700 nodes for a total of around 30K computing cores and more than 100 GPUs. of various generations. But the expansion of the university Data Center will also have positive repercussions on the local area. All with a strong focus on environmental sustainability.
“With the development of the University’s Green Data Center, our ability to support the digitalization processes is also strengthened, not only of the university but also of the territory, consolidating what is the ‘UniPi model’ of digital transition, in which the Our university makes its infrastructures and its strong skills in the ICT field available to the territory – declared the rector’s delegate for the digital transition, Giuseppe Anastasi – The strengthening of the Data Center can in fact guarantee new digital services from which they can benefit not only the academic community but also the territory, thus laying the foundations for increasingly sustainable, widespread, inclusive, effective and participatory development”.
“Recent studies show how data centers help the growth of the territory and its GDP (in 2022 alone the number grew by 22%) – finally declared the president of the University Information System, Antonio Cisternino – It is important that these infrastructures are present and help not only the teaching and research of the University, but also to develop the territory through the availability of innovative infrastructures and collaborations. Finally, it should be underlined that data centers are also becoming the engines of artificial intelligence and have been named also AI Factories”
“The main objective of the expansion project of the Green Data Center – explained the CTO of the Data Center, Maurizio Davini – was to integrate new technological elements without distorting the original project, designed to have the lowest possible environmental impact. Thanks to the new solutions adopted, the Green Data Center is thus able to support High-performance computing (HPC) and latest generation Artificial Intelligence infrastructures for the next few years, limiting energy consumption”.
To do this, innovative liquid cooling solutions such as Vertiv’s Liebert® It was thus possible to also adopt latest generation computing systems such as Lenovo Neptune, which guarantees a reduction of up to 40% in energy consumption without having to sacrifice performance. Furthermore, the University of Pisa was among the first in Europe to adopt these technological solutions, making its Green Data Center a cutting-edge structure also from the point of view of environmental sustainability.
Finally, the internal and external connectivity at high speed and high reliability of the structure has also been enhanced. “Thanks to the activation of a second connection node to the new generation ultra-broadband national network (GARR-T), dedicated to the education and research community, the scientific computing power of our University Green Data Center has increased enormously – explains Stefano Suin, director of the Digital Infrastructure Directorate of the University of Pisa – Today, in fact, this structure can count on internal connectivity at 200 Gbit/sec and external connectivity at 100 Gbit/sec which allows it to fully exploit the its potential in terms of access to High Performance Computing and Artificial Intelligence systems and deliverability based on the needs of each project; without forgetting the due attention to the protection of data and research results”.
Source: University of Pisa – press office
Tags: largest Data Center Italy Pisa
