HPC in the Cloud: NCSA Petascale Datacenter Gets LEED Gold Certification

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January 10, 2012

NCSA Petascale Datacenter Gets LEED Gold Certification

URBANA-CHAMPAIGN, Ill., Jan. 9 -- The University of Illinois' National Petascale Computing Facility has been certified LEED Gold in the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system, which is the recognized standard for measuring sustainability in construction.

The building, which opened in summer 2010, is home to supercomputers and other high-performance systems operated by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and used by scientists and engineers across the country.

The LEED system awards points in a half-dozen categories, including energy and water efficiency, indoor environmental quality, and innovation in design. NPCF's energy-saving features include:

A highly efficient power distribution system that is based on 480 V power for the computational equipment.
Focusing on water-cooled computational and storage equipment. Liquid cooling is two times more efficient that air cooling.
External cooling towers that let Mother Nature chill the water needed for cooling the building and the supercomputers a large part of the year. This is expected to cut the chilled water costs for the facility by about $1 million per year.
Low-impact landscaping with native prairie plants that thrive without frequent watering or mowing.
Using best practice construction methods to improve the air quality environment within the facilty.

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Source: NCSA

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