SGI (NASDAQ: SGI), a manufacturer of HPC and data center solutions, today announced a new Universal class of ICE Cube, the company's award-winning modular data center for extreme server and storage densities. The Universal ICE Cube models are fully optimized to accommodate all SGI server and storage systems, bringing unparalleled compute flexibility and deployment options to a wide range of vertical markets. In addition to models cooled with chilled water, SGI is also announcing an air-cooled design to greatly increase deployment flexibility.

Universal containers open the door for ICE Cube to easily support all SGI server and storage systems, including Altix ICE, Altix UV, Rackable, COPAN, and InfiniteStorage lines, in addition to heterogeneous, third-party systems. The company's long-established Dual Row class of ICE Cube has also been enhanced to better support heterogeneous equipment.

"Our new Universal ICE Cube data centers extend SGI's leadership in modular data center innovation, allowing us to offer our customers greater flexibility in design and deployment," said Rick Chapek, SGI senior vice president of hardware engineering. "SGI can now offer targeted ICE Cube configurations across vertical markets that span technical computing, federal government and defense, oil and gas, and Internet, meeting customer specific application and deployment needs."

Each ICE Cube is a self-contained data center in an easily deployable 20 or 40 foot ISO standard shipping container. The Universal ICE Cube class can scale to 46,080 cores and 29.8 petabytes (PB) of storage, and is available with chilled-water or air-based cooling, as well as roll-in or fixed-rack designs for the utmost in configuration flexibility. The air-cooled Universal model replaces chilled water with filtered outside air for more efficient deployments in cool and dry climates. ICE Cube leads the industry with deployments capable of attaining a Power Utilization Effectiveness (PUE) factor under 1.12.

Two new Dual Row ICE Cube models represent a fresh take on the company's established ICE Cube line, designed to primarily accommodate Rackable half-depth servers and now also supporting two additional rear-accessible, standard-depth cabinets. This empowers customers to deploy Rackable high density servers in conjunction with a wide variety of heterogeneous storage, server and networking equipment.

"It is not surprising that SGI is driving new innovation in the data center container market given its long experience in delivering ICE Cube to customers," said Michelle Bailey, research vice president for Enterprise Platforms and Datacenter Trends, IDC. "By deploying advanced cooling technologies and integrating standard-depth racks that can support a wide variety of server and storage solutions, these new ICE Cube designs provide customers with the flexibility that they require to support a diverse set of applications across their data centers."

ICE Cube is available in the following models:

Dual Row Containers:
  • IC2012DR: 20-foot container, up to 12 half-depth racks.
  • IC4024DR: 40-foot container, up to 24 half-depth racks and vestibule.
  • IC4028DR: 40-foot container, up to 28 half-depth racks.
  • New IC2010HY: 20-foot container, up to eight half-depth racks and two roll-in cabinets for standard-depth, heterogeneous equipment.
  • New IC4026HY: 40-foot container, up to 24 half-depth racks and two roll-in cabinets for standard-depth, heterogeneous equipment.
Dual Row models benefit from lower power consumption by using in-row chilled-water based cooling, replacing the need for server cooling fans. DC power distribution with in-rack UPS maximizes power efficiency.

New Universal Containers:
  • IC2008UA: 20-foot container, up to eight standard-depth cabinets can be rolled in and fastened in place. It features new adiabatic cooling technology that uses only one percent of the water needed for water-cooled containers - a simple garden hose is sufficient. Air-cooling is ideal for combinations of dry and cool climates.
  • IC4019UR: 40-foot container, up to 19 standard-depth cabinets can be rolled in and fastened in place. Chilled-water, in-ceiling cooling for standard hot-aisle, cold-aisle environment suitable for practically all rackmount IT equipment.
  • IC4016UP: 40-foot container, up to 16 x 60U fixed racks with up to 45 kW/rack and in-row, chilled-water cooling. Especially suitable for high-power technical computing configurations, this model reaches the highest code density of any ICE Cube container, supporting up to 46,080 cores of compute power.
  • IC4024UD: 40-foot container, up to 24 x 49U fixed racks with up to 14.5 kW/rack and in-ceiling, chilled-water cooling. This model reaches the highest storage density of any ICE Cube container, supporting up to 29.8 PB of storage capacity.