Advania will be hosting the compute facility of a new supercomputer in its green data center in Iceland.

Thor Data Center, located just outside of Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik, will be hosting the new innovative supercomputer, which is the result of a joint effort between National High Performance Computing (HPC) organisations of Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Iceland.
 
The supercomputer is innovative not so much for its technology, but for its concept, placement and operations. The computer is part of a pilot initiative aiming to test remote hosting, such that computing is brought to the energy source and not vice versa, as is the norm, thereby introducing substantial savings.
 
Supercomputing costs are an increasing economic burden for researchers and their universities; however, Iceland is an attractive location, with powerful natural resources providing very low-cost electricity and cost-efficient cooling solutions.
 
In addition to the economic incentive is of course the environmental one. Supercomputers entail a large CO2-footprint when fossil energy sources are used. In Iceland, energy is produced not only at low cost but also from CO2-neutral renewable hydro- and geothermal energy sources.
 
In the future, joint large scale procurements and energy efficient placement of supercomputers will be increasingly advantageous for the Scandinavian countries, as well as to Iceland. It increases value for money as well as the possibility to develop new advanced competencies within shared operations of remote computing.