VISIT TO THE SWISS NATIONAL SUPERCOMPUTING CENTER LUGANO

Host to Europe’s fastest supercomputer, Lugano’s Centro Svizzero di Calcolo Scientifico (CSCS) provides computing power for scientific research, including physics, chemistry and materials science and weather forecasts. The data centre houses several high performing computers (HPC) including Piz Daint, ranked the world’s sixth fastest supercomputer and Europe’s top performer.  

To remain competitive in this fast-moving industry, operators ETH Zurich and Università della Svizzera Italiana (USI) designed a facilities expansion programme to optimise computer performance. Arup together with its consortium partner IFEC won the tender for a framework contract in 2012 to deliver a total of 14 subprojects dealing over the next four years. Sustainability and resilience were the key drivers for this data centre, one of the most energy-efficient computing centres in the world.

With Piz Daint, CSCS is one of the most important tier zero sites for PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe). One of the key challenges in this project was working to accommodate several High-Performance Computers, some of them prototypes – with no downtime. Our engineers worked to plan and support the upgrades to meet strict requirements including securing access to a highly secure power supply and to ample cooling water supplies.

Cooling systems – essential to ensure mainframes don’t overheat – can consume up to a third of an average data centre’s total energy consumption. In Lugano, the super-computers are directly water cooled by supplies from Lake Lugano, making this one of the most energy-efficient data centres with a power usage effectiveness (PUE) of < 1.25.

For more information regarding the center please visit the website