Wednesday 29 May 2013

PETER HOPTON ANNOUNCED AS NEW ICEOTOPE CEO

Original Iceotope founder to steer company reins through new investment and further product development


Iceotope, the creator of next-generation liquid cooling, today announced that Peter Hopton, the company’s original founder, is to assume the position of CEO starting immediately. Having been operating as Iceotope’s chief technical officer since 2011, Hopton has been instrumental in Iceotope’s commercial and product development, building on the company’s customer base and increasing its profile within the technology industry. It is with these achievements in mind that the Iceotope investors have decided to promote Hopton to CEO. In this capacity he will continue to guide the company through investment and product development, as well as expand upon its rapidly growing commercial opportunities.

As part of this senior management change, Neil Bennett will step into the role of Executive Chairman. Bennett will continue to be involved in the business at a boardroom capacity but will hand over control of the day-to-day running of the business. On Hopton’s appointment, Bennett said “Peter has shown leadership at every level and has the ability to guide this company from both a technical and commercial standpoint. He is the focal point of the technology as well as the board room and is doing a great job. We recognise that he’s been working tirelessly to develop a successful product and business and it is entirely on merit that he takes up this new role.”

Hopton commented on the new position, “I’d like to thank Neil for his commitment to the cause during his spell as CEO and also the investors for putting their full weight behind me. It seems like the IT industry is starting to come around to the idea of liquid cooling and many influential forces within have now recognised the game-changing potential of Iceotope’s technology. We’re growing rapidly as a business but it’s becoming clearer than ever that liquid cooling and Iceotope both have a bright future ahead. I have faith that I can guide the company to its next stage of development and it is a great privilege to be given the opportunity to do so.”

Monday 20 May 2013

Iceotope shows off fully immersed liquid cooled servers


Uses 20 percent less power than traditional systems

COOL SERVER MAKER Iceotope has demonstrated its fully immersed liquid cooled server system that's in operation at the University of Leeds.
Using a non-conductive liquid, the liquid cooling system has a low dielectric constant such that, as far as the electronics inside are concerned the liquid acts like air, meaning the electronics can be submerged in it.
However, as there are no fans or moving parts needed to pump the liquid around because it naturally expands as it takes heat away from the electronics, Iceotope's server system claims to reduce data centre cooling costs by up 97 percent, power on computing load by 20 percent and overall ICT infrastructure costs by 50 percent when compared to traditional air or water cooling systems.
Iceotope also claims that the server liquid cooling system is up to 90 percent efficient at capturing heat from submerged servers, which can then be transferred and reused to heat other devices like domestic radiators up to 50 degrees Celsius, thus doubling power savings.
Iceotope's submerged servers have already attracted inquiries from many companies interested in using the technology.

By Lee Bell, The Inquirer

Tuesday 14 May 2013

Iceotope Garners Acclaim from Green IT Community!


The month of May sees Iceotope’s green IT credentials celebrated on both the home and international stage as part of a whirlwind week! 


On Thursday night, Iceotope won ‘Cooling Product of the Year’ by popular vote at the UK’s Green IT Awards ceremony and yesterday we accepted the award for ‘Facility Product Deployment’ as part of the Uptime Institute’s Green Enterprise IT Awards in the heart of Silicon Valley.


e-shot 12
The Uptime Institute award recognises
the successful collaboration between
Iceotope, the University of Leeds and
3M in deploying Iceotope's innovative
liquid cooled servers at the University
and the combined efforts of all three
organisations to develop the technology.



The two award wins mark a fitting
testament to Iceotope’s continued
development and we are absolutely
delighted to receive yet more positive
reception for our work in advancing
energy efficiency in IT!




Iceotope Solution at University of Leeds


“The recognition we’re getting from these extremely prestigious industry bodies is absolutely incredible, especially to get so much praise for Iceotope’s work with Leeds, which is of course the company’s first publically announced customer. It is the tech sector’s equivalent of being given an Oscar for your first film!”

Peter Hopton, CEO


GEIT-photo 3
GEIT Awards 2013 Reception, Santa Clara, CA

Monday 13 May 2013

The wet servers



David Hayward has a look at a new concept in server cooling and chats to the designers








Cooling a significantly sized server room is a challenge in itself. The energy requirements necessary to keep a constant air temperature are quite extraordinary, making the server room a less than green approach to providing adequate cooling. Then there are other aspects to take into consideration, such as humidity control systems, air purification, air conditioning servicing… The list goes on, and quite soon the server room itself has become the single most expensive part of any company’s IT equation.
However, the UK firm Iceotope has an ingenious solution. Led by Dr Jon Summers, from the University of Leeds’ School of Mechanical Engineering, a team of researchers have installed the first production system of servers completely immersed in liquid.
Traditional air cooling has a number of disadvantages when it comes to transferring heat away from a server. For starters it’s very expensive, it’s noisy, it requires more energy and it’s not particularly effective. Whereas liquid is several thousand times more effective at transferring heat, it’s quieter in doing so and requires significantly less energy.
The liquid in question is called 3M Novec, a non-flammable coolant that doesn’t conduct electricity. In fact, it’s so exceptional that Dr Jon Summers said, “The liquid we’re using is extraordinary stuff. You could throw your mobile phone in a tub of it and the phone would work perfectly.”
The server and the liquid cooled system uses a model based on computational fluid dynamics to represent the coolant as it flows through the server, making it an ultra efficient system, designed with a simple low energy pump installed at the bottom of the cabinet, pumping a secondary coolant, which is water, to the top, where it cascades down through all 48 modules of the server thanks to gravity. The secondary coolant then terminates at the heat exchangers within the cabinet for the transfer of heat to a third and final coolant, on an external loop, taking the heat away for external cooling or for reuse.
The high efficiency of this system means that the output water can reach temperatures of up to 50°C, which can then be used for heating rooms and providing hot water. Overall, the Iceotope-designed system uses a mere 80W of power to harvest the heat from up to 20kW of ICT use.
It’s extraordinarily impressive, and because there are no fans or air conditioning units, the server room is considerably quieter and uses an estimated 80 to 97% less energy to keep the equipment at perfect operating temperature.

Interview with Iceotope

We took a moment from Iceotope’s busy schedule to ask the team a few questions regarding this revolutionary liquid cooled system:
Can you tell us a bit more about the Iceotope company? When did it start? What are its objectives and goals?
Founded in 2011 with acquired IP dating back to 2005, Sheffield-based start-up Iceotope has designed and engineered an innovative liquid cooling system that solves some of the most pressing challenges facing today’s data centre operators. The technology has the potential to halve the energy usage of the data centre industry, prevent millions of tons of CO2 being released into the atmosphere and reduce the spiralling costs of running a data centre facility. Iceotope ultimately aims to offer 24/7 ‘free cooling’ anywhere in the world, including equatorial and desert regions.
Was all the R&D work conducted here in the UK, through and in conjunction with various universities?
Iceotope is the culmination of a five-year, UK-based R&D effort. The company has worked in partnership with various universities to include the University of Sheffield, Sheffield Hallam and most recently the University of Leeds. The current system is also backed by industry leaders such as 3M and AMD.
How easy would it be for a company to implement the Iceotope Liquid Cooling Server solution into its own organisation?
By negating the need for air handling, chilling and humidity control equipment at the server, rack or building level, the Iceotope Solution can be located almost anywhere with access to power and water, including industrial space or populated areas. By negating fans from the equation, the Iceotope Solution is completely silent in operation, meaning that servers can now be located in environments that were previously considered unsuitable for data centre use.
How do the setup costs of the Iceotope system compare with that of a traditional machine room, air con setup?
By removing the need for specialised data centre design, the Iceotope Solution slashes CAPEX and OPEX in equal measure. Traditional ‘air cooled’ data centre facilities require extensive and expensive infrastructure, sometimes resulting in 2/3 of the overall design. Such facilities also require much more physical space for ventilation (hot and cold aisles). The Iceotope Solution can be configured as a single supercomputer, multiple server racks or scaled out to create entire data centres, offering new builds and retrofits more building and more space for their money.
Would there be any advantage to implementing this system at the desktop level? For overclocking, perhaps?
Possibly, but our core market interest is not desktops at the moment. Overclocking aims to keep desktop computers running cool, whereas the Iceotope Solution aims to run server rooms neutral in terms of heat thus allowing for optimal processing power. We might look at designing a desktop product further down the line.
Which companies have so far used this technology?
The first production system was installed at the University of Leeds in January. We are in the process of installing a second system in Poland, buyer to be announced and bidding for a third requirement within the UK. We have a strong sales pipeline for 2013 and into 2014.
What happens if the systems fail? Is there a fan-based backup that kicks in?
There is no fan-based backup; the cooling systems are fault tolerant and fully redundant. They can also tolerate prolonged outages due to the thermal latency in the system.
Aside from reducing cooling costs by 97%, what other ‘green’ benefits are there to be had from this system? Are the materials used manufactured in a ‘green’ way, and can they themselves be recycled?
In addition to reducing cooling costs by 97%, the Iceotope Solution reduces ICT power load by 20% and overall ICT infrastructure costs by 50%. The technology can also help reduce associated CO2 emissions - something that the data centre industry is going to have to address soon, since it has been estimated to be on par with that of the airline industry in the years to come.
The Iceotope Solution also delivers high-grade heated exhaust water, which can be reused to heat buildings or for other applications - another very valuable ‘green’ benefit that is unique to Iceotope.
Our patented products are designed ‘cradle to cradle’ ensuring that all core components can be recovered and reused many times and all of our products are also designed, engineered and manufactured locally within the UK, and that’s something we are very proud of.
How do you see the future of data centre and server room cooling evolving? What projects do you have in line for future Iceotope systems?
We believe that most data centres will be liquid cooled in the future, the reason being that liquid is thousands of times more effective at transferring heat than air, and the cooling aspect of such facilities is the single largest contributor to inefficiency.
If you purchase a car today, the first thing you think about is running costs (fuel efficiency). Although the data centre industry is enjoying double digit growth year on year, it’s suffering from many pain points that liquid cooling can solve, such as running costs (cooling efficiency).
We’re finding in real customers that flexibility and adaptability are key buying motives, funded by energy savings. The fact that the Iceotope Solution does not even need a data centre environment, combined with the fact that it unifies servers and infrastructure into a single simple yet elegant solution makes the choice for many to switch from traditional air cooling to next-generation liquid cooling a simple and sensible one.

Conclusion

The world of server room cooling is on the verge of something very big. Wth the Iceotope system in effect, imagine the global implications to the carbon footprint. The future is certainly looking impressive, but there are still hurdles to overcome, chiefly the acceptance of a new innovative system.
However, those involved are confident that Iceotope’s system of cooling is the future; as Peter Hopton, Iceotope’s chief technology officer and originator of the Iceotope concept, said, “More than five years of research, innovation and collaboration have gone into Iceotope’s technology. The basic principle of the design has many applications and, while a few years away, there is no reason why every home shouldn’t make better use of the surplus heat from consumer electronics. Imagine having your PC or TV plumbed into the central heating system.”
In a world where the internet and cloud services will grow to unimaginable proportions and data centres become the equivalent of small towns in size, we as users have to take responsibility for the impact our daily lives have on the environment, and the Iceotope concept may very well be the saving grace and a positive outlook for a more green IT future. 

Key facts about data centres

  • The world’s data centres use 31 gigawatts of power - more than seven times the capacity of the UK’s largest coal-fired power station, Drax in North Yorkshire.
  • Data centre carbon emissions are projected to quadruple between 2008 and 2020.
  • The UK has 7.6 million square metres of data centre floor space.
  • One in three of the world’s population use data centres. The number is growing at around 15% annually.

New Data Center Liquid Cooling Process Wins Uptime Institute Award


Collaboration among 3M, Iceotope and University of Leeds Advances Energy Efficiency in Servers and Reduces Waste from Data Center Infrastructure


ST. PAUL, Minn. – May 13, 2013 - As the demand for more data and premiums on energy have grown, 3M Company along with Iceotope Research and Development Ltd, and the University of Leeds are working to advance energy efficiency in servers using new data center liquid cooling methodologies. The efforts will be recognized by the Uptime Institute today, which selected the organizations as a Green Enterprise IT (GEIT) Award winner for pioneering projects and innovations that significantly improve energy productivity and use of resources in IT.

The University of Leeds is being recognized in the Facility Product Deployment category of the GEIT Awards for its case study, which details the installation of the Iceotope Solution, a new liquid cooled server system designed and manufactured by Iceotope utilizing 3M™ Novec™ Engineered Fluids, at the University’s School of Mechanical Engineering thermofluids laboratory.  Iceotope chose Novec fluid for its excellent dielectric heat transfer performance with exceptional environmental properties. The result is a system that can be incorporated into existing data center infrastructure. Additionally, it reduces the energy used to cool IT equipment by up to 97 percent as it eliminates the need for chillers and air conditioning units. Harvested heat from the system is also being reused for heating the laboratory in the case of the University’s deployment.

“The team at The University of Leeds and Iceotope are true visionaries for finding innovative ways to respond to sustainability and energy efficiency needs in data centers,” said Joe Koch, business director at 3M Electronics Markets Materials Division. “We applaud their dedication and leadership and hope their accomplishments will inspire other industry leaders to come forward in helping to find better ways to address energy efficiency. In addition, the collaboration with our partners is consistent with 3M’s longstanding commitment to sustainable development and demonstrates 3M’s culture to work with our customers to meet energy-efficiency and sustainability objectives.”

While liquid cooling is generally recognized as being more efficient than air cooling, capturing the heat from the myriad of devices within a server has traditionally been challenging. Iceotope’s liquid encapsulation technology efficiently captures this heat without complex plumbing networks.  Additionally, revolutionary coolants like Novec fluids, which are non-ozone depleting, have wide margins of safety in their intended applications and low global warming potentials, further enable the possibilities. 

“As we are recognized for the successful deployment of the University of Leeds system with the GEIT award, we continue to collaborate with 3M to bring our cutting-edge liquid encapsulation cooling technology solution to the U.S. market to address the rising data center energy costs and high-performance computing needs as well as water and space conservation needs in a manner that fully conforms to industry standards,” said Peter Hopton, founder and Chief Executive Officer of Iceotope. 

Additionally, for the ninth consecutive year, 3M received the ENERGY STAR Sustained Excellence Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy for its comprehensive worldwide energy conservation efforts. The Dow Jones Sustainability Index continues to recognize 3M as a sustainability leader by including the company in its 2010-2011 global sustainability index. When 3M first introduced Novec technology in 1997, the American Chemical Society recognized the company’s scientists with a Heroes of Chemistry Award.

Visit 3M’s Uptime Symposium booth (#108) to witness the GEIT award-winning parties’ collaboration at work.  For more information regarding 3M Novec Engineered Fluids visit www.3M.com/Novec or for other 3M branded products log onto www.3M.com/datacenters. Also visit us on Facebook. For more information about 3M’s sustainability initiatives visit www.3M.com/sustainability.


About 3M
3M captures the spark of new ideas and transforms them into thousands of ingenious products. Our culture of creative collaboration inspires a never-ending stream of powerful technologies that make life better. 3M is the innovation company that never stops inventing. With $30 billion in sales, 3M employs about 88,000 people worldwide and has operations in more than 70 countries. For more information, visit www.3M.com or follow @3MNews on Twitter.


Friday 3 May 2013

Iceotope Selected to Pitch at Global Corporate Venturing Symposium in London!


Global Corporate Venturing Symposium

Iceotope has yet again been recognised as one of the most disruptive companies in the world as it has been selected from over 50 entries as 1 of 10 organisations to present at the 2013 Global Corporate Venturing Symposium in London on 22 May.

The delegate list and agenda are impressive and substantial.  

Iceotope will present to 50 of the world's leading strategic and financial investors as part of the Corporate Venturing Portfolio for Energy.

Full details here - www.globalcorporateventuring.com.