SWEDEN’S DATA CENTRES ARE ON THE RISE
PHOTO CREDIT: PÄR BÄCKSTRÖM
ON THE RISE WRITTEN BY: FRAN ROBERTS PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN
RISE SICS AB is the leading research institute for applied information and communication technology in Sweden. Tor Björn Minde, CEO of RISE SICS North, describes the Institute’s new research data centre, located in Luleå
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ISE SICS North is a new subsidiary of RISE SICS, established in Luleå. “It’s like the Swedish Fraunhofer. There are other countries that also have their own research institute organisations,” notes Tor Björn Minde, CEO of RISE SICS North. “Here it’s called RISE – Research Institutes of Sweden.” The SICS part of the Institute’s name stands for Swedish Institute of Computer Science, whilst the north references its location in Luleå, around an hour drive from the Arctic Circle. Minde’s work at RISE SICS North is only part of what he does. “I work at Ericsson, the telecom company where I had my 30th anniversary last year. My current position is Head of Research Strategies. Part-time I’m loaned out to this organisation, which I’m running as a CEO,” he observes. Originally focused on mobile audio, Minde transitioned into computing
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activities, which later facilitated his heading up of RISE SICS North. “The nascent activity in Ericsson is called Ericsson Labs and that took me over to more computer platforms and now data centres,” Minde comments. “So, that’s the background of why I’m CEO of this research institute.”
Continuous expansion RISE SICS North was formed around the creation of a new research data centre in Luleå. “We have projects on cloud platforms, hardware and software for big data analytics. All of that we run in our two-modules-large data centre,” advises Minde. “We have 200KW installed right now and we are continuously expanding, so we will add another 150KW during this autumn. “We call it ICE and ICE stands for infrastructure and cloud research environment. So, we cover both infrastructure and the software
Module 1 enclosure
PHOTO CREDIT: PÄR BÄCKSTRÖM
TECHNOLOGY
RISE SICS Module 2 Inauguration party in the
PHOTO CREDIT: PÄR BÄCKSTRÖM
ICE facility
Tor Bjorn Minde CEO
Tor Björn Minde is currently head of research strategy at Ericsson Research with 30 years’ experience in ICT research. He has research management experience leading industry research teams, sections and sector research areas. He holds an adjunct professorship at Lulea University of Technology in systems technology and has been involved in many academic research projects. He is part of LTU technology faculty board and also a board member of Norrbotten research council. His main research interests are audio, geo, sensor, context aware, machine learning and data center technologies. He led the team behind Ericsson Labs with the objective to improve Ericsson ability in open innovation and network exposure. Ericsson Labs operated a server infrastructure with network functionality offering on-line experimental API's, Application Programming Interfaces. Lately his main focus has been on cloud infrastructures for energy efficient operation. He has around 20 publications in various conferences and workshops and more than 40 filed patents in the field of signal processing and applications since 1989. Tor Björn is currently CEO of RISE SICS North AB and working as the manager for the large-scale research infrastructure facility build-up project. He will lead the initiative and implement the vision of a large-scale data center facility to support Swedish industry and academia.
S U P P LY C H A I N
“If you can have a selfdriving car, why can’t you have a selfdriving data centre?” – Tor Bjorn Minde, CEO, RISE SICS North
application platforms.” At ICE, clients can test their innovations in a riskfree environment with the added service of being able to measure hundreds of environmental factors.
Pioneering projects Despite being established just 18 months ago, much progress has already been made by RISE SICS North. “We are now at €1.8mn a year in turnover and we have 11 persons right now that work here,” notes Minde. “Our scientific leader is Jon
Summers. He is from the University of Leeds – he started up Data Centre Alliance and is behind the Data Centre Transformation Conferences.” At present the facility is working on four major projects. “There is one project on data centre automation. If you can have a self-driving car, why can’t you have a self-driving data centre?” Minde comments. “The machine learning algorithm already can perform lots of activities, complex identification problems much better than humans. “The long-term mission is to come
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to autonomous data centres, but to that it’s beyond big data at an analytics get there you need to really measure level,” Minde explains. “We have some and model data centres correctly. pre-studies on heat reuse and liquid You need to have a data collection cooling and we hope to expand them. software tool chain and database We’re looking into drying wood and and you need to have all the tools in also liquid cooling. So that is what the place for the sensors. The project is data centre is used for – different types about trying to understand how to of projects to understand how you can make the data centre autonomous create better data centres in the future.” and how to optimise the holistic view on automation – it’s Head in the cloud a very big project The first module of the with Ericsson and data centre, a room-inABB involved. room module, has been “We have one project running since February about how to use 2016. “This first module natural convection is used for big data Number of and draught in data analytics, it’s used for Employees at RISE SICS North centres so you can some cloud applications reduce the fan use. and that is running in It’s a real thermodynamic project,” the servers. We have 200 servers there, continues Minde. “The third project is some GPU [graphics processing unit] to look into how a data centre can be accelerated,” Minde advises. “Then we a part of the smart grid in the future. A use the data centre to do modelling.” data centre has lots of battery, it has “The second module is more a a water tank for cooling and it has an lab and we have built it so we can intrinsic possibility to be a big battery. It do a slab floor or a raised floor. We can then be a load balancer in the grid. can change equipment easily with “The fourth project is really about much bigger doors and we can using analytics in new applications, so move equipment in and out. We can
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RISE SICS
exchange coolers and racks, we can exchange lots of different equipment there. Module three, that we’re going to install this autumn, will be an open computer lab,” Minde explains. Outside the modules the space will be used for smaller experiments in a wind tunnel, a cube for thermodynamics, a water tank, solar panels on the roof and renewable energy storage. All to be built during the autumn. On the roof there is also a cooling tower that will be used.
centre is being located just next door. Facebook has donated equipment to the research data centre, and plans are in the making for setting up projects together,” explains Minde. “Another important partner is the Luleå University of Technology. We have only been around for one and a half years, so we will expand the number of companies involved, but we have counted the companies we count as being part of our network, and it’s nearly 60-plus.”
A collaborative network
Increased integration
In order to work on such a number of projects, RISE SICS North is collaborating with several partners. “The companies are Ericsson, of course, and ABB are involved. Additionally, there is Vattenfall, the power company, and Swegon, the ventilation company,” advises Minde. “EON is another power company involved, alongside a number of smaller companies like Acon, Metria, Eitech, BnearIT, ArctosLabs, Netrounds. “We also collaborate with Facebook, it’s first European data
Looking ahead, the holistic view of the data centre will become increasingly important for RISE SICS North. “The whole system needs to be much more integrated to make it optimised. It seems to me that some parts of the data centre industry are very conservative – they do what they always have done. If you need redundancy, you hit the solution with a diesel engine and that is not the future – we need to find other ways to do redundancy. That’s why we’re around, to challenge the way data centres are built,” acknowledges Minde.
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TECHNOLOGY
Control/ management works space in the data center w w w. s i c s . s e / g ro u p s / r i s e - s i c s - n o r t h PHOTO CREDIT: PÄR BÄCKSTRÖM
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RISE SICS NORTH BJÖRKSKATALEDEN 112 (F.D. TRAKTORVÄGEN 1) LULEÅ 973 47 T +46 70 624 29 59 E INFO-NORTH@RI.SE WWW.SICS.SE/GROUPS/RISE-SICS-NORTH