SGI, a provider of HPC and data centre offerings, has unveiled a new Universal class of ICE Cube, a modular data centre for server and storage densities. The Universal ICE Cube models are fully optimised to accommodate all SGI server and storage systems, bringing flexibility and deployment options to a range of vertical markets.

In addition to models cooled with chilled water, SGI is also announcing an air-cooled design to increase deployment flexibility. The Universal containers facilitate ICE Cube to 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 Dual Row class of ICE Cube has also been enhanced to better support heterogeneous equipment. Each ICE Cube is a self-contained data centre in an deployable 20’ or 40’ ISO standard shipping container.

According to SGI, 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 configuration flexibility. The air-cooled Universal model replaces chilled water with filtered outside air for deployments in cool and dry climates with deployments capable of attaining a Power Utilisation Effectiveness (PUE) factor under 1.12.

SGI said that two new Dual Row ICE Cube models are designed to accommodate rackable half-depth servers and supports two additional rear-accessible, standard-depth cabinets, allowing customers to deploy rackable high density servers in conjunction with a various heterogeneous storage, server and networking equipment.

ICE Cube is available in Dual Row Containers and comes in the models including IC2012DR, a 20’ container with up to 12 half-depth racks; IC4024DR, a 40’ container with up to 24 half-depth racks and vestibule; IC4028DR, a 40’ container with up to 28 half-depth racks; IC2010HY, a 20’ container with up to eight half-depth racks and two roll-in cabinets for standard-depth, heterogeneous equipment; and IC4026HY, a 40’ container with up to 24 half-depth racks and two roll-in cabinets.

The company said that the new Universal Containers comes in four models IC2008UA, IC4019UR, IC4016UP and IC4024UD.

Rick Chapek, senior vice president of hardware engineering at SGI, said: “Our new Universal ICE Cube data centres extend SGI’s leadership in modular data center innovation, allowing us to offer our customers greater flexibility in design and deployment.

“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.”