On 16 April 2024, the Green Data Centre of the University of Pisa inaugurated a new room that will host 38 additional racks, which added to the existing 66, make a total of 104 racks available. The Data Centre of the University of Pisa is now the largest in Italy, as well as the only one that was granted the “A” classification by AgID.
“The University of Pisa aspires to a leading position in the development of digitalization processes that are necessary to face at best the new challenges in education, research and technology transfer. The investments made in the University’s Green Data Centre is therefore strategic for us. The expansion of this facility will help us make a leap in quality in high-level competitive projects and frontier technology, e.g. 5G, Artificial Intelligence, quantum computing or high-performance computing in the context of the National Centre funded under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR),” said Rector Riccardo Zucchi.
The expansion of the Green Data Center will greatly increase the computing power available for scientific research at the University of Pisa, with a positive impact also on the surrounding area and great attention to environmental sustainability. “Recent studies show that data centers help the surrounding area and the related GDP to grow. The presence of these infrastructures is very important since they not only support University teaching and research activities, but they also help develop surrounding area by sharing innovative infrastructures and collaborations. Finally, I would like to highlight that data centers are becoming the engines of artificial intelligence and have also been called “AI Factories,” added Antonio Cisternino, delegate for the University Information Technology.
To make this Data Centre, which is already a leading facility in Europe, even more sustainable, investments were made to adopt last-generation computing systems, such as Lenovo Neptune which ensures a reduction by 40% of energy consumption with the same performance levels. Finally, the high-speed and highly reliable internal and external connectivity of the facility has also been enhanced.
“The activation of a second node of connection to the new generation ultra-broadband national network (GARR-T), dedicated to the education and research community, has greatly increased the scientific computing power of the University Green Data Centre. Today, this facility can count on a 200 Gbit/sec internal connectivity and 100 Gbit/sec external connectivity, which allows us to fully exploit its potential in terms of access to High-Performance Computing and Artificial Intelligence systems and deliverability based on the needs of each project, without neglecting data and research outcome protection,” concluded Stefano Suin, manager of the Digital Infrastructure Directorate of the University of Pisa.
