A state of the art Green Data Centre inaugurated at IIT Delhi
New Delhi: Inauguration of a Liquid Immersion Cooling System/Cluster (LICS) at the Supercomputing Facility for Bioinformatics & Computational Biology (SCFBio), IIT Delhi on 20th Dec, 2018 and launch of a web portal on Bioactivity Information of Indian Medicinal Plants
A state of the art Green Data Centre was inaugurated by Dr. Renu Swarup, Secretary, Department of Biotechnology, Govt. of India and Prof V. Ramgopal Rao, Director, IIT Delhi at SCFBio, IIT Delhi on 20th Dec, 2018. The machine, which has been hosted inside the Data Centre is based on Liquid Immersion Cooling system (LICS) developed by Fujitsu Japan and is first of its kind in Asia outside Japan. The entire machine, which occupies a space of approximately 1m3 and hosts 50 teraflops, is completely immersed inside a liquid bath.
Immersion cooling technology is a new paradigm to solve the challenges of power, space and compute requirements in the age of big data storage and analysis. Fully immersed servers in an electrically non-conductive fluid provide greater cooling performance, eliminate the need for server fans, and reduce the total power consumption.
The main benefits of this machine as compare to conventional systems are as follows:
i) 40% less Power consumption.
ii) 50% space saving, Installable anywhere (no need for a well-designed Data Centre).
iii) No Noise generation from the system because there are no moving parts.
iv) Easy to maintain.
v) The Inert fluid physically protects sensitive ICT equipment from polluted air, humidity and dust.
Web Portal on Bioactivity Information of Indian Medicinal Plants
Tulsi, Turmeric and Neem are some of the Indian plants known to be beneficial in a multitude of diseases and disorders. The effectiveness of these extracts in viral and bacterial infections, inflammations, cancer and diabetes etc. have been documented over the centuries. Many recent research papers also discuss additional novel utilities of these extracts. A major limitation encountered with these extracts is the unavailability of knowledge of the compounds and their biomolecular targets. Elucidation of the precise mode of action of compounds of these extracts can lead to better clinical utilization.
Dr. Renu Swarup, Chief Guest on the occasion, was pleased to note that the new LIC technology would not only reduce the burden of maintaining a complex Data centre, but also the associated expensive air conditioning. She emphasized on the importance of sharing the resources with the student and scientific community across the country, which the SCFBio has been practising for more than a decade now.
Launching the web-portal on Informatics of Indian Medicinal Plants, she
noted with appreciation the efforts of the Biocomputing group headed by
Prof. Jayaram at SCFBio and wished that a collaborative model across the
various Institutes in the country would accelerate drug discovery from
within the country.
Prof. V. Ramgopal Rao, Director, IIT Delhi, who presided over the function, called the LIC technology as a disruptive technology, which has the potential to revolutionize the HPC industry. While adverting to the collaboration between IIT Delhi and AIIMS, he appreciated the efforts of the SCFBio team for exploring various aspects of different medicinal plants in drug discovery.
Dr. Anil Srivastava, President, OHSL, USA, a Guest of Honour on the occasion, projected that India would take lead in the science and technology of drug discovery as it did in software industry three decades ago.
Prof Bodh Raj Mehta, Dean (R&D); Prof James Gomes, Head, Kusuma School of Biological Sciences; Prof B. Jayaram, Coordinator, SCFBio; Mr Yasuhide Ishihara, President & Head, TCSU, Fujitsu Limited, Japan; Mr Takashi Yamamoto, Vice President, AI Platform Business Unit, Fujitsu, Japan were present on the occasion. The function was attended by several dignitaries, scientists and students from across the country.