ANU NCI
Stage 2
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Australian National University, Acton
THE PROJECT —
The National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) at ANU is home to the Southern Hemisphere’s most highly-integrated supercomputer and filesystems for Australia’s highest performance research cloud, and one of the nation’s largest data catalogues. The roll out of the second stage has doubled the power capacity of the existing electrical infrastructure.
COMPLETED
2025
HIGHLIGHTS
Shaw Building Group completed the second stage of the major electrical and cooling upgrade works for ANU Supercomputer known as The National Computational Infrastructure (NCI). The NCI is home to the Southern Hemisphere’s most highly-integrated supercomputer and filesystems for Australia’s highest performance research cloud, and one of the nation’s largest data catalogues. The research facility work supports research with Astronomy and Astrophysics, Biology, Chemistry, Earth and Marine Sciences just to name a few.
The roll out of the second stage has doubled the power capacity of the existing electrical infrastructure and has also made provision to triple the power capacity in the future.
PROJECT JOURNEY
Early on in the design phase the project team identified an opportunity to make provision in the design to accommodate future power needs to support the facility in the next 10 – 20 years. The client supported this change and saw the benefits to fast track the late design change.
The new building also provided the space to install 4 large new cooling towers which were integrated into the existing cooling network to provide natural cooling to the facility. The cooling is critical to keep the CPU’s in the facility running efficiently and rejecting the large heat loads created in the facility. The additional cooling systems surpasses current needs and will fulfil the needs of future upgrades.
The project has also added one new 1500kva generator and repurposed two existing 1100kva generators. The two existing generators were installed in the new building side by side to run in parallel to directly support the back up power of the data centre while the 1500kva generators supports the cooling system.
The extensive back up power system provides clients and users with the reassurance that the colossal amounts of stored data and computing is safe and eliminates any down time and costly start up processes.
