Liquid-cooled machines powering a high-performance computing and AI future could one day provide the heat for our houses.

This is the core sustainable business proposition behind atNorth, a Pan-Nordic data center services company offering cost-efficient, scalable colocation and HPC solutions across Iceland, Sweden and Finland. At a data center located in Ballerup, Denmark, within the greater Copenhagen area, atNorth provides waste heat to local homes by using a streamlined technology stack.

“The data center design is the most efficient; we built it for high-performance computing and AI in the most efficient way,” said Guy D’Hauwers (pictured, right), global director of cloud, high-performance computing and AI for atNorth. “We directly capture the heat, get it to the heat exchangers and then we are selling that off. We are heating thousands of houses and apartments with that heat. That’s really the circular economy.”

D’Hauwers spoke with theCUBE industry analysts John Furrier and Savannah Peterson at SC23, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. He was joined by Serban Zirnovan (left), senior director of ISG solutions, DCS EMEA, at Dell Technologies Inc., and they discussed their partnership, a recent acquisition by atNorth and how both companies plan to meet customers’ AI and HPC needs. (* Disclosure below.)

Lowering the TCO

An example of the collaboration between Dell and atNorth can be found in the customer use case of BNP Paribas S.A., a French multinational bank and financial service company. BNP Paribas worked with atNorth and Dell to build HPC infrastructure and expand responsibly by moving a segment of data center operations to Iceland. The bank lowered total cost of ownership through a 50% reduction in energy and generated 85% less CO2 output.

“We were looking for a partner able to provide a sustainable and … understandable energy cost and able to provide a solution related to an area which is stable as well,” Zirnovan said. “We were looking at how we can merge a Dell culture which is around technology and people and processes and partnerships together with what the customers are looking for. AtNorth was exactly in the middle of that turning point.”

In August, atNorth announced the acquisition of Gompute, a leading provider of HPC and data center services in the Nordics. Gompute has been focused on increasing performance, throughput and ease of use for HPC workloads and applications. The acquisition will provide atNorth with additional support for its full stack offering tailored to HPC and AI workloads, according to D’Hauwers.

“[Customers] need to run the simulations, they need to run the AI inference or machine learning and then it’s about getting the data fast enough to the GPUs,” he said. “This is what the Gompute acquisition brings us.”

AI and HPC demand an infrastructure with tested and proven configurations to meet computing needs based on specific use cases. Dell’s Validated Designs offering provides a resource for enterprise customers seeking a more efficient and shorter timeline for testing and integrating components.

“We have Dell Validated Designs, which gives the blueprint for how to select the infrastructure dedicated for your workload,” Zirnovan said. “It’s not just putting things together; it’s providing you an infrastructure which works.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of SC23:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for SC23. Neither Dell Technologies Inc., the main sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE