The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) recently launched the Green Data Centre Innovation Program (GDCIP) that aims to boost the competitiveness of the data center industry by raising their overall energy efficiency.
A first of its kind in Singapore, the program follows the launch of the Green Data Center Roadmap in late 2014.
According to IDA, the program intends to spur innovation by catalyzing development and adoption of innovative green data center related products, solutions and services, and direct local R&D efforts in green data center technologies by providing research funding for key areas of research.
Some of the possible solutions could include raising the ambient level of tolerable heat within data centers, automatic smart allocation of computing resources within data centres and more intelligent systems-level solutions spanning IT and facilities.
IDA said it has secured collaborations with several leading technology partners, including Dell, Hewlett Packard, Huawei and IBM, to engage in prototyping short- and long-term solutions for data centers.
The Innovation Program also includes an open Call for Collaboration (CFC) to garner industry proposals that would develop and pilot promising innovative solutions to provide proof-of-concepts in Singapore’s environment, the results of which could lead to immediately implementable solutions for data centers.
By Q3 2015, IDA will also release an open call for Research Grant Proposals and a Request for Proposal to build Singapore’s first Green Data Center Innovation Hub. The former will look into longer-term research & development of green technologies for data centres from research organisations, while the latter is envisioned as a data centre platform to house and demonstrate proof-of-concept solutions.
“Singapore’s journey to Smart Nation will involve many aspects of the value chain of which data centers are an integral portion. By working with key companies to explore new research and prove solutions, Singapore will continue to be at the forefront of enabling progressive and positive technological advancements,” said IDA Assistant Chief Executive (Engineering & Technology Group) Toh Chai Keong.
Based on IDA's estimates of 2012 statistics in a survey of data centrers, the 10 largest data center operators in Singapore account for energy consumption equivalent to 130,000 typical 4-room HDB households. An energy efficiency improvement of 20% in the existing stock of commercial data centers in Singapore is estimated to be capable of yielding combined annual savings in excess of S$34 million.