DUG was recently announced the Winner of the Most Effective Platform category of the WAITTA Incite Awards. The Incite Awards is in its 25th year and celebrates inspiring ICT innovation in Western Australia. Managing Director of DUG, Dr Matthew Lamont, accepted the award, giving credit to Chief Technology Officer, Stuart Midgley (pictured).

The award celebrated DUG’s breakthrough data centre cooling system which is making their data centres among the most energy efficient in the world. The company’s patent-pending innovation cools their supercomputers in a specially-designed oil-like substance called polyalphaolefin dielectric fluid. The extremely hot components within the servers are then cooled by the circulating fluid rather than the more traditional, expensive and inefficient air cooling methods. As a result of the innovation DUG’s power costs have reduced by 45%.

DUG has implemented this technology into its Perth, Kuala Lumpur and Houston data centres. It is currently being considered by several major computer vendors, including leading open-source HPC computer company, Penguin Computers. Penguin Computers, Chief Executive, Tom Coull said “We are extremely excited by this new cooling technology and we are keen to consider it as part of our open compute project”.

Mr Lamont said, since its inception DUG has been focused on innovation and the new cooling system was a prime example. “Our cooling system offers the highest levels of cooling with the simplest design, installation and maintenance – it’s cheap to build and easy to deploy”.

DownUnder GeoSolutions, as winner of their category of the WAITTA Awards will now progress as a finalist to the National iAwards which will be announced on September 1 in Melbourne.