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Posts Tagged ‘CSCS new building’

“Roofing Ceremony” for the new Swiss National Supercomputing Centre

Friday, February 4th, 2011

On February 3rd, 2011 ETH Zurich and Implenia Impresa Generale SA are pleased to celebrate with the authorities the “Roofing Ceremony” for the new Swiss Supercomputing Centre in Lugano. This is a party that is traditionally thrown for the workers to celebrate reaching and completing the roof of a new construction. A successful roofing ceremony is meant to bring good fortune to the new building. It was hence a great pleasure to see nearly 300 workers turn up for this event and thoroughly enjoy themselves.

The construction project started in January, 2010 with the demolition of an old building (previous bus terminal) and the excavation work. The construction of the building shell started in August 2010 and finished on February 3, 2011 with a “roofing ceremony”.

As a special thanks to the workers CSCS produced a video showing the achievements reached so far.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qExgRHS_7KI[/youtube]

Additional movie formats (Quicktime) »

The new data center offers 8’000 m2 for technical installation (2’000 m2 for the supercomputers) and 3’000 m2 for offices. The construction will continue in the next months with the interior work and the completion of the building front.

The new centre will be operative at the beginning of 2012.

Tags: CSCS, CSCS new building
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New CSCS Building: Assembling the Data Centre Roof

Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010

Have a look to the assembling of the data center roof for the new Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) in Lugano.

In the movie (see here below) you can see the positioning of the roof beams for the new machine room. Each roof beam is 35 meters long and weights 50 tons.The machine room will offer a surface of about 2’000 square meters without pillars to host the supercomputers.

The mobile crane used is the largest worldwide and can lift up to 1200 tons. The crane itself weights about 380 tons.

[youtube width="500" height="310"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-kmrMJBWbI[/youtube]

Click here for different video formats (Quicktime) and additional videos on CSCS.

Have a view to the webcam or the home page of the construction project.

Tags: CSCS, CSCS new building, Infrastructure
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Construction of the New CSCS Building Proceeds at Fast Pace

Monday, December 6th, 2010

Construction of the new CSCS building proceeds at fast pace. The shell is almost complete, the roof being built these days.

The new data center will house the next generation of supercomputers, it covers an area of 2000 square meters and is void of pillars, allowing more freedom in placing the latest models of supercomputers.

The roof is currently being built using the strongest mobile crane on the market, featuring a telescoping beam that extends from 20 to 100 meters and can lift weights up to 1200 tons. Each of the eight beam weighs 50 tons and is 35 m long.

The next photo shows the future machine room.

The administrative building with in foreground the crane that will be used to mount the roof.

Check the web pages of the construction project about the latest news or have a view of the webcams placed at the construction site.

Tags: CSCS, CSCS new building
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Laying the Foundation Stone for CSCS Building in Lugano

Monday, October 18th, 2010

Monday, October 18 has been an important day for the implementation of the Swiss National HPC Initiative (HPCN). In Lugano Cornaredo there was the ceremony for the laying of the foundation stone for the new CSCS building. The ceremony has been attended by representatives of ETH Zurich, the Canton of Ticino, the City of Lugano, Implenia (the construction contractor) together with a lot of other guests.

Raffaele Balmelli, head of Implenia Ticino, Thomas Schultess, Director CSCS and Roman Boutellier Vice President Personal and Ressources of ETH Zurich during the foundation stone ceremony on the construction site.

Handshake between Raffaele Balmelli (Implenia) and Roman Boutellier (ETH Zurich).

The total investment for the new building will be about 80 millions CHF. The new center is needed to host the future national supercomputer with a computing capacity of some petaflops and a power consumption of up to 5 Megawatt (the existing building in Manno is limited to less than to 2 Megawatt). Special attention has been put to reducing the energy consumption of the whole center. The offices will be build according to the Minergie standard and the supercomputer will be cooled using water from the lake of Lugano. The excess heat will be made available to the city of Lugano.

The new building in Lugano should be ready by the end of 2011 and the relocation from Manno to Lugano ought to be done by mid 2012.

ESC Colloquia “Neubau CSCS in Lugano Cornaredo” online

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

The talk of Ladina Gilly on “Neubau CSCS in Lugano Cornaredo” for the Energy Science Colloquia (Energy Science Center, ETH Zurich) is now available online.

Have a look at the video »

Tags: CSCS, CSCS new building
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