PRESS RELEASE

Northern Data AG commissions first data center in the Netherlands
 

- Significant expansion step due to high demand for HPC infrastructure

- Further locations shortly before commissioning

- Computing power of 404 Petaflops by the end of Q1/2021

Frankfurt am Main - November 25, 2020 - Northern Data AG (XETRA: NB2, ISIN: DE000A0SMU87), a leading provider of High-Performance Computing (HPC) solutions, is commissioning its latest HPC data center near Maastricht. This new facility will entail one of the largest GPU clusters worldwide and will be the Company's first data center location in the European Union. The Company will begin installing the first hardware for its GPU-based Distributed Computing Cluster from the beginning of December. The GPU cluster is one of Northern Data AG's most significant expansion steps and is expected to be scaled up by the end of Q1/2021 to achieve computing power of 404 Petaflops (FP64). With this level of power, it will be one of the largest GPU clusters of its kind worldwide. The world's most powerful supercomputer, Japan's Fugaku, has a computing capacity of 415 Petaflops.

As CEO Aroosh Thillainathan commented: "With the smooth and rapid expansion of our GPU cluster, now including our first European location, we are moving to meet the very high demand for stable, reliable and cost-efficient High-Performance Computing infrastructure. Our highly specialized teams have done an excellent job over the past few months to lay this foundation for future growth in a very short timespan. We are well on course, and thanks to our GPU cluster, we shall be offering HPC services in the fields of artificial intelligence, deep learning, research and rendering as early as the first half of next year, with maximum scalability and optimum time- and cost-efficiency."

The cooling technology to be deployed in the Netherlands data center is based on an air-cooling system developed by the Company itself, which delivers an excellent PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) figure of between 1.05 and 1.04. The PUE value indicates the level of energy being consumed by a computing facility relative to the energy actually delivered to the computing equipment. PUEs of 2.0 are regarded as average, 1.5 as efficient and figures less than 1.2 as very efficient.

In addition to the proprietary cooling technology, the Maastricht facility will make use of Northern Data's own management software, which enables the documentation and rapid configuration and commissioning of the server hardware. The software automates the entire process of continuously optimizing the operating parameters of the servers and the entire HPC data center itself.

This new facility in the Netherlands is the first of several new locations for Northern Data AG, which, due to the high demand, also intends to establish HPC data centers in Germany, Scandinavia and Canada.

About Northern Data:
develops and operates global infrastructure solutions in the field of High-Performance Computing (HPC). With its customer-specific solutions, the company provides the infrastructure for various HPC applications in areas such as bitcoin mining, artificial intelligence, blockchain, big data analytics, IoT or rendering. The internationally active company was formed from the merger of the German company Northern Bitcoin AG and the American company Whinstone US, Inc. and is today a leading provider of HPC solutions worldwide. Northern Data offers its HPC solutions both in large, stationary data centers and in mobile high-tech data centers that can be set up at any location worldwide. The company combines self-developed software and hardware with intelligent concepts for a sustainable energy supply. The Northern Data group currently employs around 150 people.

Press Contact:
Northern Data AG
Dr. Hans Joachim Dürr
Head of Corporate Communications
Thurn-und-Taxis-Platz 6
60313 Frankfurt
E-Mail:
Telefon: 89

Investor Relations:
Sven Pauly
E-Mail:
Telefon: 3 30

Disclaimer:
This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy or subscribe for any securities of Northern Data AG and does not constitute a prospectus of Northern Data AG. The information contained in this press release is not intended to form the basis of any financial, legal, tax or other business decision. Investment or other decisions should not be made solely on the basis of this press release. As with all business and investment matters, please consult qualified professional advice.