CABLING companies , governments and data centre operators are united in their common goal to provide direct connections between countries that allow easy and affordable colocation .”
At the same time , the demand for higher performance and lower latency is bumping up against the universally recognised need for more sustainable practice throughout the data centre industry . Verne Global may be headquartered in London , but it builds the majority of its data centres in Iceland , where Cantrell explains that ready access to 100 % renewable energy mixes make traditionally power-hungry HPC workloads a far greener proposition .
In fact , freezing temperatures , hydroelectric power infrastructure , and strong government support for green energy generation all conspire to make countries like Iceland , Sweden , and Norway attractive places for enterprises throughout Europe ( and even beyond ) to house their HPC and cloud compute workloads . However , putting your data centre workload just a few miles south of the Arctic Circle has its drawbacks , namely the sheer distance between you and your data . Achieving sustainable site selection while meeting increasing demand for lower and lower latencies may seem like a contradictory set of goals .
The answer ? Subsea cables capable of moving massive amounts of information across vast expanses of open ocean in the blink of an eye . Cantrell and Fridström are both in agreement that , if power-intensive workloads are to be made sustainable , then strategic subsea cabling infrastructure is the key to delivering on that goal .
Iceland : the future of home of HPC Iceland - like many other island nations around the world - relies on subsea cabling
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