SGI has designed some new shipping container-based data centers dubbed Universal ICE Cubes because they will accommodate not only all of its own post-merger server and storage systems but other people's widgetry as well, its first container update in three years. And besides the ones that are cooled with chilled water it's also got a new air-cooled design that in colder and dryer climates should bring down opex costs.

Support now extends to SGI's Altix ICE, Altix UV, COPAN and InfiniteStorage in addition to any 44U third-party systems that can accommodate front-to-back cooling.

It used to be just SGI's dense Rackable half-depth servers but now the company has two classes of containers and nine different standard models. The development is supposed to let it offer targeted ICE Cube configurations to vertical markets like technical computing, the federal government, defense, oil and gas and the Internet, an expanded marketplace. SGI will only admit to deals with Microsoft and the US Army.

Each ICE Cube is a self-contained data center in a 20-foot or 40-foot ISO standard shipping container that can now scale to 46,080 cores and 29.8PB of storage. The company expects density to increase down the road.

The roll-in or fixed-in-place rack designs are supposed to be as flexible as it gets. The air-cooled model, limited to a 20-foot container, replaces chilled water with filtered outside air for energy efficiency. It claims an industry-leading Power Utilization Effectiveness (PUE) factor of less than 1.16.

The air-cooled adiabatic model will support up to 16,896 cores and 7.9PB of storage.

A storage-optimized configuration can accommodate 29.8PT of InfiniteStorage arrays in a 40-foot box.

Two new dual-row ICE Cube models rework the company's established ICE Cube line to accommodate two rows of Rackable half-depth servers and support two additional rear-accessible standard-depth cabinets. Figure 28 racks with 34,608 cores and 14.5PB of storage. This lets customers deploy Rackable high-density servers with two racks of other people's storage, server and networking equipment.

The so-called dual-row models benefit from lower power consumption by using in-row chilled-water based cooling to replace the servers' fans. DC power distribution with in-rack UPS maximizes power efficiency.

SGI is currently taking orders with initial ship dates expected in Q3. Pricing varies because of customization.