The University of Southern Denmark (SDU) is establishing a new supercomputer and data center in Sønderborg in collaboration with Danfoss and HPE. Announced on January 7, 2026, the project combines more sustainable energy management with advanced artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities and is set up as a joint research and development initiative to demonstrate the potential of energy-efficient data centers internationally.
The data center builds on the SDU eScience Center’s work with cloud technologies and national high-performance computing (HPC) services, including DeiC Interactive HPC based on UCloud, which since 2019 has provided supercomputing resources to Danish universities. SDU says the new facility will provide researchers from SDU and other Danish universities access to accelerators for AI research and large datasets, including sensitive personal data, in a secure, open-source, and sovereign environment.
In the project, HPC infrastructure will be combined with Danfoss cooling and heat recovery, with operational data used to optimize the cooling and heat reuse systems and to optimize the UCloud platform for energy-saving workloads. SDU states the data center will be built on Danish soil and use Danish-developed open-source cloud technology (UCloud) to strengthen digital sovereignty, while surplus heat from the facility can be reused. The initiative is supported by ProjectZero in Sønderborg, which aims to make its energy system carbon-neutral by 2029.
The data center is delivered by Danfoss and HPE Services and is based on an HPE Data Center Services - AI Mod POD. The modular setup includes HPE Cray XD225v and HPE ProLiant Compute XD685 servers, HPE ProLiant DL325 and DL365 servers, HPE Networking CX6300 switches, an NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand networking platform, a total of 128 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs, and direct liquid cooling, alongside Danfoss heat reuse modules for data center heat recovery.
“We are proud that with the new data center, we can combine research, sustainability, and technological innovation in one unified project. It is not only an investment in the future of research but also a concrete example of how SDU creates value for society by supporting the green and digital transition in Denmark,” said Thomas Buchvald Vind, University Director at SDU.
