Mizuho Securities picks HPE liquid-cooled Cray XD2000 for financial simulations
Mizuho Securities will build a new data center ready for direct liquid cooling and deploy the HPE Cray XD2000 to run its financial simulations, HPE and the Japanese brokerage said. According to HPE, Mizuho Securities is the first in Japan's financial sector to choose the system with direct liquid cooling.
- Mizuho Securities will build a direct liquid cooling ready data center and deploy HPE Cray XD2000.
- Its simulations involve more than 360 million calculations per day, a volume that grows each year.
- Mizuho Securities expects 1.6 times the performance per server node versus its current environment.
- The initial deployment has eight server nodes, with production scheduled for mid-2027.
- The company will assess liquid cooling as it explores GPU-accelerated compute for future private AI.
A growing calculation load
Mizuho Securities' Global Markets department serves customers in Japan and abroad with products including public and corporate bonds, equities and derivatives. According to the announcement, simulations for derivatives pricing and for quantifying market risk and counterparty credit risk involve more than 360 million calculations per day, and the volume rises every year.
As the business grows, the firm needs to scale its system resources and keep compute performance consistent. The goal, as described in the announcement, is to deliver higher-value financial products and services to a wider customer base.
What is being deployed
The HPE Cray XD2000 is described as a density-optimized, scale-out compute system. In this configuration, direct liquid cooling removes heat directly from key components. HPE says this delivers up to 20% performance improvement per kilowatt over air-cooled solutions and consumes 15% less power. Mizuho Securities expects 1.6 times the performance per server node compared with its current environment.
To meet current cooling requirements and leave room for expansion, the company is building a new data center designed for liquid cooling. The initial deployment will comprise eight server nodes. Mizuho Securities plans to add servers and racks in stages while assessing the benefits in its production environment.
HPE Services will provide monitoring and maintenance, including real-time visibility into the status of the direct liquid cooling and power infrastructure and automated coolant leak alerts. This is meant to support operational stability for what is the organization's first direct liquid-cooled system.
Timeline and executive comments
Installation of the liquid cooling equipment, system buildout and operational validation will begin this fall. The system is scheduled to go into production in mid-2027.
Hirokazu Mochizuki, senior vice president and managing director for HPE Japan, said HPE systems have long underpinned Mizuho Securities' financial business. He added that HPE is drawing on "more than 50 years of liquid cooling technology and HPC expertise".
Ken Utsunomiya, Operating Officer, CIO, CPrO, Head of Global IT and Head of Global Operations at Mizuho Securities, tied the move to the strategy of Mizuho Financial Group, which integrates commercial banking and investment banking capabilities on a global scale. He said that transitioning from air cooling to liquid cooling and ensuring reliable operations is "essential to our continued business growth".
Groundwork for private AI
The deployment also looks ahead to AI. Mizuho Securities plans to use the new system to validate the effectiveness of direct liquid cooling as it explores GPU-accelerated compute for its future private AI infrastructure.
For the firm, the project is a first step from air cooling to liquid cooling, with expansion tied to results in production. The announcement gives no figures for the cost of the project or the size of later phases.
