Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea to investigate energy efficiency • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea to investigate energy efficiency

#191

Post by JacobJans » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 1:48 PM UTC

tomxor wrote: post #189

As an aside in the article: > There has been growing concern that the rapid expansion of the data centre industry could mean an explosion in energy use. But Emma Fryer, who represents the sector at Tech UK, says that fear has been exaggerated. > "What's happened is we've had the benefit of Moore's Law. The continued advances in processing power have made doom-laden predictions look foolish" There may be other reasons…

> In a normal year, demand for electric power in Chelan County grows by perhaps 4 megawatts — enough for around 2,250 homes — as new residents arrive and as businesses start or expand. But since January 2017, as Bitcoin enthusiasts bid up the price of the currency, eager miners have requested a staggering 210 megawatts for mines they want to build in Chelan County. That’s nearly as much as the county and its 73,000 residents were already using.

Source: http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/business/article212008409...

Re: Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea to investigate energy efficiency

#192

Post by chrisseaton » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 1:49 PM UTC

thedancollins wrote: post #128

For years we've used water to cool our CPUs ... what happens if we drop the entire datacenter into water?

Why are you just restating the question of the article?

Re: Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea to investigate energy efficiency

#193

Post by cc-d » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 1:49 PM UTC

> There has been growing concern that the rapid expansion of the data centre industry could mean an explosion in energy use. But Emma Fryer, who represents the sector at Tech UK, says that fear has been exaggerated.

If we're concerned about the technology industry vastly increasing energy consumption, lets look at the entire medium sized country's worth of energy bitcoin is consuming for absolutely useless calculations.

Re: Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea to investigate energy efficiency

#194

Post by reading-at-work » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 1:53 PM UTC

apk-d wrote: post #136

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sickening click sound that a disk drive makes when it's on the verge of failure is ingrained in my head. I tried putting one of those in the freezer once, and maybe it was a folk remedy, but it worked enough to boot and get my data off!

That must be one of the silliest hacks I've ever heard, right up there with oven-baking electronics to fix loose solder joints. I love it!

Reminds me of the old Xbox 360 "red ring of death" fix where you could just wrap the box in towels and leave it running for an hour to overheat it, then reboot and it would work again.

Re: Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea to investigate energy efficiency

#195

Post by kulu2002 » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 1:53 PM UTC

Would have loved to see FMEA done for this project. From both environment and Data centre point of view.

Re: Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea to investigate energy efficiency

#196

Post by rando444 » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 1:54 PM UTC

shoo wrote: post #105

# Full fathom six thy server sits; # Of its disks are coral made; # Those are pearls that were its bits # Nothing of it that doth fade # But doth suffer sea-migrations # Into substrate for crustaceans. # Sea-nymphs monitor system vigour: # Hark! HEALTH CHECK: FAILURE -- replacement trigger'd

If you made a book of these, I would buy it.

Re: Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea to investigate energy efficiency

#197

Post by ethbro » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 2:00 PM UTC

cc-d wrote: post #193

> There has been growing concern that the rapid expansion of the data centre industry could mean an explosion in energy use. But Emma Fryer, who represents the sector at Tech UK, says that fear has been exaggerated. If we're concerned about the technology industry vastly increasing energy consumption, lets look at the entire medium sized country's worth of energy bitcoin is consuming for absolutely useless calculatio…

In the same vein, I'd be curious how much energy gets consumed by HFT.

Re: Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea to investigate energy efficiency

#198

Post by gnode » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 2:00 PM UTC

cc-d wrote: post #193

> There has been growing concern that the rapid expansion of the data centre industry could mean an explosion in energy use. But Emma Fryer, who represents the sector at Tech UK, says that fear has been exaggerated. If we're concerned about the technology industry vastly increasing energy consumption, lets look at the entire medium sized country's worth of energy bitcoin is consuming for absolutely useless calculatio…

Naturally scarce stores of value like Bitcoin, gold, diamonds, etc. have always "wasted" resources, whether they be power, human resource, or polluting the environment. On one hand you could regard them as immoral because of this, on the other hand they enable the freedom to store value without trust.

Re: Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea to investigate energy efficiency

#199

Post by freeflight » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 2:03 PM UTC

dogma1138 wrote: post #77

nomercy400 wrote: post #75

Putting your datacenter in international waters, without laws or regulations, hidden from the world. Such a great way to do things without people knowing, or having people do things about it. Power it with offshore windmills, and you really only need a network connection. Great idea though, using water to cool your datacenter and leaving all the oxygen out.

Maritime law; there is no such thing as international waters for “stuff” each vessel has to fly under a flag. The MSFT Datacenter is a vessel under law, if they don’t want to fly it under a flag they’ll have to essentially abandon it and then salvage laws come into play.

In that context, the Internets fascination with pirates makes a whole new level of sense. Servers, classified as marine vessels, admins being literal captains sailing under flags.

In a more fun world, one of those vessels would fly the Jolly Rogers and host a certain infamous Swedish bay.

Re: Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea to investigate energy efficiency

#200

Post by cc-d » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 2:05 PM UTC

gnode wrote: post #198

cc-d wrote: post #193

> There has been growing concern that the rapid expansion of the data centre industry could mean an explosion in energy use. But Emma Fryer, who represents the sector at Tech UK, says that fear has been exaggerated. If we're concerned about the technology industry vastly increasing energy consumption, lets look at the entire medium sized country's worth of energy bitcoin is consuming for absolutely useless calculatio…

Naturally scarce stores of value like Bitcoin, gold, diamonds, etc. have always "wasted" resources, whether they be power, human resource, or polluting the environment. On one hand you could regard them as immoral because of this, on the other hand they enable the freedom to store value without trust.

>Bitcoin, gold, diamond

You're being dishonest if you're pretending these things are identically comparable.