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

bbc.com

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

#241

Post by semanticist »

cm2187 wrote: post #12

> Additionally because there are no people, we can take all the oxygen and most of the water vapour out of the atmosphere which reduces corrosion, which is a significant problem in data centres First time I hear corrosion is a problem in datacentres. I never noticed any corrosion on any machine at home or work. Does it have to do with the cooling of datacentres?

The industrial scale cooling used in datacentres can produce weird results, like when it rained inside Facebook's first datacentre: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/08/facebook_cloud_vers...

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

#242

Post by amatai »

Well everyone is talking about the energy usage, which is the point of the experiment.

But what happens after 5 years (the expected life of the datacenter). Most of the computers in there will be worthless then. Will they bring up the datacenter and reload it with new equipment? Will the cost-benefit be in favor of re-equipment or just sink a new one in? If its going to be cheaper to just drop a new one in, we will have ocean floor littered with dead datacenters.

Haven't heard anything about this.

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

#243

Post by Maybestring »

icebraining wrote: post #142
sushid wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you're making it sound as if the data centers being cooled somehow wouldn't happen otherwise. Seeing as how the alternative is to cool using A/C, surely it's the case of causing less harm than the alternative? Of course you could argue that the lower cost of this cooling method will create a larger demand for cheaper servers/data storage, which increases net harm, for which I have no answer.

The overall heat increase is the same, but the localized effects mights not be: fewer beings live in the atmosphere, and air displaces that heat faster than water, reducing the local concentration.

>The overall heat increase is the same

That's not the case if you're comparing with AC. You have to use energy (generating more waste heat) to pump heat up a temperature gradient.

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

#244

Post by coffeeacc »

ams6110 wrote: post #239
cm2187 wrote: post #12

> Additionally because there are no people, we can take all the oxygen and most of the water vapour out of the atmosphere which reduces corrosion, which is a significant problem in data centres First time I hear corrosion is a problem in datacentres. I never noticed any corrosion on any machine at home or work. Does it have to do with the cooling of datacentres?

A trend in energy-efficient data centers is to maintain temperatures and humidity at near the maximum acceptable levels to reduce energy use for cooling and dehumidification. Data centers used to be like walk-in refrigerators. Now the air is borderline uncomfortably warm and slightly "heavy" with humidity.

Sounds like underground in the desert would be suitable?

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

#245

Post by dwyerm »

cm2187 wrote: post #12

> Additionally because there are no people, we can take all the oxygen and most of the water vapour out of the atmosphere which reduces corrosion, which is a significant problem in data centres First time I hear corrosion is a problem in datacentres. I never noticed any corrosion on any machine at home or work. Does it have to do with the cooling of datacentres?

Yes. The air quality -- especially the amount of sulfur in the air -- contributes to sulfur creep corrosion. Run that through an image search to see the results. It's pretty dramatic. Some of this equipment looks like it had been underwater.

But while the older equipment was pretty stable (so long as the capacitors didn't bulge), today's equipment usually has to comply with ROHS. Lead, for all its faults, has a very well-understood corrosion mechanic. The exotic blends used to replace it, we're discovering, aren't always so great...

You know, now that I think about it, I wonder how many cell phone warranty claims have been denied for water ingress were actually due to poor solder choices? Color-changing stickers aside, of course.

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

#246

Post by michaelscott »

rtkwe wrote: post #231
gnode wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin doesn't intrinsically require that much power. The computation to verify transactions is a tiny fraction of that required to compete for the next block by hashing. The high hash rate is because of the high difficulty, which is itself dependent on the hash rate of the entire network. If the price of bitcoin drops, the incentive to mine decreases, and thus so does the difficulty. This is comparable to gold, as…

But once extracted their energy costs are negligible (especially with gold being stored and the rights traded instead of the physical asset a lot of the time). In the case of BTC you can't really separate out the cost of mining a block from validating the transaction because until it's in a block a transaction doesn't really exist (this will get much better with lightning though). But without the constant burn of min…

Until it IS in a block. Then, like the storage cost of gold or any "real" material, the energy expenditure for maintenance is negligible. In fact, considering the storage requirements of something like bullion I'd argue the maintenance costs are considerably lower.

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

#247

Post by larkeith »

seszett wrote: post #46
alexghr wrote: post #36

At what point does this become a problem? They're using the naturally cool sea water to regulate the temperature in the container, but that heat needs to go somewhere... it heats the water. If this becomes a popular alternative to classic server farms, at what point does it start to increase the temperature of the sea? I know, the oceans are big, but so is our data.

If my calculation is correct, the total annual electricity production in the world (I used 20 279 PWh) would heat up the oceans (1 347 000 000 km³ of water) by 0,0129°C. It's rather easy to calculate because one calorie is the energy required to heat up one gramme of water by one degree Celsius, the rest is just unit conversions, but I could have messed up anywhere of course. Even if I'm off by a few orders of magnit…

One thing to note is that heat diffuses much slower through the ocean than the atmosphere - even if the impact on the average temperature of the ocean is negligible, local thermal pollution could still cause major issues. I don't know how much effect a pod of this size will have; hopefully Microsoft will fund and publish a comprehensive review.

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

#248

Post by _bxg1 »

I'm sure the environmental impact of this one unit will be negligible, but if the worlds largest tech companies start deploying thousands of these - imaginable, since it's a pretty good idea from an engineering perspective - I could see that causing some real problems.

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

#249

Post by criley2 »

d0lph wrote: post #223
rtkwe wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only Bitcoin requires the continuous consumption of energy to continue being a useful asset though.

Right, diamonds just cost human lives.

"Right, diamonds just cost human lives."

If we're going to play that game, where did the electricity come from for your watt-hour-sucking GPU?

A coal plant? How many died mining it? How many got life long illness or injury/disability mining it? How much poverty did the abusive mining industry inflict on poor dependent communities? How many hundreds of thousands of people were affected by it's emissions? How many thousands of cases of asthma? How many deaths?

If we go nuclear : Where was it mined? Who mined it? Who processed it? Where is the waste going? Are you supporting rather despotic countries depending on ore source? Etc

Or the cards themselves. Where did the rare earth materials that go into graphics cards come from? Where were the graphics card parts manufactured, and where was the board assembled? Are you benefiting from near-slave labor for your cards?

I mean, if we want to play that game, there's so much to examine!

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

#250

Post by pbhjpbhj »

wglb wrote: post #210
ethbro wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And how much by machinery to run advertising?

There's a large overlap between serve farms and energy use backed-by/for marketing.
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