Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#41

Post by lawlessone » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 3:59 PM UTC

Shivetya wrote: post #35

NathanKP wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An HVAC system above ground would generate far more heat. The advantage of sinking the data center would appear to be that it can function with passive cooling from the surrounding water only, no HVAC. This means less electricity consumption (meaning less energy generation required, and fewer resulting greenhouse gasses). And HVAC systems create far more waste heat than they do cooling, so this passive cooling will j…

Well they why not create artificial bodies of water and just keep our data centers there? How much water is sufficient for the cooling cycle to not require additional energy? How much water will need to be added to such pools to deal with evaporation? I think on a smaller scale test with an artificial pool would provide some solid answers. We could even put solar panels across the surface to limit wind and solar evap…

You'd have to pump loads of water for it then? to fill the pool and replace what is lost to evaporation.

"I think on a smaller scale test with an artificial pool would provide some solid answers. We could even put solar panels across the surface to limit wind and solar evaporation effects "

If it's artificial pool you'd need evaporation to cool it.

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#42

Post by ants_a » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 4:02 PM UTC

emteycz wrote: post #34

reaperducer wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the impact was pretty minimal We used to say that about plastics in the ocean. And landfills. And light pollution. And noise pollution. And space junk. And on and on and on. Heck, not that many decades ago there were responsible people who thought that air pollution was no big deal because there's plenty of air, and it's just fine if California allows rich car collectors to keep buying leaded gasoline long after othe…

There is a difference between understanding of different fields of science. We understand temperature in large bodies pretty well - and we know that it's nearly impossible to sink that many servers to do anything.

I once read that using ZFS was supposed to boil the oceans.

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#43

Post by angry_octet » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 4:03 PM UTC

Another example of the journalistic malpractice of not linking to the original articles or data.

https://natick.research.microsoft.com/

https://news.microsoft.com/innovation-stories/project-natick...

One of the facts left unmentioned is that this was built and operated by Naval, the French state-owned submarine and shipbuilding corporation.

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#44

Post by snovv_crash » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 4:04 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #22

slaymaker1907 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I remember, the impact was pretty minimal. Water has a huge capacity for heat so the temperature was elevated only when very close to the data center.

the impact was pretty minimal We used to say that about plastics in the ocean. And landfills. And light pollution. And noise pollution. And space junk. And on and on and on. Heck, not that many decades ago there were responsible people who thought that air pollution was no big deal because there's plenty of air, and it's just fine if California allows rich car collectors to keep buying leaded gasoline long after othe…

Nothing exists in a vacuum. Of course comparing having a datacentre to not having a datacentre shows that having it has higher ecological impact.

But that wasn't really the option now, was it?

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#45

Post by YawningAngel » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 4:05 PM UTC

Etheryte wrote: post #20

endtime wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the surface were that hot, would sea creatures still want to live on it? I have no idea what their range of tolerance is, but I'd assume that they're well adapted for living on relatively cool rocks. And if it's not that hot, then it seems like there's not a cooling problem. (To be clear, I'm speculating without any real knowledge of this subject, and welcome the inevitable corrections.)

The ocean is host to a very wide number of creatures and bacteria, some live in arctic cold waters, others on volcanic vents, and every range in between. There's a good saying for this, roughly translated, that nature doesn't love an empty spot — if one type of plant or bacteria won't live in an area, someone else will quickly settle in.

We have "nature abhors a vacuum" in English

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#46

Post by serjester » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 4:07 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #10

Why heat the oceans indirectly when you can just place the heatsource directly in them? Much less chance of losing precious ergs. Seriously though, what is the direct ecological impact of doing this at scale, would the local increase in temperature have an immediate effect on the life around it? If so how much of an impact? What about the effect on surface life and life in intermediary layers of the water? After all,…

It takes about 80 watts to heat up a liter of water 1° celsius. Global data centers used about 4.16 x 10^14 watts last year [1]. Let's assume we still have a lot more data centers to build so bump that number up 10,000X. Assuming every watt of energy is actually converted to heat and we moved every data center on earth underwater it'd raise the temperate of the oceans (1.3x 10^21 liters) about 0.01°C.

This is a very rough calculation and there's obviously nuances but the point is oceans are HUGE and water has a high specific heat. It's much easier to indirectly heat them with greenhouses gases.

Edit: I clearly need to brush up on my physics. Regardless the effect is still miniscule.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2017/12/15/wh...

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#47

Post by bearjaws » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 4:07 PM UTC

uluyol wrote: post #39

NathanKP wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An HVAC system above ground would generate far more heat. The advantage of sinking the data center would appear to be that it can function with passive cooling from the surrounding water only, no HVAC. This means less electricity consumption (meaning less energy generation required, and fewer resulting greenhouse gasses). And HVAC systems create far more waste heat than they do cooling, so this passive cooling will j…

I think the question is what is the local impact of the temperature increase? It would be good to know if it harms certain types of ecosystems ahead of time rather than after the fact. It's also possible that a direct increase in ocean temperature has undesirable knock-on effects that don't take place if you operate on land.

I believe it would be less impactful than many power plants that vent their heat into the ocean. There are many studies, mainly around marine life (phytoplankton, manatees, other endangered species). These systems probably produce similar heat output into the water.

https://assets.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/power-plant-cool...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00253...

https://res.mdpi.com/d_attachment/water/water-11-02577/artic...

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#48

Post by mleonhard » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 4:09 PM UTC

spamizbad wrote: post #8

Very interesting to see a lower failure rate. Is it simply a function of possibly better thermals than your average datacenter? Less EMR?

Other explanations:

- Technicians were extra careful (slow) when installing the equipment.

- The datacenter pod used no recycled parts. Traditional datacenters are full of recycled marginal-quality parts. Maintenance teams balance the cost of buying new parts, the cost of testing used parts, and the labor & downtime costs from recycled parts failing.

Extreme reliability is already achievable but not economical. One reason why Google Search beats Bing is that Google's infrastructure software is more tolerant of flaky hardware, so Google can spend less money on hardware maintenance, reducing the cost per search.

Hopefully Microsoft will release a report and tell us the source of the underwater datacenter pod's low failure rate.

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#49

Post by StavrosK » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 4:11 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #40

StavrosK wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is CO2, though, not heat per se. Yes, the two are correlated, but if you use renewables to power your things, it doesn't really matter how much heat you generate. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

> it doesn't really matter how much heat you generate Doesn’t matter is strong. It won’t in the short term. But as we continue increasing our energy use as a species, the simple thermal problem of waste-heat management will certainly surface.

Sure, where "doesn't matter" read "is way way less important than CO2 emissions".

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#50

Post by noisy_boy » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 4:14 PM UTC

znpy wrote: post #7

Interestingly in the original article it said that the datacenter was meant to stay under water for five years. I wonder why they have pulled it out ahead of time. (source: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44368813 -- see video) edit: just to be clear, my questioning isn't meant to be read in a denigratory way. just wondering. Also thank to Kydlaw for pointing out that it actually said "up to five years".

Some executive probably said "I think it would be good to take stock of the experiment now to reduce time-risk and arrive at a decision point regarding future strategy".