51–60 of 386 posts
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.
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".
I must ask, apart from the renewable energy factor, why do it in Orkney? There are many islands and archipelagos in Scotland, the Hebrides which are closer to the mainland but still out of the way of fishing. Many of them are going to be setup with tidal and wind generators. Would be interesting to see how it was tethered to the shore with networking and power. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/mar/17/10me…
I suspect there is simply more infrastructure for this kind of thing in Orkney that the other islands.
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…
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".
Was the load in the data center synthetic, or did it handle production traffic? Curious to see how they split it out. I doubt there's a "Orkney-Underwater" region.
"Natick was used to perform COVID-19 research for Folding at Home and World Community Grid."
Also the data center designation for it was "Northern Isles" (SSDC-002).
Was the load in the data center synthetic, or did it handle production traffic? Curious to see how they split it out. I doubt there's a "Orkney-Underwater" region.
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…
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…
You're confusing power and energy here.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.