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Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

bbc.co.uk

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

#261

Post by sangnoir »

sandworm101 wrote: post #211

Nobody talking about the potential military applications of a hardened processing infrastructure underwater? Once upon a time Russia toyed with the idea of putting ICBM silos at the bottom of lakes. Say you wanted to run a network of hydrophones on the seafloor. You might want to do the data processing in-situ rather than transmit everything back to shore. If I were microsoft I might be interested in those potential…

> Once upon a time Russia toyed with the idea of putting ICBM silos at the bottom of lakes

Was this before or after nuclear submarines were a thing? I think maintenance is much easier with a submersible than something affixed to a lakebed.

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

#262

Post by jarvist »

crazygringo wrote: post #245
geophertz wrote: post #237

The thing is that if putting data centers underwater solves the cooling problem, all the heat produced is wasted, so it this really a good solution?

Heat is awfully hard to transfer in the first place, especially when it's not even that hot. It's handy if you can put your data center underneath a swimming pool, for example. But I'm not aware of any large-scale heat recovery projects from data centers. Data centers generally spend extra energy to remove the heat... But honestly who cares if your power comes from renewables in the first place -- solar and wind? It…

The new LUMI EU supercomputer in Finland will put its waste heat into a district heating system: https://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/csc-lumi-supercomputer-...

I'm sure smaller scale data centre heat to district heating schemes must already be in place. Fundamentally you are using the same technology to cool the data centre (a heat pump), just pushing that heat into hot-water / steam, rather than dumping into the air.

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

#263

Post by meshaneian »

YawningAngel wrote: post #45
Etheryte wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Anyone hearing one abhors a vacuum; in fact they are designed to amplify certain sounds, such as dust particles passing through the system. Consumers equate "loud" with "powerful" and this improves sales and product opinions. Yes, I'm aware this is a different kind of vacuum.

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

#264

Post by ramon »

buzzerbetrayed wrote: post #240
ramon wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://climate.nasa.gov/

Is there something on there that contradicts what I said? I'm not going to scour the entire website to find whatever it is you're referring to when you could just tell me (except you probably can't because I'm guessing it doesn't exist.. hence your vagueness).

What is your objetive here in this forum? Is it to pick a fight?

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

#266

Post by da_chicken »

geophertz wrote: post #237

The thing is that if putting data centers underwater solves the cooling problem, all the heat produced is wasted, so it this really a good solution?

The heat produced in a traditional data center is already unwanted and wasted and takes a ton of electricity and machinery to get rid of. Given that processors like to operate around 50 C, that's not a lot of heat to preserve and transport and do something useful with.

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

#268

Post by thaumasiotes »

sktrdie wrote: post #267

Why not put them in... space? Lots of energy (direct sun) and cold temperatures up there. I guess space debris could be an issue.

As I understand it, the temperature is cold in space, but it's still difficult to transfer heat from yourself to the environment (because there's nothing in the environment to absorb the energy).

You don't want low temperatures for their own sake; you want them to facilitate heat loss.

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

#270

Post by winrid »

endtime wrote: post #6
mips_avatar wrote: post #3

It seems an additional hurdle is anti-fouling. Those barnacles and algae act as an insulator, making the cold-water cooling advantage less and less of an advantage.

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 surface of this container won't get that hot.
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