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

#141

Post by ajnin » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 11:45 AM UTC

snarfy wrote: post #132

jgtrosh wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not an expert either, but this might be a good way to think about it: on land or at sea, the machines produce the same amount of heat. On land, in general, the environment around the machines will be much warmer than the desired temp. Cooling on land is in general an active affair, which has to do with generating and controlling flow of fluid and/or maybe some kind of thermic reaction. Potentially at sea being plunge…

I'm trying to see how the efficiency is gained and I just don't really see it. I guess you don't need to pump water for water cooling so you save the pumping energy, or maybe lower fan speeds or something, but it really seems like it would be a minimal amount. What it does seem like is a cheap way to build a water cooling system that doesn't really need to be maintained. It seems like switching to arm would be a much…

Usually DCs use AC for cooling, which needs electric power, which needs far away power plants and tranmisions lines. Here, you have a practically endless source of cool water that you can just pump directly.

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

#142

Post by icebraining » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 11:52 AM UTC

sushid wrote: post #43

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.

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.

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

#143

Post by floor_ » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 11:54 AM UTC

Reminds me of that NOC +10 ARG and the first Bioshock.

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

#144

Post by Qworg » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 11:54 AM 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!

It works because of how hard drives work - the heads are extended by slightly heating the bar the heads are connected to. If you're head crashing, you need a little less length, hence freezer.

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

#145

Post by nabla9 » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 11:58 AM UTC

If you want maximum energy efficiency, build city centers in cold climates where the excess heat can be used. Yandex has data center in city of Mäntsälä, Finland and they provide 50 percent of the heating needs.

Even more advanced concept, combined district heating and cooling. With combined district heating and cooling and integrate data centers into them. Data center heat can be used in cold regions for heating. Combined heat pump/chiller units can produce both heat and cooling at the same time. Sea water (trough absorption chillers) is used for cooling apartments, offices and data centers. Heat from data centers, purified waste water, etc. is used for heating apartments. During winter more heat is utilized. During summers more water cooling is utilize.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jul/20/helsinki...

Suvilahti Data Centre New Build Case Study: Operationalizing District Heating and Cooling in large Data Centre in Former Electricity Station http://www.energy-cities.eu/IMG/pdf/WS2_Helsinki.pdf

https://www.helen.fi/en/company/energy/energy-production/pow...

COMBINED DISTRICT HEATING AND COOLING https://www.euroheat.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Case-stu...

District Heating & Cooling in Helsinki http://www.iea.org/media/workshops/2013/chp/markoriipinen.pd...

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

#146

Post by uh_what » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 11:59 AM UTC

Radim wrote: post #130

Retric wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heat is not really useful energy the way your taking about. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics Life wants entropy like sunlight or glucose becase it can do something with it. Heat can speed up chemical reactions which makes a minimal amount useful indirectly but not as an energy source. PS: Heat gradients are a form of entropy and for example create thermals which are then useful.

You're correct of course, but same difference here. The extra energy will kickstart processes that nurture life. I was actually pondering whether to expand on "energy", "water", "carbon" and "life" in the original post (none of them trivial concepts) but decided against it. It'd only muddy the waters, so to speak, missing the point: A submerged data centre will be a net boon to the biological life around it.

> The extra energy will kickstart processes that nurture life.

Why would that be the case? If this were the case, the biological density of the highest-temperature locations in the ocean should be significantly higher than average. This has not been observed. Quite the opposite, actually.

Secondly, in thermodynamic terms, heat is the least useful form of energy. Heat is often the waste product of a chemical/mechanical process and cannot be easily be converted into other forms of energy without significant loss.

And no offense, but water and carbon are both trivial well defined concepts. Energy is also fairly well defined.

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

#147

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 11:59 AM UTC

sambeau wrote: post #108

mpweiher wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of it is that even problems that are small/unnoticeable at the individual level become big when multiplied by a huge N. For example, I don't think I've ever had a hard drive fail in ~30 years in computing, well without being dropped that is, yet look at the Backblaze reports: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-benchmark-stats-20...

I've seen a whole batch of hard drives fail: one-by-one the company's employees' PCs failed over a period of a week or two. They had all been bought together in a single upgrade. I (on a Mac) was unaffected (and no doubt a little smug).

[deleted]

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

#148

Post by ksec » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 12:04 PM UTC

polvs wrote: post #104

tomglynch wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Polvs, I believe we met in Berlin. I hadn't seen immersion cooling before then but was absolutely impressed. Unfortunately setup costs are quite restrictive, but for large scale organisations it does make sense.

Hi Tom, I think I remember you from the C3 Crypto Conference where we had a booth. I know what you mean, the initial cost of acquiring this technology compared to regular air cooling technologies is more expensive in the very short term, but when you consider the operational costs of electricity, the ROI can be under a year. It becomes much more interesting when you also factor in that you can pack >4x computing powe…

Why hasn't this taken up pace though? I am pretty sure I read about immersive cooling at least 4 -5 years ago. And 3M had some new "liquid" shown 1 - 2 years ago. Given the scale of which now Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple operate, surely they should be the first one to adopt?

Edit:

Looks like I asked the question a while ago. From Anandtech and Servethehome:

10 years ago, liquid had a thermal limit. Now it is around 5x that old limit. Problem is cost ($$$/gallon of the liquid) and installation. Has to be marketed on TCO. Also, issues with submerged fiber connections

2U air cooling can reliably handle 8x 200w+ TDP CPUs, 600w of NVMe, plus RAM and add-in cards. 4U designs can handle 6kW of cooling on air. Liquid may be more efficient, and more data centers are being built for it, but air is easy to deploy.

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

#149

Post by seszett » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 12:07 PM UTC

jwilk wrote: post #135

seszett wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici... , total electricity production is about 24816400 GWh/year (~25 PWh/year, so you were 3 orders of magnitude off). $ units -t '24816400 GWh / (1347000000 km^3) / (1 kg/dm^3) / (4200 J/kg/K)' 1.5908368e-05 K

Looking again, I think I got caught off by the "." being used as a decimal separator in some places.

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

#150

Post by adwn » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 12:10 PM UTC

Radim wrote: post #116

masklinn wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In addition, the heat represents extra energy. Warmth and water (and carbon) are the very fabric of life. That's cute, but 1. nature will adapt just fine to both heat and cold so that's not exactly compelling; 2. the issue is we may not, human civilisations have arisen in fairly specific conditions, and tend not to be very resilient to significant environmental changes > My prediction is we'll be amazed at the life…

> nature will adapt just fine to both heat and cold Not with the same ease! That's the point — it is a one-way street. "Having easy access to energy" or "not having easy access to energy" are NOT equivalent states for flourishment. They're not equally "just fine". The rest seems like you're grinding some anthropomorphic axe unrelated to my post, so I'll abstain.

> "Having easy access to energy"

Life needs an energy gradient. In this case, direct access to colder water. No organism (or machine) can use the heat energy of its environment if it has no access to a colder medium.

Edit: I just saw that Retric explained it better (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17245948).