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

bbc.com

171–180 of 397 posts

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

#171
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Re: Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea to investigate energy efficiency

#172
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/mechanica…

Local pockets of increased heat have not been observed to nurture life? Thermals mentioned by OP are just one obvious example. I agree making use of subtle energy gradients is not trivial, but life is pretty good at it nevertheless. Even in conditions you wouldn't expect it. And no surprise — it had billions of years to evolve that way. If you wanted to be daring, you could even say that's what life is for.

> Local pockets of increased heat have not been observed to nurture life?

That's absolutely not what the comment you're replying to says. What it says is:

> If this were the case, the biological density of the highest-temperature locations in the ocean should be significantly higher than average.

> Thermals mentioned by OP are just one obvious example.

Thermals are not just heat, and by and large the heat is not a source of energy (sulphur chemistry is the basal energy source of thermals). And shallow waters have much higher biological densities.

Ambient heat is only useful so far as helping the organism improve the efficiency of its chemical and biological reactions, it's extremely rare for it to be an actual energy source (because as you've been told multiple times it's extremely hard to use/harvest). And organisms are generally adapted to a certain level of ambient heat with compensatory mechanisms matching, most don't do very well if you drastically change their ambient heat levels, again aside from micro-organisms with short lifecycle which can adapt extremely quickly.

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

#173
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.

Not a subsea engineer, but having worked in the space previously I can tell you that we already have giant man made heaters sitting at the bottom of the ocean. Subsea Oil and Gas wells take advantage of the steady temperature at those depths to dump excess heat form the production fluid (sometimes up to 120F for straight crude, much higher for oil and gas mix) whilst and before it rises up to the platform. Sometimes using active or passive cooling on the ocean floor.

Then there's natural geothermal vents doing that, but probably an order of magnitude more, since before humans were around.

The ocean is a pretty big thermal mass.

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

#174
post #165

I wonder what will be algae/flora impact on a heat exchange after year or two. This thing will be warm and stationary so it will became overgrown really fast.

I imagine the first step would be to use standard marine anti-foul paint on the exchangers. But that only works for a few months at best.

After that, I'm not so sure. Perhaps a slow, continuous movement of an exchange surface past a hard surface would do the trick. When this stuff is young, it's easily wiped away, but once it's there for a while you get real problems.

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

#175
post #136

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!

Not OP, but I have had the freezer trick work more times than not. It's a last case type of deal, but when there's nothing to lose try it. Just make sure the drive is sealed up nicely.

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

#176

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!

I can confirm the freezer trick worked too. This was back before multi-platter high density drives though. I tried it recently with a failed 6TB drives from a friend, and it didn't work.

Yeah this was many years ago. I think the one I did it with was a 250GB from the mid to late 2000's

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

#178
post #165

I wonder what will be algae/flora impact on a heat exchange after year or two. This thing will be warm and stationary so it will became overgrown really fast.

We could look at hydrothermal vents to see the effect of heat source underwater.

The heat from hydrothermal vents on its own wouldn't support ecosystems in deep water, they also feed out various useful chemicals and nutrients. The base of these foodchains is creatures that can build biological carbon stuff using chemical energy from that instead of using light, called "chemosynthesis".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemosynthesis

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

#179
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know, the oceans are big, but so is our data. Meh. The biggest data center (ChinaTel's Inner Mongolia Information Park) consumes about 150MWe, assuming all of it becomes waste heat it's basically nothing: a nuclear reactor (each plant has 2~8) releases 2Wt for each We it produces, and they're usually sized between 800 and 1300MWe. Hell, earth averages 160W/m^2 from the sun, oceans cover 360m km^2, so oceans get 1…

Even Greenpeace at least doesn't think that it's a bad idea: "Experimental underwater data centres could be more sustainable if connected to offshore wind power, but Microsoft must focus more on investing in new renewable energy now. [...]" https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35472189

[deleted]

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

#180
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?

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...

That's just unbelievable. To even survive the Deskstar era blows my mind. Not a single drive?
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