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

#281

Post by ggggtez » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 4:57 PM UTC

gnode wrote: post #198

cc-d wrote: post #193

> There has been growing concern that the rapid expansion of the data centre industry could mean an explosion in energy use. But Emma Fryer, who represents the sector at Tech UK, says that fear has been exaggerated. If we're concerned about the technology industry vastly increasing energy consumption, lets look at the entire medium sized country's worth of energy bitcoin is consuming for absolutely useless calculatio…

Naturally scarce stores of value like Bitcoin, gold, diamonds, etc. have always "wasted" resources, whether they be power, human resource, or polluting the environment. On one hand you could regard them as immoral because of this, on the other hand they enable the freedom to store value without trust.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/scarcity.asp

Everything in the world is scarce (non-infinite). Just because something is scarce, does not mean it's valuable.

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

#282

Post by lallysingh » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 4:59 PM UTC

ethbro wrote: post #197

cc-d wrote: post #193

> There has been growing concern that the rapid expansion of the data centre industry could mean an explosion in energy use. But Emma Fryer, who represents the sector at Tech UK, says that fear has been exaggerated. If we're concerned about the technology industry vastly increasing energy consumption, lets look at the entire medium sized country's worth of energy bitcoin is consuming for absolutely useless calculatio…

In the same vein, I'd be curious how much energy gets consumed by HFT.

Not very much. A handful of machines per exchange colo, for each of a few hundred orgs? Probably about as much power as a small-midsize college, if I were to guess?

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

#283

Post by haldean » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 5:03 PM UTC

nashashmi wrote: post #270

I am most concerned about the data cable getting cut by ships. Don't know why nobody else here is concerned about that.

Because most of the internet already goes through under-sea cables? We're pretty good at not cutting under-sea cables.

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

#284

Post by reaperducer » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 5:03 PM UTC

dorfsmay wrote: post #269

I wish somebody worked on using that unwanted heat, like they do in swimming pool / ice rink combos, rather than finding ways to just disperse it faster in the environment.

Or perhaps heating a greenhouse in a cold climate where fresh food is expensive or impossible to import.

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

#285

Post by foobarchu » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 5:04 PM UTC

monochromatic wrote: post #228

ethbro wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the same vein, I'd be curious how much energy gets consumed by HFT.

I would think far less. HFT isn’t intentionally computationally expensive.

And the HFT industry is incentivized to use as little processor time as possible, and thus as little power as possible.

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

#286

Post by djtriptych » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 5:09 PM UTC

sathackr wrote: post #268

I wonder why they are submerging these instead of just making them a floating barge. I can't imagine submersion is significantly better for cooling, the energy density very likely already requires a circulating water system, and the added issues dealing with the pressure at depth seem risky. Possibly there is a benefit not related to cooling. Perhaps weather/waves? Things are probably alot calmer 30ft below the surfa…

HDD spindles????

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

#287

Post by drbawb » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 5:10 PM UTC

overcast wrote: post #180

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...

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

That's not all that surprising to me, I've had supremely good fortune with drives. I have a Maxtor Fireball that still "works" (though its SMART has failed.) My current workstation still has drives in it from the three prior workstations; spanning back 7 or 8 years now[1], humming along well outside their warrantied operation. The first disk failure(s) I witnessed came while I worked at a computer repair shop, which would be "a huge N" compared to the number of PCs I've personally owned. My first disk failure on my own personal equipment didn't happen until I built out a home storage array - again a rather large multiplier of number of disks compared to a traditional PC. Even then that failure was because a disk controller got fried, the drive was mechanically sound and the data was completely recoverable.

Admittedly my own experience is probably a bit skewed since I don't have a personal laptop. By the time I got a job that provided me w/ a laptop solid state drives were already quite mature. In my experience doing repair work: laptops were a huge source of our failed drive & data recovery operations.

[1]: I should note these drives all operate nearly 24/7, no five-nines on my personal equipment though ;-P

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

#288

Post by zaroth » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 5:12 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

So that is to say, all the worlds energy production directed toward heating the oceans, could increase global oceanic temperature by 0.00001 degree C in a year.

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

#289

Post by sbarre » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 5:13 PM UTC

cpeterso wrote: post #279

dorfsmay wrote: post #269

I wish somebody worked on using that unwanted heat, like they do in swimming pool / ice rink combos, rather than finding ways to just disperse it faster in the environment.

Arthur C. Clarke wrote a short story about an power generator based on the temperature difference of a long pipe reaching into the cold ocean depths. I think the story was The Deep Range .

Toronto cools some of the larger office buildings downtown by pulling in cold water from the bottom of Lake Ontario.

http://www.acciona.ca/projects/construction/port-and-hydraul...

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

#290

Post by remir » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 5:14 PM UTC

dorfsmay wrote: post #269

I wish somebody worked on using that unwanted heat, like they do in swimming pool / ice rink combos, rather than finding ways to just disperse it faster in the environment.

I wonder if the water would be hot enough for a thermal bath/spa?