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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

#291

Post by morei »

sandworm101 wrote: post #222
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.

>> Those barnacles and algae act as an insulator Maybe not. Barnacles probably conduct heat at a similar rate to water. And they create a rougher surface with greater contact area to the surrounding water. And some of them actively filter water, push it around. Perhaps having a layer of barnacles woudl increase cooling.

The cooling nature of water comes from the high specific heat _and_ the fluid mixing (convection currents, pumped flow, etc).

Barnacles and other accretive life forms means that the thermal gradient drops sharply, and hence the heat flow rate drops significantly.

Take a comparison is between (say) 25C heatsink in contact with 10C water across a boundary layer that likely on the order of 10mm thick, versus what is effectively a static fluid ~50mm thick followed by the same boundary layer.

So the unmixed fluid is going to be ~6x [1] thicker, for a heat flow rate 1/6th the original. And that's assuming that barnacles do in fact conduct as well as water, something that's unlikely (water is ~0.6, human flesh ranges from ~0.2 to ~0.5)

[1] Insert a bunch of unstated assumption about the fluid flow rate, salinity, etc etc.

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

#292

Post by rexpop »

gregd wrote: post #247

Does anyone know what the environmental ramifications are of sinking presumably noisy and hot tubes into the ocean? I've been in server rooms and they aren't exactly quiet. The picture of the racks look to me like standard 1U servers.

Unfortunately, there are no oceanographic environmentalists with sufficient clout to have any say, whatsoever, in this unaccountable private endeavor. I doubt the Scottish Environment Protection Agency or UK's Environment Agency were invited to be veto-empowered stakeholders.

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

#293

Post by jeffbee »

jacquesm wrote: post #10

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 seems like people are always overestimating the power consumed by this type of datacenter load, and under estimating the thermal power of transportation. This little tube uses 1/4 of a MW. A nuclear submarine has a roughly 50MW(t) reactor, and there are dozens of those prowling around all of the time.

A really huge datacenter might draw 500MW, but that's only the same thermal output as about 7 airliners.

You could submerge every datacenter on earth and no fish is going to notice.

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

#294

Post by kortilla »

badRNG wrote: post #89
noisy_boy wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some executive probably said "I think it would be good to take stock of the experiment now to reduce time-risk and arrive at a decision point regarding future strategy".

It increasingly seems that public businesses seem incapable of making long-term plans, even rather trivial ones, if the cost of ending the experiment results in immediate gains. The driving force is the single most important metric: this quarter's upcoming earnings report. Businesses that tend to place bets on multi-year investments are either privately held (e.g. SpaceX) or are participating in specific public/priva…

> the cost of ending the experiment results in immediate gains.

This is oft-parroted without any hard evidence though. If it were true even broadly, most companies would be doing absolutely no R&D because all R&D is just cost in the near term.

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

#295

Post by tomjakubowski »

nomel wrote: post #280
adrianmonk wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> journalistic malpractice of not linking That disease is very prevalent, and I don't understand why. My less-cynical guess is that the industry is stuck in the past, and journalists need better training and tools. My more-cynical guess is that they are afraid of irrelevance, so they are defensively trying to keep you in their walled garden of information instead of encouraging you to get into the habit of getting in…

I've always assumed it's the fear of dead links hurting their SEO.

Outbound links also remove the reader from the newspaper's ad revenue stream.

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

#296

Post by ngcc_hk »

The benefits is secure, nitrogen with renewable energy. it could be anywhere not necessarily in the sea. It could be in a data center as well. A temper proof ...

And one need to dig it out to check though meant it is not connected. Not very useful. Even a mars based one we want them to communicate. Even low end just control signal.

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

#297

Post by vkou »

freehunter wrote: post #100
smaddox wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony is that this phrase predates the Torricelli experiment, in which he used a glass vial and mercury to produce a vacuum, and the eventual discovery that the vast majority of nature is a vacuum (outside of the atmosphere of planets and stars).

And if it wasn‘t for gravity, everything inside the atmosphere of planets and stars would be rushing to fill that vacuum. Nature abhors a vacuum, but that‘s only tempered by the fact that there are more powerful forces than vacuums.

If all of the matter in the universe were evenly distributed, it would be so close to a vaccum as to make no difference.

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

#298

Post by taneq »

smaddox wrote: post #90
shuntress wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am familiar with that sentiment expressed through the phrase "nature abhors a vacuum"

The irony is that this phrase predates the Torricelli experiment, in which he used a glass vial and mercury to produce a vacuum, and the eventual discovery that the vast majority of nature is a vacuum (outside of the atmosphere of planets and stars).

It also predates attempts to use dewatering pumps in mines, leading to the snarky variant “nature abhors a vacuum, but only up to 32 feet.”

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

#299

Post by elihu »

spamizbad wrote: post #8

Very interesting to see a lower failure rate. Is it simply a function of possibly better thermals than your average datacenter? Less EMR?

From the article:

>The team is speculating that the greater reliability may be connected to the fact that there were no humans on board, and that nitrogen rather than oxygen was pumped into the capsule. > >"We think it has to do with this nitrogen atmosphere that reduces corrosion and is cool, and people not banging things around," Mr Cutler says.

Better cooling and isolation from all kinds of radiation seem like they'd also be beneficial.

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

#300

Post by Retric »

kortilla wrote: post #294
badRNG wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It increasingly seems that public businesses seem incapable of making long-term plans, even rather trivial ones, if the cost of ending the experiment results in immediate gains. The driving force is the single most important metric: this quarter's upcoming earnings report. Businesses that tend to place bets on multi-year investments are either privately held (e.g. SpaceX) or are participating in specific public/priva…

> the cost of ending the experiment results in immediate gains. This is oft-parroted without any hard evidence though. If it were true even broadly, most companies would be doing absolutely no R&D because all R&D is just cost in the near term.

Clearly companies can take on multi year projects like making a movie and even take on risks when doing so. They also do a lot of things called R&D with similar expectations of direct profits.

However, it’s not clear that Microsoft’s next version of windows for example is actual research rather than the software equivalent of making a movie. As such I think what people are talking about fundamental research not the kind of R&D which happens to qualify for a tax break but is mostly just the cost of doing business.

IMO, the line for what still qualifies for research is basically the DARPA self driving car challenge. Before the event it looked like basic research, afterward it looked like an engendering challenge to get there first. In 2004 nobody finished though several got close in 2005, in 2005 five teams finished and the race for commercial success was on.

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