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

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

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not true.

They'll take a 400W 10GHz CPU over a 5mW 1 GHz CPU every time, if it generates better financial returns.

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

#312
post #299
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is this confusion coming from? Are you suggesting there won't be colder water around the data centre? Or just nitpicking for the sake of it? It looks like my original comment hit some HN ideological hot spot (unintentionally), but it's entirely uncontroversial scientifically.

> Where is this confusion coming from? Are you suggesting there won't be colder water around the data centre? If a fish is swimming in 24°C water, it can't simultaneously be swimming in 19°C water. Maybe its friend 10 meters away is swimming in 19°C water, but that doesn't help the first fish. Maybe that fish feels more comfortable in 24°C water, because it needs a certain body temperature to keep its internal proces…

I don't know whether this is feasible at the temperature gradients created by data centers, but it's not prohibited by physics. If there are chemical species in the water that are stable at 24 C and not 19 C, the fish can harvest these for chemical energy after they have traveled the ten meters.

This is probably more relevant at temperature gradients greater than 5C, but it's thermodynamically possible.

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

#314
post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Task for some more suited than me: turn transactions into protein representations, and every mining operation becomes a folding operation.

The problem with solving "real" problems instead of synthetic ones is that they aren't uniformly difficult, so clever people will game the system.

As long as gaming the system means solving a real problem, that would be a good thing right?

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

#315
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…

> Even if I'm off by a few orders of magnitude I'm not saying there is a problem with your calculations, but if you were just one order of magnitude off, then after 10 years that would be 1°C, which is a colossal amount. The main problem with global warming, as I understand it, is that 1 or 2 degrees change to the atmosphere would melt a huge amount of polar ice. I imagine that if the sea were increase in temperature…

[deleted]

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

#316
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…

> Even if I'm off by a few orders of magnitude I'm not saying there is a problem with your calculations, but if you were just one order of magnitude off, then after 10 years that would be 1°C, which is a colossal amount. The main problem with global warming, as I understand it, is that 1 or 2 degrees change to the atmosphere would melt a huge amount of polar ice. I imagine that if the sea were increase in temperature…

> then after 10 years that would be 1°C,

or 1000 years if off in the other direction

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

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because you can not convert heat alone into energy. You need a heat difference (something hot and something cold). And the efficiency of the conversion depends on the temperature difference.

Right, but if you’re putting it in a place that is naturally cold, you’re going to have a temperature differential you can then work with to recycle the heat, wouldn’t you? Obviously you’re going to be losing heat still, but you could reclaim some of that energy.

Yes, in theory you could do that, but the efficiency depends on the temperature difference. The higher a temperature difference you have, the better. The theoretical maximum efficiency of a heat engine is (Tmax-Tmin)/Tmax (temperature in Kelvin). So a few degrees is not going to result in anything usable. So to reclaim the energy, we need a large temperature difference.

But since the goal is to cool the datacenter, we want the temperature difference to be as small as possible.

Reclaiming energy from waste heat usually only pays off in industrial settings. If you have very hot steam, you can use it to power a steam turbine and generate electricity. But at lower temperatures, the efficiency is too low.

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

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Task for some more suited than me: turn transactions into protein representations, and every mining operation becomes a folding operation.

Here's the problem for me. These mining operations can be exploited to an extreme. Any scientist or professor with knowledge in protein representations will have an unfair advantage over normal miners. This gap will be even larger than the hashpower gaps we see between ASICs and "normal" miners in bitcoin, litecoin, etc because scientists will have access to not only hardware but also extremely specific domain knowle…

Isn't that good though? The scientists who make new discoveries get paid to do so, rather than just some random person with a gpu in their closet?

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

#319
post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with solving "real" problems instead of synthetic ones is that they aren't uniformly difficult, so clever people will game the system.

As long as gaming the system means solving a real problem, that would be a good thing right?

Not if you want the currency to replace traditional currencies in the future.

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

#320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as gaming the system means solving a real problem, that would be a good thing right?

Not if you want the currency to replace traditional currencies in the future.

Presumably that wouldn't be a goal for such things. You could just as easily call them "coolness points" and use them as badges of distinction. That alone could motivate participation. God knows it works for Reddit.
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