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

bbc.com

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

#331

Post by chc »

madrox wrote: post #329
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…

This has come up a number of times...probably because of the studies[1] over the last year or so. It's convenient to hit bitcoin on this front because it's conceivable to estimate its energy footprint. What I find frustrating is that we look at no other segment of tech this way. We never discuss the energy consumption of video games or the stock market. How can we say if this is very bad if we have nothing to compare…

The assumption is that there is no real benefit to the energy expenditure Bitcoin demands. This isn't true for video games (entertainment is generally considered to be worth a decent amount of resources for the psychological benefits it brings) or the stock market (it's basically the heart of our economy).

If you don't share these assumptions, you'll come to a different conclusion. But I don't think it's hypocrisy.

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

#332

Post by hinkley »

Nican wrote: post #81
choonway wrote: post #74

I don't think this is done for the sake of efficiency, but rather latency. For example, if you had a underwater data center that sat in the middle of the atlantic ocean in between new york and london, you could do some serious trading with that capability.

Even in the coast of large cities, like NYC or Boston. The real state cost of having a data center in those regions are high, but it would be much cheaper to just hide your servers underwater, near where your users are.

So you’re going to put servers in a public waterway and you don’t think the US Government is going to have a word with you about it?

You’re going to pay even if it doesn’t have a street address.

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

#333

Post by urda »

wellboy wrote: post #330
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…

Or focus on cryptocurrencies that are much more scalable and decentralized than Bitcoin and don't use Proof of work as a consensus mechanism, such as 1. Skycoin, Web of Trust 2. Iota, Tangle 3. Aeternity and soon alsk Ethereum with PoS/PoW hybrid

Or maybe start to focus on how cryptocurrencies just aren't working, are a waste of precious energy, and don't currently have real value outside of those that hold it and trade it.

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

#334

Post by d0lph »

criley2 wrote: post #249
d0lph wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, diamonds just cost human lives.

"Right, diamonds just cost human lives." If we're going to play that game, where did the electricity come from for your watt-hour-sucking GPU? A coal plant? How many died mining it? How many got life long illness or injury/disability mining it? How much poverty did the abusive mining industry inflict on poor dependent communities? How many hundreds of thousands of people were affected by it's emissions? How many thou…

I like nuclear, it's the obvious choice, and incredibly safe.

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

"Uranium mining in the United States produced 3,303,977 pounds (1,498,659 kg) of U3O8 (1271 tonnes of uranium) in 2015"

The US. I wasn't aware there were a significant number of uranium mining deaths? I also assume the US can process it and safely dispose of the waste. No despotic countries of course.

China is a tough one though, I don't know how we justify it.

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

#335

Post by madrox »

chc wrote: post #331
madrox wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has come up a number of times...probably because of the studies[1] over the last year or so. It's convenient to hit bitcoin on this front because it's conceivable to estimate its energy footprint. What I find frustrating is that we look at no other segment of tech this way. We never discuss the energy consumption of video games or the stock market. How can we say if this is very bad if we have nothing to compare…

The assumption is that there is no real benefit to the energy expenditure Bitcoin demands. This isn't true for video games (entertainment is generally considered to be worth a decent amount of resources for the psychological benefits it brings) or the stock market (it's basically the heart of our economy). If you don't share these assumptions, you'll come to a different conclusion. But I don't think it's hypocrisy.

Exactly, discussing this requires the assumption that bitcoin has little value, instead of directly discussing its value. It may not be hypocrisy, but it's certainly fallacious. It only reinforces existing beliefs in the merit/demerit of bitcoin.

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

#336

Post by michaelscott »

rtkwe wrote: post #300
thatcat wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming gold / physicalvaluestores can be spent without shipping cost and exchange fees and that the volume traded reaches 0 in your comparison. Is the volume of any valuestore ever 0? Also mining doesn't have to be continuious, it's reward varies with volume to adjust the rate mined so you only wait a looong time if suddenly transaction volume spikes.

> You're assuming gold / physicalvaluestores can be spent without shipping cost and exchange fees and that the volume traded reaches 0 in your comparison. Is the volume of any valuestore ever 0? That's why gold isn't a currency there are definite transaction costs but the whole of the costs of transporting gold spent isn't required for my gold to be spent. With BTC the whole network supports all transactions and all…

> That's why gold isn't a currency there are definite transaction costs but the whole of the costs of transporting gold spent isn't required for my gold to be spent.

Whole costs for transporting gold are definitely required to be spent... the gold must be transported from one owner's location to another, unless the escrow between the two parties is the same or you're actually trading ETFs.

> With BTC the whole network supports all transactions and all transactions require the mining network for validation.

This is true for the network as a whole, but not any given transaction. Such a model would mean that the network is topologically fully connected, which would in turn mean that it'd be orders of magnitude slower than it already is.

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

#337

Post by teachrdan »

naravara wrote: post #324
masklinn wrote: post #53

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…

>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. Seems a shame to let all that heat go to waste. Surely we put that waste heat to use and a distillery or desalinization plant or som…

Desalination isn't a bad idea, but it does produce large quantities of waste brine, among other things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination#Environmental

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

#338

Post by adrianmonk »

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.

It's tough in hot climates. There's plenty of heat to go around. And there are lots of people who live in hot climates who, for latency reasons, need servers near them.

Thus there are kind of two cases to solve for. You can stick a data center in Northern Europe, and that heat might be valuable enough that your approach could be to try to reclaim it. If you stick a data center in Singapore, you'd better focus on generating less heat in the first place or finding better ways to get rid of it.

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

#339

Post by foobarchu »

Moter8 wrote: post #95
masklinn wrote: post #53

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

My understanding is that MS took that to heart on this second round. The article claimed they choose Orkney as the site of the new datacenter precisely because they have an excess of renewable energy.

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

#340

Post by scruple »

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!

Very recently I was able to get a bootlooping N5X to temporarily boot, long enough to recover pictures, by putting it in to the freezer for a couple of hours. Some folks have (claimed to have) had long term success from freezing the bootlooping devices.
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