Something very interesting just happened in China, and unsurprisingly, it involves data centers and green energy.
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China has announced the completion of the first phase of an underwater data center project, which will be powered by wind turbines and rely on seawater for cooling.
The advantages of placing a data center beneath the ocean surface are twofold — no electricity is needed for cooling the servers, and because overall power consumption is significantly lower without it, the facility can be supplied entirely by nearby wind turbines.
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Microsoft ran a similar experiment in 2018 that lasted roughly two years.
The findings demonstrated exceptionally high server efficiency, as the sealed, stable environment the servers operated in reduced failures by a considerable margin.
The main challenge of underwater server deployment is that repairs are nearly impossible, so the systems are designed from the outset to require zero maintenance that demands physical access.
The second challenge is the high cost of development and equipment.
The sealed containers, ruggedized hardware, and submarine cables are extremely expensive, and the elevated cost relative to a conventional data center deters companies from adopting the solution.
A significant scale-up of this type of construction could improve the solutions and drive costs down, and combined with years of electricity cost savings, the approach may become increasingly economical and worthwhile.
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👋 Hi, I'm Shlomo Strauss — follow me for more interesting content on science and technology.