this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
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Technology

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Who else foresees environmental problems with this later down the line? (news.microsoft.com)
submitted 1 year ago by flashgnash@lemm.ee to c/technology@beehaw.org
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Microsoft are looking at putting datacenters under the ocean, which sounds like a really good idea to cool them but I can’t help but think a couple decades from now it’s going to start causing us problems

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[–] CaptainAniki@lemmy.flight-crew.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Right but you've got to remember that these are off the shelf computers so they need cabling and wires, fans, all manner of drives that will fail, connections to the outside. Are they cooling the CPUs with saltwater or just the cooling equipment? Because either way is either risky via corrosion or just as inefficient, now with the added complication of having everything at the mercy of N, underwater.

Again, this whole thing just screams like greenwashing horseshit and the fact that there's been no update for half a decade leads me to believe that the project was a failure.

[–] AdminWorker@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago

Ehh, it could sound that way (green washing). I remember an article from 1 or 2 years ago where Microsoft did a "pilot" test of this and the general consensus is that in a datacenter

  • while you fix part a you break part b of the identical server next to it.
  • Moore's law means that every 5 years or so you spend more on electricity and storage than you would for the smaller more efficient hardware
  • having 0 human interaction and 0 added dust and 0 oxygen and the ocean at 40 decrees farenheight meant that no additional cooling required. (Maybe some cpu airflow to the external 40° air)

Time (and investments) will tell if this is the solution to costly land based air heat pumps to cool datacenters with human interactions.