Microsoft’s Underwater Data Centers could be the future

Have you ever watercooled a computer system? What if we could do that on a massive scale? Data centers are essentially racks upon racks of servers working 24/7. For those unaware about how most technology works, this creates a lot of heat. It cost an astronomical amount to keep large data farms cool enough to operate, and if they get too hot, users experience crashes on their favorite websites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. New Experiences and Technologies (NExT) and Jules Verne of Microsoft believed the answer to these growing heating issues lies at the bottom of the sea.

The ocean is a large place, which goes without saying, but having so much cool water in one place could prove very useful to data centers. Not only would this cool the equipment needed to run these data centers, but Microsoft seeks to further utilize this deep blue Sci-fi idea with turbines or a tidal energy system to also power the entire data center, making it self-sufficient. It should also be noted that Microsoft took special care in also measuring temperature changes due to their experiment and happily report that there was “No heating of the marine environment beyond a few inches from the vessel.” According to Dr. Peter Lee, Corporate vice president for Microsoft Research and the NExT organization.

Another unforeseen advantage to these Sea Lab-like is internet speed. Today, server farms are built in the middle of nowhere due to their space requirement. It goes without saying that nobody lives in the middle of nowhere, so the ping between a connection request and approval takes however long it takes data to travel from California to the middle of a desert for example. A number of America’s most populated cities lie close to an ocean. If these data centers are off the coast of one of these cities, the ping will be much shorter.

This project started with trial runs that included a 105-day trial with an eight foot steel capsule submerged in 30 feet of water in the Pacific Ocean. The trial went off swimmingly, readying Microsoft for the real deal. Sensors were placed on the capsule to test various sensors that measure things such as water pressure, leak events, humidity, etc. With a successful trial run, they plan to sink capsules three times in size into the ocean beginning next year.

An interesting fact for GameZone fans: Their first prototype was named Leona Philpot, a character of Halo fame.