News China's begins building underwater data center with performance equal to 6 million PCs — aims to save nearly ten soccer fields of land and 122 mill...

[Admin]

China Central Television reports that China has added another data module to the country's commercial underwater data center (UDC) off Hainan Island.

China's begins building underwater data center with performance equal to 6 million PCs — aims to save nearly ten soccer fields of land and 122 mill... : Read more

 

[randyh121]

Man I wish I could do more business with Chinese companies to be involved with projects like this.

 

[COLGeek]

You have to admit, this is pretty "cool".

 

[RodroX]

Wonder whats the cost for the ocean creatures and plants around it?

 

[hotaru.hino]

Wonder whats the cost for the ocean creatures and plants around it?

Likely no real effect once you get a short distance away from them, if any at all.

As a point of reference, a study on effects of coastal nuclear power that discharges their heated cooling water back to the ocean found there was some influence up to 3km, but the temperature difference between the water beyond 3km and the water from 0.5km from the discharge point was about 1-2C. And the amount of thermal energy being output from a nuclear plant will far exceed that of a data center.

 

[bit_user]

There's that old joke about boiling the oceans... at least, it seemed like a joke, at the time!
: O

 

[bit_user]

Man I wish I could do more business with Chinese companies to be involved with projects like this.

I think China has never wanted to partner with outsiders, unless you have some technology or resources they don't. Even then, you're on borrowed time.

As the article points out Microsoft has been working on this for a decade, already. Did you ever try to do business with them?

Microsoft finds underwater datacenters are reliable, practical and use energy sustainably - Source

Microsoft retrieved the Northern Isles underwater datacenter from the seafloor off Scotland's Orkney Islands. Project Natick is proving the concept of underwater datacenters is feasible as well as logistically, environmentally and economically practical.

news.microsoft.com

Not sure if I'm imagining this, but I think even Google might've "dipped their toe in the water"!
; )

 

[bit_user]

Likely no real effect once you get a short distance away from them, if any at all.

No way. Plenty of research has been done on the effects of thermal effluent from power plants (though mostly in rivers, I think). It's not harmless.

As a point of reference, a study on effects of coastal nuclear power that discharges their heated cooling water back to the ocean

Okay, that's one paper. Did you do a literature survey, or just pick the first hit that said what you wanted to hear?

Also, if you look at where that paper's authors work, we should be skeptical about what kind of bias they might have. With one being from the Ministry of Natural Resources, I think it's unlikely they'd produce a paper finding that it's particularly harmful.

In case people want to do their own research:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=thermal+effluent+effects​

And the amount of thermal energy being output from a nuclear plant will far exceed that of a data center.

Datacenter energy usage is currently on an exponential growth curve. How long before we see datacenters integrated with their own nuclear plants? If you can "solve" the cooling problem, I think it's probably not long.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Global-electricity-demand-of-data-centers-2010-2030_fig2_275653947

With that said, a datacenter is going to have an environmental impact, no matter where you put it. I'm still skeptical this is the best option. Wherever you put them, I think improving computational efficiency needs to be the top priority.

What strikes me as weird about the idea is that technology changes so rapidly - I think the typical upgrade cycle for datacenters is around 3-4 years. Most server components and equipment are only warrantied for 5 years, so that should be the practical maximum. However, the article highlights how troublesome and presumably expensive it is to raise and lower the units. Maybe if you build it with enough redundancy that it doesn't need regular service, then it's still viable just to raise & service each module every 3.5 years or so?

If you compare AI hardware to 3.5 years ago, it's even worse. Back then, Nvidia's V100 still ruled the roost. Seems like the upgrade cycle for AI hardware is probably more like 2 years.

 

[gg83]

It will catch fire just like there flagship sea vessel just did. Lmao

 

[Order 66]

I think Microsoft has already started doing something like this, IIRC.

There's that old joke about boiling the oceans... at least, it seemed like a joke, at the time!
: O

I know you are joking, but I don't think it is possible to boil the oceans with heat from underwater data centers unless there are an absurd number of them. The ocean is just so massive that even running full load all the time, even several underwater data centers would take years to saturate the entire ocean with heat enough to raise the temperature even slightly, let alone boil them.

 

[bit_user]

I know you are joking, but I don't think it is possible to boil the oceans with heat from underwater data centers

If you extrapolate the trend in data center energy consumption, it would be enough to boil the oceans in something like a 100 years. Obviously, the trend would break down well before then, but that's the joke. It does highlight the fact that something(s) need to change.

I linked this above, but I know people don't follow links. I'd have embedded the image, but they don't allow it and I was too lazy to re-upload it. Well, here you go:

​

​

Caveats: the data is from 2015 and I haven't fit the curve to see where it actually lands in 100 years, but it'd be a fictitious number anyhow.