Re:Project Natick: Microsoft's Underwater Data Center
by T-A on Monday February 01, 2016 @12:57AM
(#11010051)
My guess is they are more concerned with latency for real-time services used by millions in big cities, where land is expensive. Think VR servers.
Quick googling yields [1] datacenter land selling for more than $1 million per acre in SV and [2] Google's requirements for datacenter placement. The first four points listed are cheap electricity, carbon neutrality, lots of water, and large parcels of land; the 215 to 1200 acres mentioned in [2] would cost $240 million to $1.5 billion at the price quoted in [1]. Sealed containers anchored to the free sea floor, running on free wave energy and cooled with free sea water would be a very clever way to satisfy those requirements while staying close to the customers.
Quick googling yields [1] datacenter land selling for more than $1 million per acre in SV and [2] Google's requirements for datacenter placement. The first four points listed are cheap electricity, carbon neutrality, lots of water, and large parcels of land; the 215 to 1200 acres mentioned in [2] would cost $240 million to $1.5 billion at the price quoted in [1]. Sealed containers anchored to the free sea floor, running on free wave energy and cooled with free sea water would be a very clever way to satisfy those requirements while staying close to the customers.
[1] http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2015/07/24/equin...
[2] http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/google-data-center-faq-pa...