Heat Sink Sunk

Abstract

This article explores various innovative ways that technology companies are working upon to deal with the large amount of heat of their big data centers. Microsoft’s research and development team is working on designing and building of an underwater data center. Researchers believe that underwater data centers might have power, construction, and performance advantages as well. Berkeley’s National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) recycles its chilled water. NERSC uses air to chill the data center and cooler-running components, such as disk drives, routers, and network servers. With the growing efficiency of data centers, better cooling might not be enough to make underwater operations worthwhile. But cooling is only one of the advantages that Microsoft sees in submerging its data centers. Submersibles also simplify deployment. Microsoft used an underwater cable connected to the electrical grid to power Leona Philpot, a submersible data center. In the future, it may reduce costs through renewable energy, combined with on-site energy storage and backup power from the grid.