“Cloud computing” has been a buzzword for a few years now, it’s the term for when
software, data storage, and processing is handled remotely in a server somewhere rather
than on the local device you’re on.
Despite its lofty name though, it doesn’t take place up in some mystical cloud, but rather
inside a mundane data center somewhere on land.
That could one day change though, because software giant Microsoft thinks that the best
place for the cloud might actually be underwater.
On its face, it sounds like a ridiculous idea. High-end electronics and water go together
like cats and water.
But Microsoft thought the potential upsides were too good to pass up.
Firstly, almost half the world’s population lives within 100 kilometers off shore.
If data centers are sunk just off the coast, they can be in close proximity to population
centers, cutting down the physical distance data has to travel and thus reducing latency.
And if these data centers are made up of mass-produced watertight pods that are ready to be deployed
whenever demand calls for it, Microsoft estimates they could set one up in just 90 days.
By comparison, a land-based data center needs to account for local building codes, taxes,
climate, electricity connectivity, network connectivity, and so on, meaning building
one could take 18 months to two years.
Data centers on land also use a considerable amount of energy keeping all the electronics
cool.
Older data centers use mechanical cooling, basically heavy-duty air-conditioning, which
could use almost as much power as the servers themselves.
Newer centers use free-air cooling that relies on the outside air and evaporated water to
bring the energy use down, but they’re at the mercy of ambient air temperatures and
the water supply.
An underwater data center can use the nearby seawater for cooling, and if it’s deep enough
the water will be reliably cool year-round, even in the tropics.
Microsoft even envisions these centers powered by 100% renewable energy.
By harnessing the motion of waves or the flow of water as the tide moves in and out, the
servers could be freed from reliance on a grid that might fail.
Tidal energy, in particular, could be the most reliable source of energy, because what’s
more reliable than the tide?
With all these benefits in mind, Microsoft launched Project Natick in 2014.
By August 2015, they built a prototype pod with server racks inside and submerged it
off the coast of California.
The experiment ran for 105 days, and all the while the servers stayed as cool as those
in mechanically cooled data centers while using only 3% of the pod’s total energy
consumption.
Satisfied with the first test, Microsoft built a full-sized pod that’s as big as a shipping
container and submerged it in June of 2018.
The location they chose was by the Orkney Islands of north Scotland, which happens to
be the home of the European Marine Energy Centre, the world's largest test site
for tide and wave energy.
Microsoft plans to run the pod on the seafloor for years to test the logistical, environmental,
and economic viability of this novel idea.
Of course, if they drop it in the sea for years at a time, that means they can’t perform
maintenance on it if something breaks.
Microsoft spins this as a good thing, because if there’s no humans down there mucking
with the servers, they can’t break anything else either.
And because there are no humans inside the pod, Microsoft could remove as much moisture
as possible and fill it with nitrogen to keep connectors inside from corroding.
Now we just wait and see if the pod can stay water-tight, if renewable marine energy can
power it, and if the salt-water cooling system adapted from submarines can run for years
without barnacles fouling it up.
If the experiment goes smoothly, we may soon be browsing the web or playing video games
on servers tucked inside mass-produced pods sunk off our shores.
Thanks for watching, be sure to subscribe because we’ll tell you everything you wanted
to know about the internet, like in my other video about what the dang thing actually looks like.
The Natick pod was intentionally made the size of a shipping container so it would
be easy to transport anywhere in the world.
That’s all for now, I’ll see you next time on Seeker!