Microsoft Discontinues Use Of The Sea Floor For Data Centers
Software giant Microsoft has opted to bid farewell to its quest of using the seabed for data centers.
The company first made headlines in the year 2018 when it sank huge tubes that went up to 14.3 meters in length and 12.7 meters in width. The goal here was to house so many data centers located on the North Sea floor called Project Natick.
The initiative was designed to explore how much potential the oceans had in regards to being a viable destination for data centers. This was fueled by the likes of wind and solar taken from plants present onshore and many were in awe of this tube-shaped center for data storage.
Moreover, it was believed to be very powerful in terms of featuring several thousands of high-end PCs and would feature a lot of storage capacity for nearly 5 million full-length films.
Reports after two years shed light on how the underwater conditions were favorable for those having computers. Experts even highlighted how it could be kept separate from humans allowing data centers to get filled with nitrogen instead of the usual oxygen with the right type of maintenance taking center stage.
The end result was huge underwater data centers that experienced low failure rates when compared to their land counterparts. But despite this, Microsoft has opted to pull the plug on the project featuring subsea data centers.
Cloud services are now being provided by many tech giants and they are giving rise to a major demand for expansion of networks featuring data centers that tends to increase with time.
As per another report, the combined energy demand from these data centers is said to double what it is right now. Hence by the year 2026, experts are predicting some major increases.
On the other front, energy consumption is expected to increase from 460 TWh to 1050 TWh which is a figure that’s in comparison to that seen with Japan.
Today, so many energy-starved data centers are leading to serious concerns regarding their impacts linked to climate change. Remember, the expansion linked to AI also needs huge computational fuel to support the creation of data centers but still activists are asking for more information regarding clean energy as sustainability is the main or leading concern at this moment.
Image: Microsoft / YT
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