China Turns on the World's First Underwater Data Center

[highplainsdem]

Source: Gizmodo

The project is the work of HiCloud Technology and China Communications Construction and is located about six miles off the coast of Shanghai’s Lin-gang Special Area, a region that has been designated for high-tech projects and manufacturing. The data center, which cost about $226 million to build, sits about 30 feet below the surface of the ocean. It’s also really more of a proof-of-concept project than a meaningful addition to the country’s capacity, as its capacity maxes out at 24 megawatts—significantly smaller than the gigawatt facilities that are being built elsewhere to support the growing demands of artificial intelligence.

According to the Chinese government, the data center will reduce power consumption by about one-fifth compared to data centers on land. That’s because it is pulling most of its power from an offshore wind farm and is using the natural cooling effects of being submerged in the ocean to counteract some of the typical cooling needs that data centers have.

Any sort of minimization of the environmental impact of data centers is certainly welcome. According to a report published this week by the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, the water consumption of data centers could reach 9.3 trillion liters by 2030, which is the equivalent to the water needs of all of sub-Saharan Africa. (An even more effective way to reduce the impact of data centers by 2030 would be to simply stop building them.)

That said, it’s not exactly clear that this experiment will be an improvement over ground-bound data centers. A similar underwater data center project proposed off the coast of California ran into environmental hurdles as scientists warned that the heat generated from such a facility could trigger toxic algae blooms or create conditions that would hurt the local wildlife, according to a report from Wired. Studies on the potential impact of such underwater projects have also warned of the risk that unpredictable weather events like ocean heatwaves could result in mass deaths of wildlife, potentially suffocating animals in de-oxygenated water.

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Read more: https://gizmodo.com/china-turns-on-the-worlds-first-underwater-data-center-2000769502

[crud]

1. Hey...it'll be just ahhh fine

...riiiight

[wcmagumba]

2. This whole idea sounds kind of dumb...data centers underwater? I like my datacenter on land, actually I don't like them.

[SheltieLover]

3. Leave. The. Ocean. Alone!

[mopinko]

6. like it's not heating up fast enough.

🙄🙄🙄🤬🤬

[SheltieLover]

7. Exactly!

WTF do we have to share such a lovely planet with such harlots?

[Jerry2144]

4. I first read it as an underwear datacenter

sounds uncomfortable.

[OC375]

5. Use the ocean to cool heat the ocean

Dumb.

[kimbutgar]

8. Nothing like heating up the ocean and destroying its sealife , reefs, corals and ocean environments.