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>Island became a magnet for the practice once miners figured out that the place is very cold and that electricity there -- geothermal and hydropower -- costs a

>Island became a magnet for the practice once miners figured out that the place is very cold and that electricity there -- geothermal and hydropower -- costs a lot less ... This is the next big frontier in data center advancement, imo -- submerged/frigid data center installations. Microsoft's already been playing around with a submersible data center under a project codenamed 'Natick,' while piggybacking off of its extreme portability and flexibility in terms of resources toward R&D, and it's just getting started. Google has already announced plans to do the same. [1] It also makes sense from a scale/growth standpoint as 50% of earth's population lives within 2 hour drive from their respective coastlines. [2] [0] https://natick.research.microsoft.com/ https://natick.research.microsoft.com/ [1] https://www.citylab.com/life/2016/02/microsoft-cloud-ocean-project-natick/459318/ https://www.citylab.com/life/2016/02/microsoft-cloud-ocean-p... [2] http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2011/10/18/how-many-people-live-near-the/ http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2011/10/18/how-many-people...

stcredzero 8y ago
>Island became a magnet for the practice once miners figured out that the place is very cold and that electricity there -- geothermal and hydropower -- costs a lot less ... Issac Arthur speculates that Titan may become a center of cryogenic industry and computing in the late 21st century. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdpRxGjtCo0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdpRxGjtCo0 Given that immigrants tend to settle in places that resemble their home country, I wonder if Titan might develop an ex-pat Icelandic community? (Isolated. Rugged. Cold. Beautiful in a literal otherworldly sense.) If you're going to have a submersible data center, you probably want it to be a partially submersible spar buoy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spar_buoy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spar_buoy This gives you all of the benefits of submersion, but makes access easier. It also makes the installation immune to waves, especially rogue waves. So what else involves mooring lots of spar buoys off shore? Offshore wind farms.
- ythn 8y ago
  > Issac Arthur speculates that Titan may become a center of cryogenic industry and computing in the late 21st century. More like the late 31st century
  - jstanley 8y ago
    At the start of the 20th century heavier-than-air flight wasn't possible. By the end of the 20th century we'd put people on the moon, and brought them back alive, multiple times. Inter-continental flight became so routine that it's not even notable. I wouldn't underestimate the rate of technological progress.
    - spraak 8y ago
      We don't know if it grows logarithmicly or exponentially, though
      - stcredzero 8y ago
        If we go by wealth generated and population supported, it would appear to go exponentially.
    - SideburnsOfDoom 8y ago
      > By the end of the 20th century we'd put people on the moon, and brought them back alive multiple time ... I wouldn't underestimate the rate of technological progress. That was by 1972 (1). 46 years ago. Since then, no progress on this front. Not even a repeat. This is not an accelerating rate. 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_17 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_17
      - stcredzero 8y ago
        Not everything can be usefully measured with one easy metric, as in Moore's Law. In the case of something like colonization, the proper metrics are economic, not technological benchmarks. You could just as well cherry pick from The Age of Discovery, say from 1260 to 1360 and make the same statement: "X years ago. Since then, no progress on this front. Not even a repeat. This is not an accelerating rate." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Discovery#Medieval_travel_(1241%E2%80%931438) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Discovery#Medieval_trav... However, if you look at metrics of economic activity across spans 200, 400, and 600 years after that, you get a far different picture. So basically, your point is intellectually bankrupt. It's based on too little data and uses an entirely inadequate metric.
- jandrese 8y ago
  > Issac Arthur speculates that Titan may become a center of cryogenic industry and computing in the late 21st century Who the hell wants to ship stuff 9AU plus or minus just to freeze it? Why not just build a sun shield in orbit with a bunch of black body radiators on the back? Or you know, use conventional refrigeration on Earth. Pretty much anything is better than shipping it out or back from Saturn.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    Who the hell wants to ship stuff 9AU plus or minus just to freeze it? No one. So if you're already out near Titan delta-V wise, Titan is the best place with lots of resources. Why not just build a sun shield in orbit with a bunch of black body radiators on the back? That would work. However, the cooling will be of much greater value if it's near other things of value. Or you know, use conventional refrigeration on Earth. Which will happen a lot, because there are lots of things of value on Earth. Pretty much anything is better than shipping it out or back from Saturn. If you're in the outer solar system, then pretty much anything is better than shipping it from Earth.
    - jandrese 8y ago
      If you are in the outer solar system you won't have trouble freezing anything. "Cyrogenic industry" is freezing stuff. In the outer solar system that is like trying to sell sand at the beach. It makes a lot more sense to talk about Titan as the gas station of the outer Solar System. Exporting methane for all of the rockets flying around doing stuff.
      - stcredzero 8y ago
        If you are in the outer solar system you won't have trouble freezing anything. It's not freezing things, it's cooling things which is key. At a random point in the outer solar system, to have a lot of cooling power, you need to build huge radiators. You need to supply coolant to flow through those radiators. On Titan, you just pump fluid from a lake. "Cyrogenic industry" is freezing stuff. Only in the simpleton view. Cryogenic industry is doing stuff that requires low temperatures. In the outer solar system that is like trying to sell sand at the beach. Industry doesn't happen at the beach. It happens someplace where there is easy shipment of resources and a source of labor. It makes a lot more sense to talk about Titan as the gas station of the outer Solar System. Exporting methane for all of the rockets flying around doing stuff. Which means that there will be industrial infrastructure there for dealing with methane. That in turn means that other uses for that methane will have an economic leg up.
jankeymeulen 8y ago
> Google has announced plans to do the same. Citation needed? IMHO putting a datacentre under water is a horrible idea, why not pump the water 10 meters higher and cool a DC near the shoreline?
- abhiminator 8y ago
  >why not pump the water 10 meters higher and cool a DC near the shoreline? Google's already doing that -- http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2010/09/15/google-using-sea-water-to-cool-finland-project http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2010/09/15/googl... As for the Google's undersea data center plans, I'm unable to find a citation for you at the moment, but I'm fairly certain that it's in the works.
  - tuukkah 8y ago
    That sea water cooling DC recently became available as the GCP region europe-north1: "Our high-tech cooling system, which uses sea water from the Gulf of Finland, reduces energy use and is the first of its kind." https://cloud.google.com/about/locations/finland/ https://cloud.google.com/about/locations/finland/
- jandrese 8y ago
  Exactly. Full submersion seems to add a lot of complication for little gain over just submersing your heat exchangers. I guess you can avoid some moving parts (and heat generation) by letting wave action circulate your cooling fluid, but that's a small fraction of the energy needed to run a datacenter. The tradeoff is the need for watertight seals all around your datacenter (including the doors and cable access), dealing with corrosion over a larger surface area, accessibility problems, dealing with marine life (barnacles!), anchoring it against storms, environmental impact, and so on. IMHO it is a silly idea and won't prove practical in the long run.
- Const-me 8y ago
  Continuously pumping sea water is expensive to maintain, the primary reason being marine biology. I once saw mussels grew inside a boat engine. Second reason, land on shorelines is expensive. Many people dream about living on a seaside (except for people who did, practically speaking the idea is not that great, humidity, noise). Also many other businesses require shorelines, beaches, marinas, ports.
hacker_9 8y ago
Apart from water and electronics don't mix. Think how easy it would be to sabotage an underwater data centre, you only need a single hole and let the ocean do the rest. Not to mention the maintenance nightmare of getting in and out of the place. The risks outweigh the benefits.

stcredzero 8y ago

>Island became a magnet for the practice once miners figured out that the place is very cold and that electricity there -- geothermal and hydropower -- costs a lot less ... Issac Arthur speculates that Titan may become a center of cryogenic industry and computing in the late 21st century. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdpRxGjtCo0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdpRxGjtCo0 Given that immigrants tend to settle in places that resemble their home country, I wonder if Titan might develop an ex-pat Icelandic community? (Isolated. Rugged. Cold. Beautiful in a literal otherworldly sense.) If you're going to have a submersible data center, you probably want it to be a partially submersible spar buoy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spar_buoy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spar_buoy This gives you all of the benefits of submersion, but makes access easier. It also makes the installation immune to waves, especially rogue waves. So what else involves mooring lots of spar buoys off shore? Offshore wind farms.

ythn 8y ago
> Issac Arthur speculates that Titan may become a center of cryogenic industry and computing in the late 21st century. More like the late 31st century
- jstanley 8y ago
  At the start of the 20th century heavier-than-air flight wasn't possible. By the end of the 20th century we'd put people on the moon, and brought them back alive, multiple times. Inter-continental flight became so routine that it's not even notable. I wouldn't underestimate the rate of technological progress.
  - spraak 8y ago
    We don't know if it grows logarithmicly or exponentially, though
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      If we go by wealth generated and population supported, it would appear to go exponentially.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 8y ago
    > By the end of the 20th century we'd put people on the moon, and brought them back alive multiple time ... I wouldn't underestimate the rate of technological progress. That was by 1972 (1). 46 years ago. Since then, no progress on this front. Not even a repeat. This is not an accelerating rate. 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_17 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_17
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      Not everything can be usefully measured with one easy metric, as in Moore's Law. In the case of something like colonization, the proper metrics are economic, not technological benchmarks. You could just as well cherry pick from The Age of Discovery, say from 1260 to 1360 and make the same statement: "X years ago. Since then, no progress on this front. Not even a repeat. This is not an accelerating rate." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Discovery#Medieval_travel_(1241%E2%80%931438) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Discovery#Medieval_trav... However, if you look at metrics of economic activity across spans 200, 400, and 600 years after that, you get a far different picture. So basically, your point is intellectually bankrupt. It's based on too little data and uses an entirely inadequate metric.
jandrese 8y ago
> Issac Arthur speculates that Titan may become a center of cryogenic industry and computing in the late 21st century Who the hell wants to ship stuff 9AU plus or minus just to freeze it? Why not just build a sun shield in orbit with a bunch of black body radiators on the back? Or you know, use conventional refrigeration on Earth. Pretty much anything is better than shipping it out or back from Saturn.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  Who the hell wants to ship stuff 9AU plus or minus just to freeze it? No one. So if you're already out near Titan delta-V wise, Titan is the best place with lots of resources. Why not just build a sun shield in orbit with a bunch of black body radiators on the back? That would work. However, the cooling will be of much greater value if it's near other things of value. Or you know, use conventional refrigeration on Earth. Which will happen a lot, because there are lots of things of value on Earth. Pretty much anything is better than shipping it out or back from Saturn. If you're in the outer solar system, then pretty much anything is better than shipping it from Earth.
  - jandrese 8y ago
    If you are in the outer solar system you won't have trouble freezing anything. "Cyrogenic industry" is freezing stuff. In the outer solar system that is like trying to sell sand at the beach. It makes a lot more sense to talk about Titan as the gas station of the outer Solar System. Exporting methane for all of the rockets flying around doing stuff.
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      If you are in the outer solar system you won't have trouble freezing anything. It's not freezing things, it's cooling things which is key. At a random point in the outer solar system, to have a lot of cooling power, you need to build huge radiators. You need to supply coolant to flow through those radiators. On Titan, you just pump fluid from a lake. "Cyrogenic industry" is freezing stuff. Only in the simpleton view. Cryogenic industry is doing stuff that requires low temperatures. In the outer solar system that is like trying to sell sand at the beach. Industry doesn't happen at the beach. It happens someplace where there is easy shipment of resources and a source of labor. It makes a lot more sense to talk about Titan as the gas station of the outer Solar System. Exporting methane for all of the rockets flying around doing stuff. Which means that there will be industrial infrastructure there for dealing with methane. That in turn means that other uses for that methane will have an economic leg up.

jankeymeulen 8y ago

> Google has announced plans to do the same. Citation needed? IMHO putting a datacentre under water is a horrible idea, why not pump the water 10 meters higher and cool a DC near the shoreline?

abhiminator 8y ago
>why not pump the water 10 meters higher and cool a DC near the shoreline? Google's already doing that -- http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2010/09/15/google-using-sea-water-to-cool-finland-project http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2010/09/15/googl... As for the Google's undersea data center plans, I'm unable to find a citation for you at the moment, but I'm fairly certain that it's in the works.
- tuukkah 8y ago
  That sea water cooling DC recently became available as the GCP region europe-north1: "Our high-tech cooling system, which uses sea water from the Gulf of Finland, reduces energy use and is the first of its kind." https://cloud.google.com/about/locations/finland/ https://cloud.google.com/about/locations/finland/
jandrese 8y ago
Exactly. Full submersion seems to add a lot of complication for little gain over just submersing your heat exchangers. I guess you can avoid some moving parts (and heat generation) by letting wave action circulate your cooling fluid, but that's a small fraction of the energy needed to run a datacenter. The tradeoff is the need for watertight seals all around your datacenter (including the doors and cable access), dealing with corrosion over a larger surface area, accessibility problems, dealing with marine life (barnacles!), anchoring it against storms, environmental impact, and so on. IMHO it is a silly idea and won't prove practical in the long run.
Const-me 8y ago
Continuously pumping sea water is expensive to maintain, the primary reason being marine biology. I once saw mussels grew inside a boat engine. Second reason, land on shorelines is expensive. Many people dream about living on a seaside (except for people who did, practically speaking the idea is not that great, humidity, noise). Also many other businesses require shorelines, beaches, marinas, ports.

hacker_9 8y ago

Apart from water and electronics don't mix. Think how easy it would be to sabotage an underwater data centre, you only need a single hole and let the ocean do the rest. Not to mention the maintenance nightmare of getting in and out of the place. The risks outweigh the benefits.