Comment by davidgerard
Comment by davidgerard 2 days ago
that was in 2020, and so here in 2025 MS has underwater data centres around the world!
wait, no it doesn't. why would that be, d'you think
Comment by davidgerard 2 days ago
that was in 2020, and so here in 2025 MS has underwater data centres around the world!
wait, no it doesn't. why would that be, d'you think
yep, just found Microsoft admitting precisely that in 2024: https://www.itpro.com/infrastructure/data-centres/microsoft-...
Cooling was great! Everything else sucked.
DCs in space will have all the stuff that sucked, but cooling will suck too.
Because despite being more reliable and energy efficient the other costs associated with it were higher. It is one thing to dunk 14.3m L x 12.7m D in the ocean for a 240 kW setup in the ocean. It is another to scale that up to a "full scale" data center that is about 200x larger that has additional electrical supply challenges.
Let's say that pod needs to be serviced once every two years. That means having a ship that services one pod every 3 days when scaled up.
From the standpoint of a single pod data center and "does this work?" - the answer is "yes, it works better than we thought it would." From the standpoint of "can we scale this to a full data center?" - the answer is "we'd need a ship servicing a twice a week, with the logistics that entails for the ship (and backup ship)." That second part becomes less practical compared to building a data center on terra firma where it's much easier to walk into a building to service it and hook up the power.