Under water data centre being developed by Microsoft

Walms · February 22, 2017

Source http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/1/10883866/microsoft-underwater-data-centers

Quote

Placing data centers underwater not only helps keep their contents cool, but also has logistical advantages. Microsoft points out that half of the world's population lives within 200 kilometers of the ocean, making subsea systems potentially easier to deploy when extra capacity is needed

Edit: that's an old link. There is a newer article here http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/want-an-energyefficient-data-center-build-it-underwater#.WK1MXcjgOIs.hackernews

sorry I thought the verge presented it bettter, didn't think to check the date.

Edited February 22, 2017 by Walms
Explain why I linked an old article

Tieox · February 22, 2017

@LinusTech time to up your water cooling game.

P4ZD4 · February 22, 2017

That's reeeeeeeeeally old news

Edit -

xAcid9 · February 22, 2017

so they want to increase sea temp as well?

Tieox · February 22, 2017

1 minute ago, xAcid9 said:

so they want to increase sea temp as well?

Be interesting if they added RGB too.

Droidbot · February 22, 2017

6 minutes ago, Kierax said:

Be interesting if they added RGB too.

nah, they need to make the helium inside RGB and put strips on the racks

Walms · February 22, 2017

9 minutes ago, P4ZD4 said:

That's reeeeeeeeeally old news

Edit -

You're very correct sorry I should have linked the newer story http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/want-an-energyefficient-data-center-build-it-underwater#.WK1MXcjgOIs.hackernews

Tieox · February 22, 2017

21 minutes ago, Droidbot said:

nah, they need to make the helium inside RGB and put strips on the racks

And have the whole thing surrounded by dolphins in ninja dive suits with RGB fins. Could make it the ultimate geek attraction

The Benjamins · February 22, 2017

30 minutes ago, xAcid9 said:

so they want to increase sea temp as well?

It may increase the temperature of the water near by by a degree but it will not effect the whole sea. It is like adding a cup of hot water to a pool.

zMeul · February 22, 2017

accelerating global warming I see .. oh well

zMeul · February 22, 2017

15 minutes ago, The Benjamins said:

It may increase the temperature of the water near by by a degree but it will not effect the whole sea. It is like adding a cup of hot water to a pool.

one degree is enough change in temp to start melting the ice cap

https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-sea-surface-temperature

not only that but it also affects the sea creatures and their habits

TOMPPIX · February 22, 2017

guys i found the solution to global warming, it's called nuclear winter.

The Benjamins · February 22, 2017

49 minutes ago, zMeul said:

one degree is enough change in temp to start melting the ice cap

https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-sea-surface-temperature

not only that but it also affects the sea creatures and their habits

OK you missed my point. It will not change the temperature of the sea by even .01 degree. You will only see effects with in a localized area like a mile or so. And a data center will have basically the same effect on the overall seas and oceans if it is above ground or under the sea.

zMeul · February 22, 2017

4 minutes ago, The Benjamins said:

OK you missed my point. It will not change the temperature of the sea by even .01 degree. You will only see effects with in a localized area like a mile or so. And a data center will have basically the same effect on the overall seas and oceans if it is above ground or under the sea.

you ignoring the fact that that center will pump energy into the ocean continously, it's not a single drop of hot water .. it's a river of hot water

the effects will not be immediate, but in couple of decades this will fuck us all; and we're already fucked

one center will turn into dozens if not hundreds .. and then what?!

leadeater · February 22, 2017

2 minutes ago, zMeul said:

you ignoring the fact that that center will pump energy into the ocean continously, it's not a single drop of hot water .. it's a river of hot water

the effects will not be immediate, but in couple of decades this will fuck us all; and we're already fucked

The earth is a closed system in the context of producing heat, your putting the same amount of energy in to the system so it'll heat the ocean above ground, on the ground or in the ocean. It'll just fuck us faster if we directly heat the ocean.

Also underwater volcanoes and super heated hydrothermal vents put way way more energy in to the ocean than every data center in the world combined, not that this is good reasoning to put them all in the ocean.

The Benjamins · February 22, 2017

9 minutes ago, zMeul said:

you ignoring the fact that that center will pump energy into the ocean continously, it's not a single drop of hot water .. it's a river of hot water

the effects will not be immediate, but in couple of decades this will fuck us all; and we're already fucked

one center will turn into dozens if not hundreds .. and then what?!

Well someone should calculate the numbers, but I don't think even 100 off a coast would hurt the overall ecosystem of the seas

DarkBlade2117 · February 22, 2017

11 minutes ago, zMeul said:

you ignoring the fact that that center will pump energy into the ocean continously, it's not a single drop of hot water .. it's a river of hot water

the effects will not be immediate, but in couple of decades this will fuck us all; and we're already fucked

one center will turn into dozens if not hundreds .. and then what?!

We go fuck over another planet, what do you mean "then what?!"

TidaLWaveZ · February 22, 2017

1 hour ago, P4ZD4 said:

That's reeeeeeeeeally old news

Edit -

1 hour ago, Walms said:

You're very correct sorry I should have linked the newer story http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/want-an-energyefficient-data-center-build-it-underwater#.WK1MXcjgOIs.hackernews

Hey it may not be the newest of the new but at least it's not another Ryzen thread.

zMeul · February 22, 2017

3 hours ago, leadeater said:

Also underwater volcanoes and super heated hydrothermal vents put way way more energy in to the ocean than every data center in the world combined, not that this is good reasoning to put them all in the ocean.

that's so wrong it's extremely wrong

the oil we extract and burn isn't all the earth's energy? so why then we see the ice cap melt, desertification?!

we humans have fucked with Earth's natural cycle, we're destroying it

the idea is not to accelerate the destruction, but to slow it down so maybe in the future we'll find ways to reverse it

Edited February 22, 2017 by zMeul

leadeater · February 22, 2017

25 minutes ago, zMeul said:

that's so wrong it's extremely wrong

the oil we extract and burn isn't all the earth's energy? so why then we see the ice cap melt, desertification?!

we humans have fucked with Earth's natural cycle, we're destroying it

the idea is not to accelerate the destruction, but to slow it down so maybe in the future we'll find ways to reverse it

Study some thermodynamics and also some basic science concepts like the difference between potential energy and other forms of energy. Oil isn't heat energy until you burn it.

Zeroth Law

Spoiler

Quote

The zeroth law of thermodynamics may be stated in the following form:

If two systems are both in thermal equilibrium with a third system then they are in thermal equilibrium with each other.^[8]

The law is intended to allow the existence of an empirical parameter, the temperature, as a property of a system such that systems in thermal equilibrium with each other have the same temperature. The law as stated here is compatible with the use of a particular physical body, for example a mass of gas, to match temperatures of other bodies, but does not justify regarding temperature as a quantity that can be measured on a scale of real numbers.

Though this version of the law is one of the more commonly stated, it is only one of a diversity of statements that are labeled as "the zeroth law" by competent writers. Some statements go further so as to supply the important physical fact that temperature is one-dimensional, that one can conceptually arrange bodies in real number sequence from colder to hotter.^[9]^[10]^[11] Perhaps there exists no unique "best possible statement" of the "zeroth law", because there is in the literature a range of formulations of the principles of thermodynamics, each of which call for their respectively appropriate versions of the law.

Although these concepts of temperature and of thermal equilibrium are fundamental to thermodynamics and were clearly stated in the nineteenth century, the desire to explicitly number the above law was not widely felt until Fowler and Guggenheim did so in the 1930s, long after the first, second, and third law were already widely understood and recognized. Hence it was numbered the zeroth law. The importance of the law as a foundation to the earlier laws is that it allows the definition of temperature in a non-circular way without reference to entropy, its conjugate variable. Such a temperature definition is said to be 'empirical'.^[12]^[13]^[14]^[15]^[16]^[17]

First Law

Spoiler

Quote

The first law of thermodynamics may be stated in several ways :

The increase in internal energy of a closed system is equal to total of the energy added to the system. In particular, if the energy entering the system is supplied as heat and energy leaves the system as work, the heat is accounted as positive and the work is accounted as negative.

$\Delta U_{system}=Q-W$

In the case of a thermodynamic cycle of a closed system, which returns to its original state, the heat Q_in supplied to the system in one stage of the cycle, minus the heat Q_out removed from it in another stage of the cycle, plus the work added to the system W_in equals the work that leaves the system W_out.

$\Delta U_{system\,(full\,cycle)}=0$

hence, for a full cycle,

$Q=Q_{in}-Q_{out}+W_{in}-W_{out}=W_{net}$

For the particular case of a thermally isolated system (adiabatically isolated), the change of the internal energy of an adiabatically isolated system can only be the result of the work added to the system, because the adiabatic assumption is: Q = 0.

$\Delta U_{system}=U_{final}-U_{initial}=W_{in}-W_{out}$

More specifically, the First Law encompasses several principles:

The law of conservation of energy.

This states that energy can be neither created nor destroyed. However, energy can change forms, and energy can flow from one place to another. A particular consequence of the law of conservation of energy is that the total energy of an isolated system does not change.

The concept of internal energy and its relationship to temperature.

If a system has a definite temperature, then its total energy has three distinguishable components. If the system is in motion as a whole, it has kinetic energy. If the system as a whole is in an externally imposed force field (e.g. gravity), it has potential energy relative to some reference point in space. Finally, it has internal energy, which is a fundamental quantity of thermodynamics. The establishment of the concept of internal energy distinguishes the first law of thermodynamics from the more general law of conservation of energy.

$E_{total}=\mathrm {KE} _{system}+\mathrm {PE} _{system}+U_{system}$

The internal energy of a substance can be explained as the sum of the diverse kinetic energies of the erratic microscopic motions of its constituent atoms, and of the potential energy of interactions between them. Those microscopic energy terms are collectively called the substance's internal energy (U), and are accounted for by macroscopic thermodynamic property. The total of the kinetic energies of microscopic motions of the constituent atoms increases as the system's temperature increases; this assumes no other interactions at the microscopic level of the system such as chemical reactions, potential energy of constituent atoms with respect to each other.

Work is a process of transferring energy to or from a system in ways that can be described by macroscopic mechanical forces exerted by factors in the surroundings, outside the system. Examples are an externally driven shaft agitating a stirrer within the system, or an externally imposed electric field that polarizes the material of the system, or a piston that compresses the system. Unless otherwise stated, it is customary to treat work as occurring without its dissipation to the surroundings. Practically speaking, in all natural process, some of the work is dissipated by internal friction or viscosity. The work done by the system can come from its overall kinetic energy, from its overall potential energy, or from its internal energy.

For example, when a machine (not a part of the system) lifts a system upwards, some energy is transferred from the machine to the system. The system's energy increases as work is done on the system and in this particular case, the energy increase of the system is manifested as an increase in the system's gravitational potential energy. Work added to the system increases the Potential Energy of the system:

$W=\Delta \mathrm {PE} _{system}$

Or in general, the energy added to the system in the form of work can be partitioned to kinetic, potential or internal energy forms:

$W=\Delta \mathrm {KE} _{system}+\Delta \mathrm {PE} _{system}+\Delta U_{system}$

When matter is transferred into a system, that masses' associated internal energy and potential energy are transferred with it.

$\left(u\,\Delta M\right)_{in}=\Delta U_{system}$

where u denotes the internal energy per unit mass of the transferred matter, as measured while in the surroundings; and ΔM denotes the amount of transferred mass.

The flow of heat is a form of energy transfer.

Heating is a natural process of moving energy to or from a system other than by work or the transfer of matter. Direct passage of heat is only from a hotter to a colder system.

If the system has rigid walls that are impermeable to matter, and consequently energy cannot be transferred as work into or out from the system, and no external long-range force field affects it that could change its internal energy, then the internal energy can only be changed by the transfer of energy as heat:

$\Delta U_{system}=Q$

where Q denotes the amount of energy transferred into the system as heat.

Combining these principles leads to one traditional statement of the first law of thermodynamics: it is not possible to construct a machine which will perpetually output work without an equal amount of energy input to that machine. Or more briefly, a perpetual motion machine of the first kind is impossible.

Second Law

Spoiler

Quote

The second law of thermodynamics indicates the irreversibility of natural processes, and, in many cases, the tendency of natural processes to lead towards spatial homogeneity of matter and energy, and especially of temperature. It can be formulated in a variety of interesting and important ways.

It implies the existence of a quantity called the entropy of a thermodynamic system. In terms of this quantity it implies that

When two initially isolated systems in separate but nearby regions of space, each in thermodynamic equilibrium with itself but not necessarily with each other, are then allowed to interact, they will eventually reach a mutual thermodynamic equilibrium. The sum of the entropies of the initially isolated systems is less than or equal to the total entropy of the final combination. Equality occurs just when the two original systems have all their respective intensive variables (temperature, pressure) equal; then the final system also has the same values.

This statement of the second law is founded on the assumption, that in classical thermodynamics, the entropy of a system is defined only when it has reached internal thermodynamic equilibrium (thermodynamic equilibrium with itself).

The second law is applicable to a wide variety of processes, reversible and irreversible. All natural processes are irreversible. Reversible processes are a useful and convenient theoretical fiction, but do not occur in nature.

A prime example of irreversibility is in the transfer of heat by conduction or radiation. It was known long before the discovery of the notion of entropy that when two bodies initially of different temperatures come into thermal connection, then heat always flows from the hotter body to the colder one.

The second law tells also about kinds of irreversibility other than heat transfer, for example those of friction and viscosity, and those of chemical reactions. The notion of entropy is needed to provide that wider scope of the law.

According to the second law of thermodynamics, in a theoretical and fictive reversible heat transfer, an element of heat transferred, δQ, is the product of the temperature (T), both of the system and of the sources or destination of the heat, with the increment (dS) of the system's conjugate variable, its entropy (S)

$\delta Q=T\,dS\,.$ ^[1]

Entropy may also be viewed as a physical measure of the lack of physical information about the microscopic details of the motion and configuration of a system, when only the macroscopic states are known. The law asserts that for two given macroscopically specified states of a system, there is a quantity called the difference of information entropy between them. This information entropy difference defines how much additional microscopic physical information is needed to specify one of the macroscopically specified states, given the macroscopic specification of the other - often a conveniently chosen reference state which may be presupposed to exist rather than explicitly stated. A final condition of a natural process always contains microscopically specifiable effects which are not fully and exactly predictable from the macroscopic specification of the initial condition of the process. This is why entropy increases in natural processes - the increase tells how much extra microscopic information is needed to distinguish the final macroscopically specified state from the initial macroscopically specified state.^[18]

You also didn't understand the point, you can't product heat in the atmosphere and not heat the ocean. This is literally how we are heating the ocean.... Along with adding particulates to the atmosphere not allowing as much heat to be radiated out in to space.

ChineseChef · February 22, 2017

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

Study some thermodynamics and also some basic science concepts like the difference between potential energy and other forms of energy. Oil isn't heat energy until you burn it.

Zeroth Law

Reveal hidden contents

First Law

Reveal hidden contents

Second Law

Reveal hidden contents

You also didn't understand the point, you can't product heat in the atmosphere and not heat the ocean. This is literally how we are heating the ocean.... Along with adding particulates to the atmosphere not allowing as much heat to be radiated out in to space.

I think his argument stems around the idea that we burn oil/coal/gas for power, this creates heat. We use this energy to power the underwater datacenter. The datacenter puts out heat. We are thus heating the air and the water at the same time, and this entire process never costs "heat" energy.

leadeater · February 22, 2017

8 minutes ago, ChineseChef said:

I think his argument stems around the idea that we burn oil/coal/gas for power, this creates heat. We use this energy to power the underwater datacenter. The datacenter puts out heat. We are thus heating the air and the water at the same time, and this entire process never costs "heat" energy.

True but we should be more concerned with the particulates that we put in the air than any heat that we pump in to the ocean. Stopping heat dissipation in to space is having a bigger impact than putting a comparatively microscopic amount of heat directly in to the ocean compared to what nature is already doing. By stopping heat going in to space the atmosphere is increasing in temperature which increases the ocean temperature.

This is the same way if you take a can of drink out of the fridge and leave it on the bench, it will reach equilibrium. The ocean and earth as a whole is just a freakin super complex and way beyond our understanding similar thing to this, heat the air heat the can/drink.

ChineseChef · February 22, 2017

7 minutes ago, leadeater said:

True but we should be more concerned with the particulates that we put in the air than any heat that we pump in to the ocean. Stopping heat dissipation in to space is having a bigger impact than putting a comparatively microscopic amount of heat directly in to the ocean compared to what nature is already doing. By stopping heat going in to space the atmosphere is increasing in temperature which increases the ocean temperature.

This is the same way if you take a can of drink out of the fridge and leave it on the bench, it will reach equilibrium. The ocean and earth as a whole is just a freakin super complex and way beyond our understanding similar thing to this, heat the air heat the can/drink.

I agree that we need to stop polluting more than we need to worry about direct heat transfer. And we are going to be running these datacenters regardless of their pollution and thermal cost. But, an argument could easily be made that using ocean water is actually better for reducing pollution and excess heat as a whole. This is because using ocean water to cool the datacenter requires less net energy compared to using air (as even "above water" liquid cooled datacenters still vent their heat to the air at some point). This means that while we are still warming both the air and water, we are actually using less fuel total due to greater efficiency, and also releasing less pollution as a result of that efficiency.

Misanthrope · February 22, 2017

Just be careful not to accidentally wake up any ancient ones MS.

zMeul · February 22, 2017

3 hours ago, leadeater said:

-

you are the one not understanding

oil is energy, oil doesn't materialize by magic

heat generated by burning oil is but a form of transforming energy

here's more data that shows oceans are heating up: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/09/what-ocean-heating-reveals-about-global-warming/

Quote

First: Roughly two thirds of the warming since 1980 occurred in the upper ocean. The heat content of the upper layer has gone up twice as much as in the lower layer (700 – 2000 m). The average temperature of the upper layer has increased more than three times as much as the lower (because the upper layer is only 700 m thick, and the lower one 1300 m). That is not surprising, as after all the ocean is heated from above and it takes time for the heat to penetrate deeper.

Second: In the last ten years the upper layer has warmed more slowly than before. In spite of this the temperature still is changing as rapidly there as in the lower layer. This recent slower warming in the upper ocean is closely related to the slower warming of the global surface temperature, because the temperature of the overlaying atmosphere is strongly coupled to the temperature of the ocean surface.

That the heat absorption of the ocean as a whole (at least to 2000 m) has not significantly slowed makes it clear that the reduced warming of the upper layer is not (at least not much) due to decreasing heating from above, but rather mostly due to greater heat loss to lower down: through the 700 m level, from the upper to the lower layer. (The transition from solar maximum to solar minimum probably also contributed a small part as planetary heat absorption decreased by about 15%, Abraham, et al., 2013). It is difficult to establish the exact mechanism for this stronger heat flux to deeper water, given the diverse internal variability in the oceans.

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Under water data centre being developed by Microsoft

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