Tech giant’s Project Natick has shown underwater data centers consume less energy, reduce latency and deter hacking
Where is the text you’re reading, right now? In one sense, it lives “on the internet” or “in the cloud”, just like your favorite social media platform or the TV show you might stream tonight.
But in a physical sense, it’s stored and transmitted somewhere in a network of thousands of data centers across the globe. Each of these centers is whirring, buzzing and beeping around the clock, to store, process and communicate vast amounts of data and provide services to hungry consumers.
All this infrastructure is expensive to build and run, and has a considerable environmental impact. In search of cost savings, greater sustainability and better service, data center providers are looking to get their feet wet.
Tech giant Microsoft and other companies want to relocate data centers into the world’s oceans, submerging computers and networking equipment to take advantage of cheap real estate and cool waters. Is this a good thing? What about the environmental impact? Are we simply replacing one damaging practice with another?
Which companies are doing this?
Microsoft’s Project Natick has been pursuing the idea of data centers beneath the waves since 2014. The initial premise was that since many humans live near the coast, so should data centers.
An initial experiment in 2015 saw a small-scale data center deployed for three months in the Pacific Ocean.
A two-year follow-up experiment began in 2018. A total of 864 servers, in a 12 by 3 meter tubular structure, were sunk 35 meters deep off the Orkney Islands in Scotland.
