WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.840 There are data centers at the bottom of the ocean. 00:00:03.840 --> 00:00:08.560 I'm not crazy. There's not very many of them. This is still very much experimental, 00:00:08.560 --> 00:00:12.560 but it's an idea that could revolutionize waste heat management, 00:00:12.560 --> 00:00:19.520 which is something I think about a lot. In 2015, Microsoft sunk its first prototype underwater data center 00:00:19.520 --> 00:00:23.120 off the coast of California and left it there for two months. 00:00:23.120 --> 00:00:30.000 In 2018, they did it again. They sunk an airtight metal storage tank with 864 servers 00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:34.960 and 27.6 petabytes of storage near the Scottish Orkney Islands, 00:00:34.960 --> 00:00:41.360 117 feet below the surface. They declared that experiment a success after two years, 00:00:41.360 --> 00:00:45.280 noting that the sealed server tank had an eighth of the failure rate 00:00:45.280 --> 00:00:49.040 of a conventional data center. Now, as promising as these results are, 00:00:49.040 --> 00:00:52.160 there are some obvious drawbacks to sinking a server 00:00:52.160 --> 00:00:57.760 in a large natural body of water. Using a data center's waste heat to warm a local swimming pool 00:00:57.760 --> 00:01:02.800 is relatively easy in comparison because we're dealing with a controlled artificial environment. 00:01:02.800 --> 00:01:07.440 But humans, aside from Jason Lamoa, cannot control the ocean. 00:01:07.440 --> 00:01:11.120 See, the problem with the ocean is that it is incredibly deep 00:01:11.120 --> 00:01:14.800 and incredibly salty, like a goth girl with tarot cards. 00:01:14.800 --> 00:01:19.440 Ocean water has a typical salinity of 3.5% compared to freshwater, 00:01:19.440 --> 00:01:22.880 which has a salinity of 0.5% or less. 00:01:22.880 --> 00:01:27.200 What this means is that saltwater is essentially an electrolyte solution, 00:01:27.200 --> 00:01:31.520 which increases conductivity and chemically accelerates corrosion. 00:01:31.520 --> 00:01:36.320 That's not an insurmountable barrier, though, because humanity has a lot of experience protecting 00:01:36.320 --> 00:01:40.400 these submerged parts of metal watercraft through anti-corrosion coatings, 00:01:40.400 --> 00:01:45.440 like specialized paint, active galvanic protection, and coal tar enamel. 00:01:45.440 --> 00:01:49.920 Of course, we could also use freshwater sources like relatively deep lakes, 00:01:49.920 --> 00:01:56.480 but the ocean, being massive, would allow us to implement sunken servers on a much larger scale. 00:01:56.480 --> 00:02:00.320 You'd still need data centers to serve population centers further inland, 00:02:00.320 --> 00:02:05.200 but around 40% of the global population lives within 100 miles of the coast, 00:02:05.200 --> 00:02:10.720 which is nothing to sneeze at. Now, another problem is that water is actually pretty heavy. 00:02:10.720 --> 00:02:16.720 With every additional 100 feet below sea level, we're piling on an extra three atmospheres of pressure. 00:02:16.720 --> 00:02:22.080 But we're never going to put these data centers anywhere other than the relatively shallow continental shelf, 00:02:22.080 --> 00:02:28.400 because we'd want them to be relatively close by. Fortunately, a typical cylindrical storage container with thick metal walls 00:02:28.400 --> 00:02:31.840 can easily withstand the pressure of a few hundred feet of seawater. 00:02:31.840 --> 00:02:36.640 These data centers also have to be reliably anchored in place to stop them from shifting. 00:02:36.640 --> 00:02:41.920 You wouldn't be able to tell just by looking, but there are strong currents deep underneath the surface. 00:02:41.920 --> 00:02:45.520 Not to mention that hurricanes can churn up water from hundreds of feet deep 00:02:45.520 --> 00:02:48.960 and sometimes wind up disturbing sunken wrecks on the seafloor. 00:02:49.040 --> 00:02:54.320 The 2018 Microsoft data center used a triangular base loaded with heavy ballast. 00:02:54.320 --> 00:02:58.800 It also wound up coated in a layer of algae and colonized by sea anemones 00:02:58.800 --> 00:03:04.640 after only two years underwater. Animal interference isn't too much of an issue for a thick metal container, 00:03:04.640 --> 00:03:09.840 but any cable leading to or from the container should ideally be wrapped in Kevlar 00:03:09.840 --> 00:03:12.960 and buried below the seabed to protect it from shark attacks. 00:03:12.960 --> 00:03:18.720 Oh, that's not a joke. For unclear reasons, possibly related to sharks' electroreceptive senses, 00:03:18.720 --> 00:03:24.880 they occasionally chomp on undersea cables. But these are all solvable problems with current technology, 00:03:24.880 --> 00:03:32.560 and the idea has enormous potential benefits. The primary advantage of sinking servers is consistent, relatively cheap cooling. 00:03:32.560 --> 00:03:36.160 On the surface, temperature and humidity vary from hour to hour. 00:03:36.160 --> 00:03:40.480 The bottom of the ocean, however, has an extremely consistent cold temperature. 00:03:40.480 --> 00:03:44.400 That's because deep bodies of water typically stratify by density, 00:03:44.400 --> 00:03:51.520 which means that they also stratify by temperature. So even though the surface of the water gets heated by the sun and stirred by the wind, 00:03:51.520 --> 00:03:56.720 that water rarely interacts with the layers of colder, denser water deep below. 00:03:56.720 --> 00:04:00.720 When the server is surrounded by consistent, low-temperature water, 00:04:00.720 --> 00:04:04.000 less additional energy is expended on the cooling process, 00:04:04.000 --> 00:04:09.360 which is a cost and efficiency win, but also a marginal environmental win. 00:04:09.360 --> 00:04:13.920 Likewise, large data centers in major urban areas can cost a fair amount in rent 00:04:13.920 --> 00:04:18.240 because they compete for space with offices, industries, and airbnbs. 00:04:18.240 --> 00:04:23.760 Data centers are one of the few business assets that could be relocated to the bottom of the ocean, 00:04:23.760 --> 00:04:28.880 where they wouldn't really compete with fish so much as get gradually colonized by them. 00:04:28.880 --> 00:04:34.240 If we were then able to leave these servers in place and not touch them for around a decade, 00:04:34.240 --> 00:04:37.520 the disruption to the benthic biome would be minimal. 00:04:37.520 --> 00:04:42.400 These underwater data servers also take advantage of an idea that has been used on land, 00:04:42.480 --> 00:04:48.400 sealing the servers in an airtight, oxygen-free environment that is instead filled with a dry, 00:04:48.400 --> 00:04:53.920 neutral gas like nitrogen. Nitrogen is less corrosive than oxygen and non-flammable, 00:04:53.920 --> 00:04:57.040 increasing server longevity and preventing fires. 00:04:57.040 --> 00:05:01.280 In these conditions, the lack of on-site maintenance has a hidden advantage. 00:05:01.280 --> 00:05:05.200 Human-machine interactions always have the possibility of bumps, 00:05:05.200 --> 00:05:09.840 jostling, and other forms of human error that increase the risk of accidental damage. 00:05:09.840 --> 00:05:14.000 A much, much lower failure rate means that with sufficient redundancy, 00:05:14.000 --> 00:05:19.040 the server can be left in place, with drives replaced only during scheduled turnover. 00:05:19.040 --> 00:05:22.160 Speaking of turnover, my turn to speak is now over. 00:05:22.160 --> 00:05:26.640 Thanks for watching. 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