Power-hungry data centres run hot, so one Chinese company is planning to submerge a pod of servers in the sea off Shanghai with hopes of solving computing\u2019s energy woes.<\/p>\n
On a wharf near the city, workers were finishing off the large yellow capsule \u2013 a foray into alternative tech infrastructure that faces questions over its ecological impact and commercial viability.<\/p>\n
The world\u2019s websites and apps rely on physical data centres to store information, with the growing use of artificial intelligence contributing to skyrocketing demand for the facilities.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnderwater operations have inherent advantages,\u201d said Yang Ye of maritime equipment firm Highlander, which is developing the Shanghai pod with state-owned construction companies.<\/p>\n
Undersea servers are kept at a low temperature by ocean currents, rather than the energy-intensive air cooling or water evaporation required by centres on land.<\/p>\n
The technology was trialled by Microsoft off the coast of Scotland in 2018, but the Chinese project, to be sunk in mid-October, is one of the world\u2019s first commercial services of its kind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Power-hungry data centres run hot, so one Chinese company is planning to submerge a pod of servers in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[67437,182,114804,181,507,144,27675,8192,71043,34772,1281,9121,4633,114803,74,55401,17345,114805],"class_list":["post-198990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-afp","tag-ai","tag-andrew-want","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-china","tag-china-telecom","tag-chinese","tag-hainan-province","tag-highlander","tag-microsoft","tag-scotland","tag-shanghai","tag-shaolei-ren","tag-technology","tag-uc-riverside","tag-university-of-california","tag-yang-ye"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}