Going to sea with Project Natick.
Yesterday, Microsoft announced that they had installed a prototype of an underwater data center at the Orkney Islands archipelago. The data center has similarities with a submarine, is 12 meters long and has space for 864 servers.
Going to sea with Project Natick.
Yesterday, Microsoft announced that they had installed a prototype of an underwater data center at the Orkney Islands archipelago. The data center has similarities with a submarine, is 12 meters long and has space for 864 servers.
A new wave of data centers
The company has been working on Project Natick for a long time and the project is about developing sustainable data centers that can work for several years without being dependent on maintenance. The data center is designed to run for at least five years without maintenance, but Microsoft will monitor the project closely over the next 12 months to see that everything is working properly.
While common data centers require a lot of cooling to keep the temperatures down, which draws a lot of power, Microsoft's new project is naturally cooled by the ocean. At full capacity, Project Natick requires less than a quarter of megawatts and this power is powered by renewable energy generated on land.
"Nearly half of the earth's population lives near the ocean. Having data centers closer to billions of people using the Internet will provide faster and better web browsing, video streaming and gaming while companies can enjoy technologies driven by artificial intelligence, "writes Microsoft's UK boss, Cindy Rose, in a blog post in connection with the launch of Project Natick.