Microsoft's Project Natick dives deep for subsea data center
- 9 years ago
REDMOND, WASHINGTON — Gaming enthusiasts have long been water-cooling their PCs for optimum performance, something Microsoft recently put to the test on an industrial scale with a subsea data center.
The New York Times reports that in 2015, Microsoft's Project Natick deployed an experimental prototype vessel off the coast of California. It consisted of a single rack of servers and pressurized nitrogen, sealed inside a white steel capsule, with heat exchangers attached to the hull.
Named the Leona Philpot, after a character in the Halo video game series, the vessel was submerged 30 feet into the Pacific Ocean, where the waters acted as a natural coolant.
To better understand how to operate in an undersea environment, researchers measured pressure, humidity, motion and other conditions, successfully operating the self-contained data center for 105 days, between August and November of 2015, according to PC World.
Project Natick's next step is to build a new system three times as large, designed to be left underwater for five years at a time.
With the project still in its early stages, no one can know for certain when Microsoft will be coming out with a viable product. But judging from potential alone, the future of data centers could very well be under the sea.
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The New York Times reports that in 2015, Microsoft's Project Natick deployed an experimental prototype vessel off the coast of California. It consisted of a single rack of servers and pressurized nitrogen, sealed inside a white steel capsule, with heat exchangers attached to the hull.
Named the Leona Philpot, after a character in the Halo video game series, the vessel was submerged 30 feet into the Pacific Ocean, where the waters acted as a natural coolant.
To better understand how to operate in an undersea environment, researchers measured pressure, humidity, motion and other conditions, successfully operating the self-contained data center for 105 days, between August and November of 2015, according to PC World.
Project Natick's next step is to build a new system three times as large, designed to be left underwater for five years at a time.
With the project still in its early stages, no one can know for certain when Microsoft will be coming out with a viable product. But judging from potential alone, the future of data centers could very well be under the sea.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to TomoNews, where we animate the most entertaining news on the internets. Come here for an animated look at viral headlines, US news, celebrity gossip, salacious scandals, dumb criminals and much more! Subscribe now for daily news animations that will knock your socks off.
Visit our official website for all the latest, uncensored videos: http://us.tomonews.net
Check out our Android app: http://bit.ly/1rddhCj
Check out our iOS app: http://bit.ly/1gO3z1f
Get top stories delivered to your inbox everyday: http://bit.ly/tomo-newsletter
Stay connected with us here:
Facebook http://www.facebook.com/TomoNewsUS
Twitter @tomonewsus http://www.twitter.com/TomoNewsUS
Google+ http://plus.google.com/+TomoNewsUS/
Instagram @tomonewsus http://instagram.com/tomonewsus