Google Floats A Data Center Patent: Offshore, Ocean-Cooled, Wave-Powered, And Modular

Are they planning on using the ocean as a heat sink? I'm not saying that is a good or bad idea, I'm just curious. It would be interesting, to say the least.

Are they planning on using the ocean as a heat sink? I'm not saying that is a good or bad idea, I'm just curious. It would be interesting, to say the least.

Floating data centers, huh? I can see it now: armed hoodlums board the barges and make off with hard-drives chocked full of music and movie swag. Brings new meaning to phrase "Internet Piracy."

The end of the article mentions The offshore location also raises interesting questions about jurisdiction, and which laws would govern the handling of any consumer data managed from the floating data centers. U.S. territorial waters typically extend 12 nautical miles, but other nations’ claims range from 3 miles (Singapore) to 200 miles.

Google and users could potentially (and perhaps should be expected to) use these as law-agnostic data processing/storage centers, for good or for bad. Legal immunity is arguably the fundamental MO for moving offshore; Google's growth potential is probably limited more by its customer base than its electricity bills. Such a move raises ethical questions as part of 'interesting questions about jurisdiction'. Google in China certainly demonstrates a willingness to alter business models to conform to local laws (or the absence of?) in order to access markets.

Is it worth it to do this?

So they move off shore to get away from paying taxes, my, how community minded.

I'm pretty sure within 12 miles from shore is still within a nation's and state's legal jurisdiction. So, the Google servers would be within this zone. The 200 mile range is for exclusive economic exploitation. I'm pretty sure that's international law that almost all countries have ratified.

@ Anthony
I'm sure that's part of the plan.

I'm pretty sure within 12 miles from shore is still within a nation's and state's legal jurisdiction... I'm pretty sure that's international law that almost all countries have ratified.

Whoops, looks like you're right. I guess it is 'all about' electricity bills and property tax!

There's a 2005 article by Google's Luiz André Barroso called 'The Price of Performance: An Economic Case for Chip Multiprocessing', in which he notes 'If performance per watt is to remain constant over the next few years, power costs could easily overtake hardware costs, possibly by a large margin'.

Hah hah. All of that server space will fit in one of those containers in a few years.

I think my idea of moving their server farms to Northern Canada is marginally better. Run of river hydroelectric power could supply the electricity and water or air could cool the computers. The heated water could be used to heat the buildings (for the humans involved) and returned to the river or used to farm fish.

The Canadian shield is geologically stable and tsunamis and hurricanes are not much of a problem--it would be a great place to store vital data against natural and man-made threats--ditto Scandinavia.

There is the issue that if the water leaves hot enough, it could screw with the biology of nearby sealife. I read that a nuclear power plant near me has been dumping 110F water from the one-way cooling system, which fish like to swim in during the winter, and when they swim into cold water suddenly, they die or are badly hurt.

I think Google would accommodate for that. Perhaps set up a peltier bank or sterling engine to collect energy from the hot water until it's close enough to the ambient sea's temperature. As the heat comes from information processing rather than a kinetic process, I imagine this would be feasible, albeit not good enough to power the whole thing. This is to augment existing power gathering. I'm not implying they'd get something for nothing, but it's a good way to capture waste heat.

Also, this looks like a great place for solar power. Usually, I'd say solar power doesn't make sense on cargo ships, because of the frequent moving of storage containers, but since these are part of a data center, I imagine they won't be swapped out too extremely often, so they could lay panels on top of the ship without too much extra labor.

=== author's response follows ===
Heat dispersion is just one more reason to stay away from the littoral zone and estuarine areas where fish breed and aquatic life is nourished in early stages.

Because warm water is less dense than cool, it can be expected that any thermal plume will float, losing much of it's heat to the atmosphere directly, until the difference with ambient temperature approaches a half degree C or therabouts.

Puts a new twist on the computer science term "data sink".

It seems like an off-shore data center would have to be able to quickly and reliably synchronize all of its servers with counterparts on shore. As such, it seems like an option for running services that need lots of redundancy and scalability, but wouldn't be ruined if a storm forced the ship to disconnect from the network. At least I wouldn't want my banking information to come from a barge in international waters.

=== author's response follows ==-=
Good point. Perhaps they are working on patents to handle those issues?

Can't wait for some Congressman to lay out his concerns about the ship taking on so much data that it sinks. (:>

Legal jurisdiction for these floating barges would also be based on port of registry -- ie what home port ( and/or flag of convenience ) do these ships/barges operate under.

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While I like the concept - and hope it get implemented in some locations - this should not be a patented as it does not meet the required standards for patents, in particular the concept while innovative is not inventive

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And looking at the documents it does not seem that they are trying to use the ocean as a heat sink.

Props to Google for innovating. With this tech, Google's bottom line will no longer be subject to taxes and electricity prices.

Lake Michigan would be perfect! (er... except for the lack of waves though most of it is class 4/5 wind)

Hah hah. All of that server space will fit in one of those containers in a few years.

There must be a corrollary to Moore's law (the number transistors on a chip doubles every 18 months). The corollary would be the demand for compute power goes up even faster. They'll still need the whole barge.

I ran across these nice pictures of Sun Microsystems' data center in a a shipping container being installed at UC Berkeley.

ttp://tinyurl.com/4dgbjz

Wow - is it just me?

All those folks will wnat to eat, and at some point that is a LOT of sewage to dispose of - more than 3 miles, will they just dump it overboard with the trash?

Thanks but no thats, the cruise ship industry is making enough of a mess now.....

@GreenPlease

They still have to pay taxes - they just don't pay land tax for the data center. And they also get to be very close to a relatively cheap near constant power source which is actually a better selling point than lower land taxes from the perspective of operating a data center.

If there was a region that had ample constant renewable power and told data centers owners that they 1) could have inexpensive long-term (decades) access to the power and 2) not have to pay land taxes for decades then the data centers would very much consider moving or expanding into that region. The other limiting factors are 3) employee access and

@bbk & John

Undersea cables are ( in related industries ) considered normal -- so these barges will just utilize undersea cable. Oh and yes undersea cable is able to transmit data faster than satellite. So no need for new patents here either.

Here's a question. Would the salt from the water cause problems with the electronics?

One torpedo and Google is pwned!

Do google or other server farms use water cooling in combination with a heat exchanger to provide hot water/heating for a building? This could be a way to cut electricity bills, increase server efficiency, and still be used in conjunction with solar/wind/or geothermal renewable energy.