Microsoft research project puts cloud in ocean for the first time

Microsoft’s first underwater test involved a car-sized capsule that weighs more than 17,236 kilograms and has a computing power equivalent to 300 desktop computers. That’s tiny compared with existing data centers.

But Project Natick marks a first step toward seeing if ocean water can help undersea data centers save on the power costs associated with cooling computers. Undersea data centers could also put many more cloud computing hubs closer to the billions of people living near coastlines.

The first Project Natick test capsule—named Leona Philpot in honor of a character in the “Halo” video game series—survived a 105-day underwater trial run at a depth of 9 meters off the coast of central California. It used a heat exchanger system to transfer the heat generated by the computer servers to the surrounding ocean water.

Read more at IEEE Spectrum

Image Credit: Microsoft

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