Tuesday, September 16, 2008

The Ocean Matrix

Is Google planning on moving their data centers offshore? Maybe:

In the patent application seen by The Times, Google writes: “Computing centres are located on a ship or ships, anchored in a water body from which energy from natural motion of the water may be captured, and turned into electricity and/or pumping power for cooling pumps to carry heat away.”

The increasing number of data centres necessary to cope with the massive information flows generated on popular websites has prompted companies to look at radical ideas to reduce their running costs.

It's only a patent application and companies file such things all the time for wacky ideas they will probably never use. But still, the notion of giant floating data centers off the coast of major countries is truly fascinating. And it surely is one of the more innovative ways of dealing with the size, expense and power requirements of data centers, which you can read more about in this fascinating article here

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