Google launching its own navy? About 70 per cent of the Earth is covered by water. So Google's thinking it had better build some data centers that can float. With a recently-released patent application, the search giant cum world power seeks exclusive rights to what it calls a "water-based data center". This modular collection of processing, storage, and …
I'm surprised they've not already been doing this, after all, heat exchanging with seawater has been done in power stations and other industries for years. Using a wave generator is a good idea (if not a little obvious), plus I guess you could strap wind turbines and solar panels to the boat too. The biggest challenges I can foresee are being able to generate enough power, being able to get big enough data pipes, and mounting the hard drives in stable platforms so you don't get multiple head crashes in the event of 'choppy conditions'.
A smart guy proposed a sure fire way to get all German subs (think WWII) to the surface: boil the seas. When asked "How do you propose to boil the seas?!", he answered: "hey, that's not my problem, I proposed the solution, you workout the details".
Well, 60 years later, I think we found it
My coat is the one with heat sinks stitched...
R
Why does that diagram remind me of the The Goodies' pirate radio station and GPO*? I am not suggesting that the Google boys may end up as jackbooted megalomaniacs drowned by their own fevered dreams of world domination... merely prior art.
Googies. Googy googy yum yum**.
* It's TV, people. But possibly not as you know it.
** My God, the longer I draw this bow the more sense it begins to make! Could L & S literally be the long lost North American Goodies franchise - doing anything, anytime without the vital balancing influence of an effeminate, conservative, third partner or the British self deprecating sense of humour?
Anything, anytime people! ANYTHING. ANYTIME. Why aren't we stopping them???
They announced long ago, and were to have a fully operational ship by the ballpark in San Francisco in April. Even at the time the scheme sounded... not well grounded. The only way it would make is if there was a tax or zoning dodge involved.
This concept is similarly ill-conceived -- a mishmash of concepts that sound good but are not practical in real life. But if anything similar happens they can take credit for having though of it "first".
For example, generating power from wave action. There is a lot of power in waves, but it's very diffuse. Too diffuse to effectively harvest. Even if it's concentrated to the surface by a gently sloping bottom, there are only a few sites where it's worth (marginally) building energy conversion facilities.
And using water-based heat exchangers? It's done all over, and you don't have to be aboard a ship to do it.
On putting a data center on a boat?
...
I don't have the chutzpah to be a successful engineer, I guess. I could understand a patent on details of the idea, like the wave power generator. But I would have never thought of asking for a patent on "putting loads of computers on a boat".
Doesn't the Navy have a few computers on air carriers? Wouldn't that be prior art?
Wait until they apply for a patent on "data centers in the jungle" "data centers in snowy regions" "data centers in rainy regions" "data centers with solar panels on top" "data centers with a yellow ceiling"...
Re: Not that amazing...
Actually data is not a problem. A datacenter like this is likely to sit at most a few hundred miles off-shore so running fiber to it is no big deal.
Re: I bet they won't be running on windows for warships!
As long as they decide to generate any power locally they are likely to end up using Windows for Power Stations which is even worse. SCADA bless it...
Re: IDS? I thought that vapor has dissipated
Well... Havenco was there first. So they do not get even that. In fact, building a purpose ship for this is as stupid as it gets and even than some. There are plenty of old oil and gas platforms that can be refloated, moved to suitable sites and reused for a bag of peanuts. Boeing with SeaLaunch has the right idea and I am surprised that the silicon valley has not picked up on it yet. In fact at the current price of land and power (and respectively cooling) it is probably cheaper to refurbish platforms for datacenters than build them in most countries in Europe.
Google will be on hand in an disaster zone with some servers. Typical.
Bunch of hungry, cold, wet and deprived people really need access to the internet when all their worldy posessions were washed, blown, crushed along with their house, family members.
How did the military or aid agencies manage disasters without an off shore server farm nearby.
Is it April the first or is this more about off shore and therefore in international waters than actual help.
The weather during the next week will be calm and sunny as high pressure moves across the.......
Hey... the server's gone down.
Ship based datacentre...good enough idea without the ecofluff... but then maybe the fluff was put there by PR to con the media into polishing the Googlehalo.
coat....nah not in this weather pass me the sunscreen and shades.
I'm sure we've been told that heating the oceans by tiny fractions has the power to amplify the force of storms. It therefore follows that Google may well be creating the very conditions where their new [war] ships will come into their own.
Let's just hope that they can provide ample access to youtube to people in disaster areas, to help them maintain a sense of perspective.
We will have to assume there will be significantly more space lasers on the finished design...
A volcano with underway sub docks and a cone that opens up for some big bit of kit (rockets, antennae) to emerge from the top, plus a big circular room in the centre where technicals in uniform attend a thousand blinking lights while S and L sit stroking white Persian cats. "Say goodbye to your data, Mr Bond."
Why do you need a data center anywhere near where an emergency has happened? Surely if there is enough network infrastructure left for this to be any use, all you have to do is to find a way of re-connecting it to the Internet - some sort of mobile, self-powered satellite link would seem appropriate. Can't see that emergency operations would produce overmuch communications load unless everyone is trying to upload video of the disaster.
Much more plausible that they want to be in international waters
This thing about a data centre in a container ?
What is the definition of a data centre.. ? Telco hardware suppliers have been delivering this soluti0on for years, in fact, I'm sat in one now : a switch site in a containers, lots of sun boxes, lots of 'proprietary' boxes and cabinets, in fact, lots of data.
Does this invalidate Googles claims for a 'world wide patent' ?
They are arses......
that fibre has to come to shore somewhere & wherever it does there'll be an individual from the Inland Revenue and an individual from Customs and Excise waiting (or whatever their regional nomenclature would be) oh and maybe an individual from the Ministry of Culture and Sport with a set of extreme porn guidelines.
There are a quantity of positions in the orbit of a planet around a starcalled Lagrange points (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_points); datacenters located here (theoretically) need no energy to stay on-station. Google would have to sucessfully patent gravity to patent the G'plexes there, that should cost Sergei & Larry a few bucks!
And don't forget there's always Octopusses on Patrol, for Parolees. IT Whizzes who toppled off the Tracks and ITs Rails.
"wonder when" .... By Kevin Posted Tuesday 9th September 2008 04:29 GMT
I was wonder the Self Same Thing, Kevin. IT's Made to Measure and Plays with Pleasure.
"international waters? ..that fibre has to come to shore somewhere & wherever it does there'll be an individual from the Inland Revenue and an individual from Customs and Excise waiting (or whatever their regional nomenclature would be) oh and maybe an individual from the Ministry of Culture and Sport with a set of extreme porn guidelines." ...By dave lawless Posted Tuesday 9th September 2008 13:51 GMT
dave,
The fun they would have though if the fibre content was Home Grown Erotography ..... for ESPecially Addictive XSSXXXXual Active Direct ProgramMINg ........ for Fine Tuning Virtual Turing Machines ....... NIRobotIQs ProgramMIng...... Network InterNetworking Robot IQs LLanTwittering Major and Minor Scales.
Or is Sex a Forbidden Weapon. It is Certainly a Foreboding Foe when Crossed for Selfish Gains.
And will someone plug in PO Box 1300 and Crank it up to Speed. Or is it a Dead Parrot.
first to claim airborne data centers running from solar wings / ballon tech?
space data centeres running from solar panels.
undergound data centers running from heat exchange with the earth.
undersea data centers running from wave power and heat exchange.
distributed data centers running everywhere from everything. Google@home
First there is nothing new nor novel about this patent.
As other posters point out... Data Centers in a Box. *yawn* been there done that.
Using the sea/ocean/lake's water temperature to help cool the equipment. Again nothing novel, nothing new.
Using the wave motion to power a generator? Hmmm don't think Google's got the patent on that technology...
So as you can see, its a combination of things that are obvious... if you can get the wave generators to work.
As to ship to shore communication... Low earth sats, or even wi-max if you want a sustainable presence off shore of a major city on the water's edge....
I did a quick glance... Did they also add solar or wind turbines too for power?
Maybe a small nuke generator? ...
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