SUBSEA CLOUD
Subsea Cloud intends to offer commercial users the capacity of its first underwater data center, Jules Verne, which is due to be built off the coast of the United States. According to The Register, a 1 MW data center is expected to be 90% more profitable than comparable terrestrial structures. Commissioning by Jules Verne is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2022. Construction of other facilities is also planned - in the Gulf of Mexico (Njord01) and in the North Sea (Manannán). And by 2026, the company aims to completely switch to using renewable energy.
The main advantage of the new data center will be its location close to urban agglomerations on the coast of Port Angeles, Washington, which will reduce latency and at the same time save money, as land in cities is expensive. The object was named Jules Verne in honor of the famous classic science fiction writer Jules Verne. The data center will be open for review by all potential customers, but there will hardly be many of them as it is being created primarily for demonstration purposes.
The data center will be cooled by ambient water, which will reduce energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions by 40% compared to terrestrial locations. The servers will be placed in a dielectric coolant and the entire system will focus on passive heat dissipation without the use of pumps. The Jules Verne capsule will fit the dimensions of a standard 20-foot container and will be located in shallow water. Capsules in the Gulf of Mexico and the North Sea are expected to be located at depths of up to 300 m, but Subsea Cloud initially designed autonomous systems capable of operating at depths of up to 3,000 m.
Inside each capsule will be 16 racks that can accommodate up to 800 servers. The total power is up to 1 MW. The communication speed with land is 100 Gbps. This underwater campus scales by adding additional capsules, up to 100 units. If a breakdown occurs or a customer wants to replace their equipment, it will take 4 to 16 hours for the maintenance team to arrive on site and carry out the replacement. The operator is currently negotiating cooperation with two unnamed hyperscalers, although specific agreements have yet to be reached.
Subsea Cloud itself, despite its name, only provides colocation services and is responsible for maintaining the capsules. In addition, it sells and licenses its solutions. It is curious that, apparently, the company already has at least one customer who opted for the second path, attending to the independent maintenance of the capsules. It now takes 10 weeks to build and test a capsule and another two weeks to install and commission it.
The effectiveness of underwater data centers has already been proven by Microsoft, which built several relevant facilities as part of the Project Natick experiment. Unlike Subsea pods, Microsoft's facilities are filled with nitrogen. According to the tech giant, only a few servers failed during the experiment. There is also a similar Chinese project Highlander. Immersion cooling is expected to prevent contamination by dust and other debris.
Source: Subsea Cloud
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