MIT Energy Initiative Powers Up Humor with the Launch of Data Center Power Forum
“MIT Energy Initiative launches Data Center Power Forum”
“As data centers around the globe become bigger and more numerous, their energy use could account for 8 percent of the world’s electricity demand by 2030 — and as much as half of all digital traffic could pass through private data networks as companies increasingly rely on their own server farms instead of outsourcing data management to third-party cloud-service providers.”
With the way data centers are spreading like a rash across our dear planet, soon we could be looking at them hogging 8 percent of the world’s electricity supply by the year 2030. Oh, and just so you know, half of the internet’s traffic could be whizzing through these mammoth data storage facilities as heavily caffeinated computer whizzes suddenly decide they don’t want to play with others and prefer to use their private sandbox.
Apparently, MIT has some brains that are rattled by all this. So, MIT’s Energy Initiative decided to step up its game and launch the Data Center Cooling Research Forum. It’s basically a bunch of really smart people sitting together to solve the impending data center power crisis before everyone else panics. Several tech giants and research bums have already hopped onto the bandwagon, including Microsoft, Facebook and the U.S. Department of Energy, amongst a few others.
This exclusive club’s agenda? Tackling the challenge of cooling all these data centers which, lo and behold, also happen to be cooking the planet. How? Simple – they want to make these data centers more energy efficient. Atta-boys and applauds! Yes, their goals are something like, “let’s not turn Earth into Mars while we’re downloading cat videos in 4K.”
But of course, as with all the great tales, it’s easier said than done. There’s just so many ways to tackle this problem, and every single one of them brings along its own pesky bundle of complications. Air cooling, water cooling, cryogenic cooling, absorption cooling, the choices are indeed many.
In the end, the members of the Forum have a delicate balancing job to perform – aligning the beastly appetite of data centers for power with the very real and soon-to-be-tangible (if not already) impact these have on the environment. And we’re all expecting them to do a masterful job at that, aren’t we?
So, here’s a final tip of the hat to the folks at the MIT Energy Initiative, as they embark on their noble quest of unlocking the mysteries of efficient data center cooling. May the force be with you, and may the temperature, at data centers, be forever low.