2024-08-03 15:15:44
[위클리 리포트] AI-Semiconductor Struggles with Power
Future data centers emerge amid power shortages… EU launches space data center project
MS conducted underwater operation experiments for 2 years… “Failure rate is 1/8 of that on land”
Data centers in space, data centers that cool down with cold seawater under the sea, data centers that run on solar energy in the middle of the desert… .
These are various ideas that companies are trying out as they struggle with the problem of managing data centers, which are the source of AI competitiveness and the main culprit of power shortages. Data centers are equipped with servers and storage devices necessary for AI learning and implementation, as well as network facilities that connect them to the outside world, and all of these devices consume a lot of electricity. The devices that run 24 hours a day generate a lot of heat, so if the temperature is not managed properly, problems can occur, so they must be equipped with an air conditioning system that includes a cooling function. This also consumes a lot of electricity. The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicted that by 2030, the amount of electricity used by data centers worldwide will approach 4% of global electricity consumption.
To this end, some countries and companies are considering installing data centers in space. It is considered the data center of the future because it can generate solar power 24 hours a day regardless of weather changes, has a low carbon footprint, and does not require separate cooling equipment.
In fact, the European Union (EU) is seriously considering installing data centers in space. According to foreign media such as the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the EU’s research service conducted through Thales Alenia Space, a joint venture between France’s Thales and Italy’s Finmeccanica, concluded that space data centers can reduce carbon emissions and are actually operational. The EU is also working on a project to place data centers in space orbit, with the goal of launching 13 data center building blocks with a capacity of 10 MW (megawatts) into space by 2036. However, the information technology (IT) industry believes that there are many challenges to be overcome in order to actually send data centers to space, operate them, and use them to exchange real-time data.
Microsoft (MS) conducted ‘Project Natick’, an experiment to operate an underwater data center near the Orknik Islands in Scotland from 2018 to 2020. The power grid of the Orknik Islands is operated 100% by wind and solar power. MS announced that when it installed and operated a cylindrical data center with 864 servers, 12.2 m in length, and 2.8 m in diameter, 36.5 m below the seabed, filled with nitrogen, the failure rate of the undersea data center was only one-eighth that of a terrestrial data center. MS is preparing an experiment to expand the scale of the undersea data center and is also promoting a plan to build a small modular nuclear reactor (SMR) for the data center.
Meta has set up a data center in Luleå, Sweden, near the North Pole. The Luleå data center, which was built in 2013, is Meta’s first data center outside the United States. The cool, dry location of Luleå allows the winds blowing from the Arctic to cool tens of thousands of servers. The energy that runs the Luleå data center comes from a nearby hydroelectric power plant. Meta has been running the data center exclusively on renewable energy since 2020.
On the other hand, there are companies that seek out deserts. U.S. data center companies Switch and Nova have built data centers in the Las Vegas desert. This is because the desert, which has abundant sunlight, is advantageous for securing solar energy, an eco-friendly energy source. Large-scale solar power plants are also being built in Arizona, U.S., to supply power to data centers.
Reporter Hong Seok-ho [email protected]
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2024-08-03 15:15:44