Leveraging technology from submarines, Microsoft is working with pioneers in marine energy for the second phase of its moonshot to develop self-sufficient underwater datacenters, that can deliver lightning-quick cloud services to coastal cities. An experimental, shipping-container-size prototype is currently processing workloads on the seafloor near Scotland’s Orkney Islands, the company announced.
The deployment of the Northern Isles datacenter at the European Marine Energy Centre marks a milestone in Microsoft’s Project Natick, a years-long research effort to investigate manufacturing and operating environmentally sustainable, prepackaged datacenter units that can be ordered to size, rapidly deployed and left to operate lights out on the seafloor for years.
More than half of the world’s population lives within about 120 miles of the coast. By putting datacenters in bodies of water near coastal cities, data would have a short distance to travel to reach coastal communities, leading to fast and smooth web surfing, video streaming and game playing as well as authentic experiences for AI-driven technologies.
For true delivery of AI, we are really cloud dependent today. If we can be within one internet hop of everyone, then it not only benefits our products, but also the products our customers serve, said Peter Lee, corporate vice president of Microsoft AI and Research.
