A new data center has been inaugurated in China. The special thing about it is that the building is located in the middle of the sea and uses nature for cooling.
Recently, a new data center was inaugurated off the coast of the Chinese province of Hainan. This was reported by the English-language magazine PCGamer. However, the special aspect is not the data center itself, but the location: the hardware has been placed in the sea. The new underwater data center is connected to other data centers via cables.
Data center in the sea is said to be as powerful as 30,000 gaming PCs
What kind of data center is this? A system of more than 400 high-performance servers has been installed off the coast of the Chinese province of Hainan. The China Media Group claims that the computing power of the entire center is comparable to that of 30,000 high-end gaming PCs.
However, no specific example or direct comparison is mentioned. The specific hardware in use is also not disclosed; due to economic restrictions, Chinese companies increasingly rely on their own developments.
Additionally, the company states that the new underwater data center will be capable of supporting DeepSeek-powered AI assistants through 7,000 conversations per second.
The underwater center is 18 meters long and 3.6 meters in diameter. According to the China Media Group (CMG), it is connected to the customers’ data terminals via a nearby coastal station.
The sea cools significantly better than a mechanical cooling system on land
Why build a server in the sea? Data centers host and manage the vast amounts of information that people generate and consume daily. The problem is that such servers are incredibly power-hungry and generate large amounts of heat. Placing a server in the sea offers several advantages, according to TechTarget.com:
- The technical hardware lasts longer underwater as people do not bump into or damage the containers.
- The humidity within the underwater data center is indeed lower than in a comparable server farm on land. This results in minimal corrosion.
- Deep-sea data centers utilize the cooling capacity of the ocean to maintain consistently low temperatures. An active, energy-intensive mechanical cooling system is not required.
The new center in China is also not the first of its kind: Microsoft has already tested initial underwater data centers; “Project Natick” by Microsoft from 2015 to 2018 was one of the first underwater data centers. Microsoft discontinued Project Natick in 2020.
The issue of cooling is often a significant topic with servers. Once, millions of people were unable to use their bank accounts because: Because someone accidentally turned off a water cooling system, 2.5 million people could not pay their bills.
