It’s been billed as the project that will put the cloud into the ocean. Microsoft has been testing its first ever underwater datacentre in a bid to reduce its impact on the environment and boost performance for its users.

Datacentres are thought to consume up to 3 per cent of the world’s electricity and big businesses are keener than ever to promote their green credentials. So when a paper about putting datacentres in the water landed on the desk of Norm Whitaker, who heads up special projects for Microsoft Research NExT, the idea immediately caught his eye.

Whitaker said: “We’re a small group, and we look at moonshot projects. The paper came out of ThinkWeek, an event that encourages employees to share ideas that could be transformative to the company. As we started exploring the space, it started to make more and more sense. We had a mind-bending challenge, but also a chance to push boundaries.”

ADVANTAGES OF UNDERWATER DATACENTRES

The benefits to the environmental seem clear enough. Cooling has always been a vital aspect of datacentres in order to prevent overheating amongst the vast racks of computer hardware they contain. But the chilling equipment they use is both costly and energy-hungry. So the cold temperatures of the deep seas provide an obvious opportunity to make these processes more energy-efficient.

Indeed, Microsoft believes that if underwater datacentres could be used in conjunction with offshore renewable energy sources, they could even strive to achieve zero emissions.

There is also a potential to achieve greater performance. Since half of the world’s population lives within 200km of the coast, datacentres in the sea could reduce latency time too (that’s the time taken for information to travel from its source to the user’s device).

This initial trial took place off the Californian coast between August and December 2015 and the 38,000-pound steel container, which sat on the seabed, 1 km from shore, is now back on dry land in a Microsoft laboratory undergoing further tests. But the team is already working on the next phase, which is set to include a vessel four times as big and with 20 times as much computing power.

One thing is for certain, the amount of information being stored in the cloud is only set to increase over time, leading to even greater energy demands by datacentres. So watch this space. The deep blue sea may just contain a workable solution for greener technology.