What if we could turn the biggest liability of data centers into an asset?
From CNBC,
This university campus is heated by an AI data center. Your home could be next.
The campus is located in Dublin, Ireland. But the dilemma is universal. Two of the biggest drawbacks of large-scale data centers are their relatively high use of two commodities: electricity and water. Those commodities are used primarily for cooling the tremendous amount of heat produced by the computer servers themselves.
What if we could harvest that heat for reuse? CNBC reports,
An Amazon Web Services data center in Dublin currently provides 92% of a technological campus’ heating demand. Advances in the technology that keep AI chips cool in data centers are making this all possible; however, high capex costs and lack of infrastructure could slow implementation in Europe.
Late last year, the Minnesota Star Tribune reported on efforts to tackle the same problem from the other end,
Minnesota startup has found a way to use lasers to reduce energy and water use by data centers
The Star Tribune reports,
A startup called Maxwell Labs in Little Canada is developing a technology that would cool down the chips using lasers instead of water.
The Maxwell Labs team includes an Ivy League engineering professor. Given a little time, it’s a good bet that those same big brains that created the artificial intelligence revolution to begin with, will solve the implementation problems, too.
