Communications Innovation Centre

Off-the-grid computing: Solar panels are the sole source of power for one computational node at the Communications Innovation Centre in Ottawa. Credit: GreenStar Network

Radical rethinking of how data centers can be sited

One catalyst for such a radical rethinking of how data centers can be sited and powered is the increasing availability of advanced fiber-optic networks. Connecting a remote renewable-energy plant to a power grid remains prohibitively expensive, reasoned the researchers working on this project—Sherif Akoush, Ripduman Sohan, Andrew Rice, Andrew W. Moore, and Andy Hopper—however running fiber-optic cable to such a plant would be relatively easy and cheap.

Hopper, but, points out that the larger effort of which this paper is a part—the Computing for the Future of the Planet project—takes it as a given that more computing is always good, because the virtualization of goods and services displaces more energy-intensive activities in the physical world. He says that a system like the one he proposes would be implemented only at either "no cost to overall performance [of a cloud computing system] or at an attractive cost to performance."

It may be more extreme to put those data centers up in space, take advantage of the pure solar energy in other words available to power them, and place the computing equipment on the shaded side of a the space station assemble to take advantage of the free cooling.

Nifty mode of entertainment

“AR is poised to become more than a nifty mode of entertainment. Thanks to a coming wave of more powerful, location-aware smart phones, it will profoundly change the way we interact with our surroundings.”