Microsoft Research paper proposes using 'Data Furnaces' to heat the home

The U.S. EPA estimated that servers and data centers were responsible for up to 1.5 percent of the total U.S. electricity consumption, or approximately 0.5 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, in 2007. With companies just as Apple and Google strongly pushing the move to cloud computing, that figure is likely to increase significantly in the coming decade. Since a lot of energy is consumed keeping the computer systems cool, colder climates are seen as more favorable sites for data centers. However a new paper from Microsoft Technology proposes a different approach that would see servers, dubbed Data Furnaces, distributed to office buildings and homes where they would act as a primary heat source.

The Microsoft Technology paper says that at around 40-50°C, the temperature of the exhaust air from a computer server is too low to regenerate electricity efficiently. Nevertheless, this temperature is perfect for heating purposes, just as home/building space heating, clothes dryers and water heaters. So the researchers argue that placing servers used for cloud computing operations directly into homes and/or office buildings would turn heat generation from a problem into an advantage.

The Data Furnaces

The Data Furnaces would be micro-datacenters on the order of 40 to 400 CPUs that would be connected to the Internet and integrated into the house/office building's heating system in the same way as a conventional electrical furnace. By leveraging the home's existing infrastructure and doing away with the need for dedicated real estate and construction of new facilities, DFs would significantly reduce the cost per server when compared to conventional data centers.

Additionally, such a setup would as well provide lower network latency as the storage and computation systems can be located closer to areas of high population density and in short those using them.

The DFs would be managed remotely and the researchers suggest that cloud computing service operators could provide free heat to host families in exchange for occasionally replacing air filters or, in extreme circumstances, turning servers off and on.

Dedicated data center facility

With residential areas much less physically secure than a dedicated data center facility, the researchers say each DF should have an individual tamper-proofing device, just as a networked sensor, and all stored data and network traffic must be encrypted. Software running on the servers would as well need to be sandboxed and secured from the hosting party.

So though the thought of Data Furnaces being placed in people's homes may seem unlikely now, with computers and network connectivity continuing to get faster and cheaper, and energy costs continuing to rise, the idea might not be so far fetched.

The biggest question here

The biggest question here.... what about bandwidth? My home cable internet connection is not going to do a 400 CPU data center much good. :-) Are they going to be running direct Internet links to everyone's homes or what?

I think my 920 ft2 basement could soak up 2kw of heat in the summer and 8kw in the winter. My 100 amp service would only support another 2kw. I see Gomez pays $45/ mo for its distributed computing project. It looks like you need one email account for each $45. At any rate, anyone with a basement has a huge prepaid heat sink.

Natural for municipalities to stimulate a POP

It is a natural for municipalities to stimulate a POP by attaching such a facility to existing infrastructure, reducing municipal overheads and stimulating local business.