Data centres (centers) and transmission networks are the backbone of many technology. Current technology enables us to communicate at lightning speed with people located at different parts of the world. There are many options to do that; for example via messaging applications, video conferencing, virtual reality environments, video gaming environment, augmented reality, hologram conferencing, voice recording, video recording, etc.
Many use these technology without knowing how it works at the basic level. That’s because technology has become so integral to our lives that we simply take it for granted. Not surprisingly, we are facing the same situation for the food that we consume too.
How so?
You see, some kids don’t know where their food comes from. Their meals are prepared regularly therefore, they never felt the need to question its origin. Nowadays, its really rare for kids to ask about the origins of their food ingredients.
One kid asked me about this a few days ago, and it somehow inspired me to write about this piece about data centres.
He asked me about the origins of beef and I replied that there’s THREE ways to obtain a piece of beef and have it cooked as a steak, (1) Rear a cow and harvest its meat, (2) Grow that piece of meat in a food laboratory or (3) Print that piece of meat using a 3D printer.
Don’t eww me. Meat can really be obtained through these three methods and no one knows how many more alternatives might emerge in the future.
Technology, like food, don’t suddenly appear out of nowhere. Somebody had to do the groundwork of mining minerals, converting the minerals into secondary products that could be used to build electronic components, code instructions into the chips, fuse the parts together, build the eco-system infrastructure that enables network connections, etc. All parts are essential but I especially want to focus on data centres.
Data centres are boring. Racks and racks of servers humming. Nothing exciting, but I reckon that it could be a space to watch out for. Given the recent advancements in artificial intelligence and how data are being used for machine learning, it is not difficult to imagine the growing importance of data and how its status might eventually rival that of money.
Since we have Switzerland for money, perhaps there should be another “Switzerland” for data. Then again, I remembered reading about how one company housed their data into a special purpose vehicle and sold it off to a holding company within Switzerland for safe-keeping. Not Switzerland again!
Anyway, chatting applications that allow for instant messaging is an integral part of our lives. Its difficult to imagine passing a day without sending some sort of instant messages. Basically, these chatting applications convert your intended messages into data signals which are transmitted through the internet and then sent through the data centres. It then goes into your intended recipients’ phone as a normal human message again. That’s the basic idea of how it works.
Chatting apps companies can process these data via two options, (1) via the cloud – which is basically using another party’s data centre or (2) via their personal data centre. Sometimes it could be safer for your data to run through the chatting app’s personal data centers, depending on its privacy and security policies.
No matter what, your chatting data has to go through a data centre to make the magic happen. How do you send an image file to a recipient and expect him to open this file as and when he likes. This image data has to be housed in some locations for delayed retrieval.
Data centre is big business. You are able to perform cloud computing because of data centres. The data centre is your cloud, not anywhere else. Most definitely not in the cloud but maybe in the outer space, in the near future.
Based on the above figure, research showed that global data centres consumed around 205 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2018 or about 1% of global electricity use. Based on figures from Energy Market Authority of Singapore, Singapore roughly consumed about 50.4 TWh in 2018. The data centres’ energy consumption trumps Singapore’s energy consumption by slightly more than 4 times.
In order for data centres to work at its best efficiency, the environment should ideally be around 20 to 25 degrees Celsius but some companies are already starting to explore the possibility of pushing the boundary to 32 degree Celsius. In addition, the data centre designer also has to consider the humidity of the environment.
About 50% of a survey said that their data centres will be between 5,000 and 50,000 square feet over and another 16% stated that their data centres will be between 100,000 and 500,000 square feet. For your information, a 50,000 square feet data centre will be slightly smaller than a soccer field. A 5,000 square feet data centre will be about as big as a basketball court.
What does this means?
This means that the operation of data centres require a specially curated environment that is energy intensive, generates a lot of heat and takes up a lot of space.
Where does this leads to?
This means that there’s a lot of potential in improving the operations of the data centres. Passive cooling technology. Housing data centres underwater. Building multi-storied data centres. Reusing the heat from the data centres. Orientation of the data centres. AND also exploring the possibility of housing data centres in outer space. It is ENTIRELY possible.
Two astronauts will installing a broadband terminal on the International Space Station. This will allow them to connect to the internet at broadband speeds. Once this is established, the possibility of housing a data centre in outer space becomes higher.
So what?
There is huge potential in this space. Literally space. No. Really.
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