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Microsoft Goes Underwater With Data Center

By Peter R | Update Date: Feb 02, 2016 08:09 AM EST

Fancy working underwater? Keep an eye out for a job on Microsoft's underwater data centers.

The company has completed testing its first underwater data center prototype. PC World reports the testing of the prototype called Leona Philpot as part of Microsoft's efforts which are being referred to as Project Natick. Through the one-year old project, the company is exploring subsea installations for providing better data access to coastal populations.

"Project Natick seeks to understand the benefits and difficulties in deploying subsea data centers worldwide. We did so by designing, building, and deploying our own subsea data center in the ocean, all in about a year," the project webpage description reads.

According to Microsoft, a Natick data center could last five years underwater before being hauled up to replace computers. The installation itself could last 20 years.

Underwater installations would make cooling computers easy and cheap while offering scope to tap water as renewable energy source. Microsoft also believes that its installations can be quickly mass produced and deployed without harming the ocean environment, The New York Times reported.

"Natick data centers are envisioned to be fully recycled. Made from recycled material which in turn is recycled at the end of life of the data center," Microsoft claimed.

"A Natick data center co-located with offshore renewable energy sources could be truly zero emission: no waste products, whether due to the power generation, computers, or human maintainers are emitted into the environment."

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