China begins building underwater data center with performance equal to 6 million PCs — aims to save 122 million KWh of electricity and nearly ten soccer fields of land

Hainan UDC
Hainan UDC (Image credit: CCTV/YouTube)

Microsoft’s Project Natick in 2014 kicked off the trend of putting data centers in the ocean. Since then, there have been a couple of underwater data centers (UDCs) around the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. As reported by China Central Television (CCTV), China started to assemble what seems to be the world’s first commercial underwater data center off the coast of Sanya, a coastal city south of Hainan Island. According to CCTV, each data storage unit can process more than four million high-definition images in 30 seconds. The estimated performance claimed to be comparable to approximately 60,000 regular computers operating in unison. 

The companies involved installed the first data storage unit back in April. On Friday, a team of engineers added another data storage unit on the sea floor south of the Hainan province. The units house racks of servers, although the exact number and specifications remain a mystery.

Watertight data storage units serve as the building blocks, and the companies plan to install a hundred units over five years. Each data storage unit weighs 1,300 tons, or about the same as 1,000 cars, so transporting it to the bottom of the ocean isn’t easy. Not to mention that the module has to travel 35 meters to the bottom of the sea, so it takes the unit around three hours to get where it needs to be. The data storage unit has a longevity of 25 years, so it's built to last and withstand natural phenomena.

According to CCTV, each data storage unit can process more than four million high-definition images in 30 seconds. The estimated performance is comparable to approximately 60,000 regular computers operating in unison. You can imagine the data center's overall processing power with 100 data storage units, equivalent to around 6 million PCs.

The upcoming data center is gigantic, measuring up to 68,000 square meters or almost ten soccer fields. A soccer field measures 7,140 square meters. However, one of the benefits of underwater data centers is that they can take advantage of the generous seabed. Therefore, the data center is potentially saving 68,000 square meters of dry land that can be used for other purposes, such as housing development or industrialization. 

Other significant savings included 122 million kilowatt-hours of electricity and 105,000 tons of freshwater annually. Submerged data centers can leverage the freezing seawater for natural cooling, which helps reduce operating costs. Furthermore, water isn't consumed in the process, freeing water resources for the population. Pu Ding, the general manager of the UDC Hainan pilot development project, asserted that the completed data center would be between 40% and 60% more power efficient than land-based data centers.

The Hainan Undersea Data Center is a joint project backed by the Sanya government and the Hainan Provincial State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission with companies, including Offshore Oil Engineering Company, Beijing Highlander Digital Technology Co., Ltd., and Shenzhen HiCloud in the forefront for construction, design, and implementation. Meanwhile, Beijing Sinnet, a leading data center and cloud computing provider in China, will operate the data center. The ambitious Hainan project was announced in Q1 2021 with an estimated completion date of Q2 2025. The data center will cost approximately $879 million to build. 

The Hainan data center isn't the only Chinese underwater data center in development. A few other projects are scattered around China, including the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta regions.

Zhiye Liu
News Editor and Memory Reviewer

Zhiye Liu is a news editor and memory reviewer at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

  • randyh121
    Man I wish I could do more business with Chinese companies to be involved with projects like this.
    Reply
  • COLGeek
    You have to admit, this is pretty "cool".
    Reply
  • RodroX
    Wonder whats the cost for the ocean creatures and plants around it?
    Reply
  • hotaru.hino
    RodroX said:
    Wonder whats the cost for the ocean creatures and plants around it?
    Likely no real effect once you get a short distance away from them, if any at all.

    As a point of reference, a study on effects of coastal nuclear power that discharges their heated cooling water back to the ocean found there was some influence up to 3km, but the temperature difference between the water beyond 3km and the water from 0.5km from the discharge point was about 1-2C. And the amount of thermal energy being output from a nuclear plant will far exceed that of a data center.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    There's that old joke about boiling the oceans... at least, it seemed like a joke, at the time!
    : O
    Reply
  • bit_user
    randyh121 said:
    Man I wish I could do more business with Chinese companies to be involved with projects like this.
    I think China has never wanted to partner with outsiders, unless you have some technology or resources they don't. Even then, you're on borrowed time.

    As the article points out Microsoft has been working on this for a decade, already. Did you ever try to do business with them?https://news.microsoft.com/source/features/sustainability/project-natick-underwater-datacenter/
    Not sure if I'm imagining this, but I think even Google might've "dipped their toe in the water"!
    ; )
    Reply
  • bit_user
    hotaru.hino said:
    Likely no real effect once you get a short distance away from them, if any at all.
    No way. Plenty of research has been done on the effects of thermal effluent from power plants (though mostly in rivers, I think). It's not harmless.

    hotaru.hino said:
    As a point of reference, a study on effects of coastal nuclear power that discharges their heated cooling water back to the ocean
    Okay, that's one paper. Did you do a literature survey, or just pick the first hit that said what you wanted to hear?

    Also, if you look at where that paper's authors work, we should be skeptical about what kind of bias they might have. With one being from the Ministry of Natural Resources, I think it's unlikely they'd produce a paper finding that it's particularly harmful.

    In case people want to do their own research:
    https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=thermal+effluent+effects
    hotaru.hino said:
    And the amount of thermal energy being output from a nuclear plant will far exceed that of a data center.
    Datacenter energy usage is currently on an exponential growth curve. How long before we see datacenters integrated with their own nuclear plants? If you can "solve" the cooling problem, I think it's probably not long.
    https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Global-electricity-demand-of-data-centers-2010-2030_fig2_275653947
    With that said, a datacenter is going to have an environmental impact, no matter where you put it. I'm still skeptical this is the best option. Wherever you put them, I think improving computational efficiency needs to be the top priority.

    What strikes me as weird about the idea is that technology changes so rapidly - I think the typical upgrade cycle for datacenters is around 3-4 years. Most server components and equipment are only warrantied for 5 years, so that should be the practical maximum. However, the article highlights how troublesome and presumably expensive it is to raise and lower the units. Maybe if you build it with enough redundancy that it doesn't need regular service, then it's still viable just to raise & service each module every 3.5 years or so?

    If you compare AI hardware to 3.5 years ago, it's even worse. Back then, Nvidia's V100 still ruled the roost. Seems like the upgrade cycle for AI hardware is probably more like 2 years.
    Reply
  • gg83
    It will catch fire just like there flagship sea vessel just did. Lmao
    Reply
  • Order 66
    I think Microsoft has already started doing something like this, IIRC.
    bit_user said:
    There's that old joke about boiling the oceans... at least, it seemed like a joke, at the time!
    : O
    I know you are joking, but I don't think it is possible to boil the oceans with heat from underwater data centers unless there are an absurd number of them. The ocean is just so massive that even running full load all the time, even several underwater data centers would take years to saturate the entire ocean with heat enough to raise the temperature even slightly, let alone boil them.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    Order 66 said:
    I know you are joking, but I don't think it is possible to boil the oceans with heat from underwater data centers
    If you extrapolate the trend in data center energy consumption, it would be enough to boil the oceans in something like a 100 years. Obviously, the trend would break down well before then, but that's the joke. It does highlight the fact that something(s) need to change.

    I linked this above, but I know people don't follow links. I'd have embedded the image, but they don't allow it and I was too lazy to re-upload it. Well, here you go:
    Caveats: the data is from 2015 and I haven't fit the curve to see where it actually lands in 100 years, but it'd be a fictitious number anyhow.
    Reply