Microsoft has released new information on its efforts to make cloud data centers more energy efficient and less water intensive.
The company is embarking on various research projects, each of which it aims to become carbon neutral by 2030 and to offset all historical emissions by 2050. In addition, Microsoft is now committed to reducing data center water consumption by 95 percent by 2024.
Each of the projects detailed in the company’s blog post aims at different options for data center operations from building and optimizing performance to cooling and to energy consumption. They are designed to help Microsoft keep pace with sustainability responsibilities and steeply growing demands.
“Customers already enjoy the massive efficiency of the cloud that reduces the collective carbon needed to support the world’s computing needs. carbon footprint “- wrote Noelle Walsh, Microsoft’s vice president of clouds.
. “We and the cloud industry therefore face an important challenge in scaling our computing power in advancing digital economies, research and inclusive economic opportunities while helping to preserve our only planet,” the vice president said.
Although Microsoft keeps a wide variety of irons on fire, the most prominent sustainability projects being the pursuit of waterless cooling and the exploration of natural building materials that could pave the way for carbon-free data centers
At the beginning of the year the company has announced that it is experimenting with a new method of cooling server racks. The server racks are immersed in a special, electrically non-conductive fluid, so there is no need for conventional evaporative cooling.
The results have been promising, so the company is now testing whether the same technique can be used to increase server chip performance. is. Early results show that some chipsets can be accelerated by more than 20 percent above their normal power levels using liquid immersion
In addition to reducing the amount of water used by data centers, immersion also provides opportunities for rack design. By packing more servers into a smaller space and increasing the performance of each chipset, Microsoft can improve the efficiency of its data centers per square meter or otherwise build smaller facilities in more strategically advantageous locations.
Microsoft is known as the Carbon Leadership Forum. published a study with a non-profit organization on sustainability, examining the effectiveness of various low-carbon building materials, including bricks and panels grown from algae and structural tubes made of mycelium (mushroom yarn).
“Carbon The potential for a significant impact of carbon sinks on the climate is now a clear advantage for such materials, and the climate profile of buildings can be transformed from one of the leading drivers of CO2 emissions into carbon stocks that can help reverse it, “said
The authors further state that the such materials require significant investment to “accelerate their sizing, production and marketable use in the construction supply chain”. It is not yet known which of these systems will be implemented on a large scale, but Microsoft has explored its capabilities in any case.
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