rare glimpse into Google's data centers

[Broheim]

purrty

the purrty colors makes me want to swing by ikea and pick up some of their color led strips.

 

[kalrith]

You realize it reaches 50*C in many parts of the world naturally right? The dash of a car in summer will break 70*C within minutes where I live.

I'd say you're overstating things a bit. There are only 20 countries on the entire planet that have EVER reached 50° C (Source). Death Valley has the highest recorded temperature (56.7° C), and its average high in July is 47° C.

Edit: And alt + 2 + 4 + 8 yields the ° symbol so that you don't have to use the unsightly *

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

I'd say you're overstating things a bit. There are only 20 countries on the entire planet that have EVER reached 50° C (Source). Death Valley has the highest recorded temperature (56.7° C), and its average high in July is 47° C.

Edit: And alt + 2 + 4 + 8 yields the ° symbol so that you don't have to use the unsightly *

On the ground in the open, maybe. But a car is basically a miniature greenhouse.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

It is the only tourist attraction I know of in Iowa

Fixed
<-- Former resident of Ames

 

[0roo0roo]

I read that, but it isn't clear to me what they mean. Does the air get cooled, and returned, or do they use it for heating something useful?

not hot enough to drive a generator. only warm enough to maybe help with heating during winter, or pass on some of the heat to the water heating system....i'm sure they just have to dump the extra heat out of the building.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

not hot enough to drive a generator. only warm enough to maybe help with heating during winter, or pass on some of the heat to the water heating system....i'm sure they just have to dump the extra heat out of the building.

I wonder...would there be enough heat energy to make it worth concentrating, like in a fridge? That would cost energy of course, but if there was enough heat coming off the servers wouldn't that make it work?

 

[BUTCH1]

I wonder...would there be enough heat energy to make it worth concentrating, like in a fridge? That would cost energy of course, but if there was enough heat coming off the servers wouldn't that make it work?

To do what, make a smoker out of it?, the purpose of the cooling towers is to remove that heat and keep the electronics at a stable operating temp..

 

[davmat787]

That's too bad. It seems like someone clever could use the heated water for something directly, or extract the energy indirectly so it doesn't get wasted.

You might be interested in this video by Google then. It discusses how they use seawater and other HVAC stuff in their Finland data center.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VChOEvKicQQ

 

[IronWing]

Edit: And alt + 2 + 4 + 8 yields the ° symbol so that you don't have to use the unsightly *

Bless you. It seems to only work with the numeric keypad but still handy to know.

Looky at all this cool stuff!! °&#9787;Ä&#9786;ƒ&#948;

 

[HeXen]

i wish i could pipe that heat exhaust into my house in the winter

 

[NL5]

I've been in several DC's before, and I can tell you it's not hot in them. They spend a fortune on cooling and room design. They even tune the rooms for proper air flow. We aren't allowed to pull more than a few floor tiles at a time, or it will mess up the tuning and cause servers to overheat.

Also, cooling towers do just vent off heat into the atmosphere, The heat can be recovered and used for building heat, before it goes to the towers.

 

[Northern Lawn]

This looks like the inside of Abram's Star Trek Enterprise.

 

[SlitheryDee]

Pretty amazing. They built all that mostly by helping other companies sell us stuff. Kind of weird when you think about it.

 

[Ichinisan]

Bless you. It seems to only work with the numeric keypad but still handy to know.

Looky at all this cool stuff!! °&#9787;Ä&#9786;&#402;&#948;

Open the Windows charmap utility and it tells you the numpad shortcuts in the status bar.

 

[Ichinisan]

This looks like the inside of Abram's Star Trek Enterprise.

Abrams'

 

[IronWing]

Open the Windows charmap untility and it tells you the numpad shortcuts in the status bar.

Hmm, but it's wrong. It says the degree sign ° is mapped to A+0176 yet A+0176 yields &#9617;.

 

[Ichinisan]

Hmm, but it's wrong. It says the degree sign ° is mapped to A+0176 yet A+0176 yields &#9617;.

It's font-specific.

I just did Alt+0176 into the Windows Run menu and got a degrees sign.

Alt+176 gives you &#9617;. Alt+0176 gives you °.

 

[lxskllr]

You might be interested in this video by Google then. It discusses how they use seawater and other HVAC stuff in their Finland data center.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VChOEvKicQQ

I like that. Not as good as /using/ the heat, but it beats using energy to cool the heat you made from using energy :^)

 

[lxskllr]

It's font-specific.

I just did Alt+0176 into the Windows Run menu and got a degrees sign.

Alt+176 gives you &#9617;. Alt+0176 gives you °.

Sucks not having keyboard compositing. I hit CapsLock(the key I assigned as the switch), then oo, and I get °. Couldn't be easier :^)