Google's chilling solution

摘要

In his final column for RAC, Andrew Bailey reflects on the future of mechanical cooling and the impact of ac in the bedroom. THERE IS A BEST-SELLING CHRISTIAN BOOK ENTITLED WHAT WOULD JESUS do? Now a secular publication has been added to the genre, What would Google do? It attempts to map and predict the response of Google, to the business challenges of the day. Cooling is vital to the banks of high-power computers that underpin the internet services of Google and similar companies. The problem is that the surges in processing power have coincided with huge increases in the cost of energy, threatening the economics of the business and exposing operators to charges of environmental vandalism. On both grounds, the conventional approach of throwing large dollops of mechanical cooling at hot silicon is becoming more and more unsustainable.