Google building its own nuclear power station?

M

MaD

Expert Member
Joined
Nov 5, 2003
Messages
4,929
Reaction score
16
If you want to start a rumour, how about that Google is going to build its own nuclear power station? The logic is easy. Larry Page, the company's co-founder, reportedly sees "running out of power" as the biggest potential threat to Google, and the electricity needed to run its "server farms" -- tens of thousands of power-hungry computers storing billions of internet pages -- could soon cost more than the hardware. Partly this is because Google is based in California, where the state solved its 2001 energy crisis by borrowing $10 billion to buy electricity at massively inflated prices. But the rest of us are heading in the same direction.

Mail & Guardian article
 
It is a big worry for Google.

Sun has an 8 core (32 threads per core) SPARC server chip called "Niagra" that consumes only 72W of power for the entire chip which is very low compared to other designs like the IBM POWER which consume about 100W per core.

It is poor at floating point but that is not required for doing what Google does.

So it would not surprise me if Google outsources all their hardware maintenance/development to Sun and either buy them outright or merge.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X