The data center are not the equipment that weighs the most on the digital environmental bill. But demand is exploding in terms of data storage and processing. It is therefore imperative to make them more virtuous, too.
Intel seems to put the package on the subject by announcing this week to release 700 million dollars which will be invested in a mega laboratory dedicated to the question.
The Oregon Research and Design Lab will be built on its Jones Farm campus in Hillsboro. It will focus on several themes: cooling by immersion, the use of water, the recovery and reuse of heat.
Let’s hope that this laboratory of more than 18,000 square meters will itself be eco-designed. Construction will begin this year for an opening at the end of 2023. It will also include a showcase where customers can come and test Intel products in different data center environments.
Submerged servers
In addition, Intel makes open-source its immersion cooling solution tested in Taiwan. This involves bathing the servers in a coolant to absorb the heat. A technology that could reduce carbon emissions by 45% compared to traditional data center use, according to the company.
It is hoped that Intel will not only focus on reducing energy consumption and recovering the heat emitted. The data center have many other harmful consequences on the environment. Let us cite, for example, the consumption of raw materials, the production of waste, the emission of fine particles, the acidification of the air or even the depletion of water resources.
The joint study by Ademe and Arcep on the impact of digital technology gives an overview of this for our country in a study published at the very beginning of the year.
Regarding greenhouse gas emissions, the urgency requires in particular to extend the life of the hardware of these data centers, to reuse and recycle it as much as possible.