It’s all about data this month, Microsoft attempt to sink a data centre and Samsung have created the industry’s largest SSD.
Microsoft sinks data centre – Project Natick
At the beginning of this month, Microsoft deployed Project Natick and sunk a data centre off the shores of Orkney. Naturally any data centre needs to be kept in a cool environment, so the theory is they’ll be able to cut the cost of cooling by placing the centre in water. Also, Ben Cutler, Principal Member of Tech Staff, Microsoft states "because there are no people, we can take all the oxygen and most of the water vapour out of the atmosphere which reduces corrosion, which is a significant problem in data centres."
The main question in our mind is “what if the computers fail?”. Well according to Microsoft they won’t be able to fix failures - they’re hoping that the underwater centre will reduce the failure rate.
If Project Natick is a success, you can expect to see groups of data centres being deployed within 90 days, reducing years off the time it takes to build a centre on land.
Other experts aren’t convinced it’ll work, and it could potentially have an environmental impact. Professor Ian Bitterlin claims “we could end up with a warmer sea and bigger fish”.
What are your thoughts on this, are Microsoft bonkers or genius? You can read the full article here
Samsung launches highest capacity storage drive
Speaking of data, Samsung has launched the industry’s highest capacity NVM2 solid state drive (basically, a memory card). The SSD packs a whopping 8TB of storage in a tiny container that is11cm x 3.05cm.
This SSD delivers read speeds of 3,100MB/s and writes speeds of 2,000MB/s – five times faster than your average SSD.
“By introducing the first NF1 NVMe SSD, Samsung is taking the investment efficiency in data centres to new heights,” said Sewon Chun, senior vice president of Memory Marketing at Samsung Electronics. “We will continue to lead the trend toward enabling ultra-high-density data centres and enterprise systems by delivering storage solutions with unparalleled performance and density levels.”
Read the latest news from Samsung here.
Voice commanded internet browser?
We’re all relatively familiar with voice command software, such as Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri. It’s already been estimated that a shocking 50% of all searches will be solely voice searched by 2020. So, it’s no surprise that we can expect to see more and more voice commanded software.
Mozilla creators of Firefox are currently trialing a new concept for a browser called Scout. Scout will make the entire browsing experience controlled by voice alone. The browser will be called “All Hands” and it’s “designed to go above and beyond the limitations and confines of the existing platform”
It’s still in very early stages so there hasn’t been an official public release yet, but could Firefox finally overthrow their biggest competitor Google Chrome with this new software?
Time Magazine gets creative with drones.
Time and Intel have set the tone for how new technology can link up with a traditional company. In the 95 years of Time, we’ve seen some memorable and controversial magazine front covers. But this has to be by far the most tech-driven cover to date.
The cover was made using 958 of Intel’s drones to create the Time logo and red border mid-air over California’s skyline. The drones were pre-programmed to create different shapes and designs in just a few minutes. Watch the video below to see how it was all made possible.
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