It will be located at the bottom of the South China Sea
Placing data centers underwater is not a new idea. Microsoft announced the corresponding Natic project back in 2014, and construction began in 2018. Now China has begun building a similar facility, which will be the world's first commercial underwater data center.
The data center will be located at the bottom of the South China Sea off the coast of Sanya. The Hainan Subsea Data Center is a joint project supported by the Sanya government and the Hainan State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, as well as companies such as Offshore Oil Engineering Company, Beijing Highlander Digital Technology and Shenzhen HiCloud. The facility will be managed by Beijing Sinnet.
It is known that construction will cost approximately $879 million. There are no clear technical specifications, but it is reported that the estimated performance of one module is comparable to the performance of approximately 60,000 conventional computers, although which conventional ones are also unclear.
In total, the data center will consist of four modules, each weighing 1,300 tons. They will be located at a depth of about 35 meters, and their service life is stated to be 25 years.
Placing a data center underwater will save up to 105,000 tons of fresh water per year. Let us remember that such objects consume huge amounts of water for cooling.