One of the major challenges facing modern internet infrastructure is the energy required to actively cool the laundry list of thermally inefficient micro-processors. The majority of server farms are so concerned with keeping their infrastructure cool without spending too much money on cooling. A solution that industry analysts have been investigating in and investing in, has been air cooled servers, where the server is more directly cooled by the ambient environment, as opposed to having an intermediary air conditioning system. These air cooled servers have come in a variety of shapes and sizes, and I would like to suggest one more,
Street Lights (I'm not kidding)
Streets lights have the potential to serve as a fantastic platform for distributed computing infrastructure, they are ubiquitous in the world's communities, there is a decent amount of un/under-used surface area for mounting, and as lighting infrastructure moves towards LEDs there is already an inbuilt AC/DC converter. At the current time the idea is relatively vague, I readily acknowledge that, as the characteristic constraints are hard to pin down. Ideally these smarter street lights would be connected to a robust internet infrastructure at the local level. Similar to how server farms have fungible racks of individual server elements, easily added or swapped by a technician. As Moore's law has begun to slow, at least when it comes to density increases of transistors (I honestly haven't kept good track on actual cost per transistor) this infrastructure can be built up for more long term planning
Potential markets include, municipal governments trying to provide their own localized equivalent to larger online cloud services, local ISPs minimizing their concentration of servers, cable companies/Netflix and other video on demand service providers where last mile delivery concerns are legitimate, and honestly who knows who else.
*(this is a quick and dirty post for the moment, I will do follow up later, my schedule has gotten rather crazy, but I really like this idea March 22, 2016)
A follow up post will have notes on a starting template for a streetlight system intended to promote a hybrid of air cooled servers, battery storage infrastructure to keep things going, and for snowier climbs who knows maybe a heat pump to melt snow around the server.
Street Lights (I'm not kidding)
Streets lights have the potential to serve as a fantastic platform for distributed computing infrastructure, they are ubiquitous in the world's communities, there is a decent amount of un/under-used surface area for mounting, and as lighting infrastructure moves towards LEDs there is already an inbuilt AC/DC converter. At the current time the idea is relatively vague, I readily acknowledge that, as the characteristic constraints are hard to pin down. Ideally these smarter street lights would be connected to a robust internet infrastructure at the local level. Similar to how server farms have fungible racks of individual server elements, easily added or swapped by a technician. As Moore's law has begun to slow, at least when it comes to density increases of transistors (I honestly haven't kept good track on actual cost per transistor) this infrastructure can be built up for more long term planning
Potential markets include, municipal governments trying to provide their own localized equivalent to larger online cloud services, local ISPs minimizing their concentration of servers, cable companies/Netflix and other video on demand service providers where last mile delivery concerns are legitimate, and honestly who knows who else.
*(this is a quick and dirty post for the moment, I will do follow up later, my schedule has gotten rather crazy, but I really like this idea March 22, 2016)
A follow up post will have notes on a starting template for a streetlight system intended to promote a hybrid of air cooled servers, battery storage infrastructure to keep things going, and for snowier climbs who knows maybe a heat pump to melt snow around the server.
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