Will Google Energy Power Its Data Centers?

A look at a working solar thermal power generation facility.

Google (GOOG) has formed a new subsidiary to buy and sell power on the wholesale market, and hopes the move will help provide more renewable energy to meet its corporate carbon reduction goals. The company formed Google Energy last month and has asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to allow it to participate in the energy markets.

“Right now, we can’t buy affordable, utility-scale, renewable energy in our markets,” Google representative Niki Fenwick told CNet. “We want to buy the highest quality, most affordable renewable energy wherever we can and use the green credits.”

Target: Data Centers?
Google isn’t saying how it will use any green energy it generates or purchases, but the company’s vast, power-hungry data center network could be the primary beneficiary. Google has shown an intense focus on energy efficiency in the design and operation of its data centers, and has also invested in renewable energy, primarily through its Google.org non-profit arm.

Can the ‘Google Economy’ Lift Small Towns?

Earlier this week we looked at how data centers have boosted the fortunes of the small town of Quincy, Washington. This week NPR is examining another small town that provides a window into the potential of data centers as an economic development tool, and the challenges faced by local residents hoping to win high-paying jobs at these facilities. 

NPR’s Frank Langfitt looks at the changing fortunes of Lenoir, North Carolina, a town in Caldwell County which is perhaps best known as the home of a $600 million data center for Google. Google’s arrival in 2007 was hailed as a transformative event for Lenoir, which was once known as the “Furniture Capital of the South” but has seen two-thirds of its furniture workers lose their jobs as the industry shifted production to China.   

Can former furniture workers find jobs at Google? Many Lenoir residents have gone back to school at the local community college to learn IT skills in hopes of being hired by Google. You can listen to the first installment of the three-part series on the NPR web site.  The series will continue this week on NPR’s evening news program, All Things Considered.

Google Exploring Quantum Computing

A view of an earlier version of D-Wave qubit processor (Photo by J. Chung, D-Wave Systems Inc.).

Google is working on developing a quantum computer, a technology that could dramatically enhance the power of its search capabilities. The company revealed last week that it has spent three years developing a quantum algorithm, and is collaborating with Canadian company D-Wave, which is working to build quantum computing processors.

What is quantum computing? Here’s a description from Popular Science: “The promise of quantum computing rests with the bizarre physics that occurs at the subatomic level. Different research teams have worked on creating quantum processors that store information as qubits (quantum bits), which can represent both the 1 and 0 of binary computer language at the same time. That dual possibility state allows for much more efficient processing and information storage.”

Google’s announcement that it has figured out how to use quantum algorithms to sort images is covered by New Scientist and Popular Science. Will this technology eventually help Google in its bid to organize the world’s information? How might a successful implementation of quantum computing affect the company’s use of data centers?

“There are still many open questions but in our experiments we observed that this detector performs better than those we had trained using classical solvers running on the computers we have in our data centers today,” writes Google’s Hartmut Neven.

Google, Cables and the Future of the Web

Why is Google investing in a second undersea telecommunications cable project? For Google, this move is all about the future of the Internet and laying the foundations for an infrastructure that will track the network’s growth. 

Last Thursday Google said it would team with KDDI, Bharti Airtel, Reliance to build a $400 million submarine cable that will connect the Asia Pacific region, dubbed Southeast Asia Japan Cable (SJC). In 2008 Google announced a deal to partner with Bharti Airtel, Global Transit, KDDI Corp., Pancet and SingTel on the $300 million Unity Trans-Pacific Cable.

To understand the motivations behind Google’s investment, check out this July video of a presentation by Google’Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf, during which he discusses growth trends in Internet usage. At about the 9 minute mark, Cerf notes that Asia already has the largest Internet population, with 657 million users, compared to 393 million in Europe and 251 million in North America. Here’s the key data point: when expressed in percentage of the population, 75 percent of North Americans are online, compared to 49 percent of Europeans. In Asia, that 657 million represents just 17 percent of the population.

Google Patent Reveals Data Center Innovations

A diagram of an "air wand" indicating the location of cooling vents in the wand, a key feature of a patent application by Google data center engineers.

Google has revealed some of the secret technology inside its mighty data centers, but its engineers are busy cooking up new secrets.

An example: Google is seeking to patent an advanced data center cooling system that provides precision cooling inside racks of servers, automatically adjusting to temperature changes while dramatically reducing the energy required to run chillers.

The cooling design, which could help Google slash the power bill for its servers, reinforces Google’s focus on its data centers as a competitive advantage in its battle with Microsoft and other rivals for leadership in cloud computing. The company has customized much of the operation of its data centers, which serve as the engines powering its massive Internet business. Google builds its own servers and networking switches, and now appears to be customizing the racks that hold them.

Precision Cooling via ‘Air Wands’
The innovative rack cooling design features an adjustable piping system, including “air wands” that provide small amounts of cold air to components within a server tray. The chilled air enters the top of a rack through two vertical standpipes, which branch off into air wands – long, thin pipes lined with vents that release cold air.

The air wands can pivot to target cold air on specific components, or be swung to one side to allow equipment to be removed from the rack. Dampers on each standpipe can open and close to regulate the volume of air flowing into the pipe and air wands, while the vents on each individual air wand can be adjusted to point up or down, allowing for a highly configurable system. (See A Closer Look at Google’s New Cooling Design for a diagram).

Should Servers Come With Batteries?

Will the data center of the future have no central UPS units, and be filled with servers with on-board batteries? The data center team at Facebook believes it should, and is pledging to share its best practices - and perhaps wield some of its clout with vendors and data center operators - as it presses its case for change.   

Facebook recently disclosed its plans to adopt a novel power distribution design pioneered by Google that removes uninterruptible power supply (UPS) and power distribution units (PDUs) from the data center. The new design shifts the UPS and battery backup functions from the data center into the cabinet by adding a 12 volt battery to each server power supply.

While many best practices shared by Google, Microsoft and Facebook can help other data center operators save energy and money, other customizations are impractical.   

Big Companies, Big Innovation 
“A lot of the innovation in the field is being driven by companies with thousands of servers who really care about the efficiency of these things,” said Facebook’s Amir Michael, who previously worked on Google’s data center team. “We have capital to be able to afford engineers to solve these problems. It’s not really benefiting the rest of the industry. Smaller companies who might deploy fewer servers can’t go and design their own systems.”

In discussing Facebook’s plans for on-board batteries, Michael discussed ways these innovations might become more widely available.

Google Envisions 10 Million Servers

Google never says how many servers are running in its data centers. But a recent presentation by a Google engineer shows that the company is preparing to manage as many as 10 million servers in the future.

Google’s Jeff Dean was one of the keynote speakers at an ACM workshop on large-scale computing systems, and discussed some of the technical details of the company’s mighty infrastructure, which is spread across dozens of data centers around the world.

In his presentation (link via James Hamilton), Dean also discussed a new storage and computation system called Spanner, which will seek to automate management of Google services across multiple data centers. That includes automated allocation of resources across “entire fleets of machines.”

Google CapEx Spending Rebounds Slightly

Google (GOOG) invested $186 million on its data centers in the third quarter of 2009, ending a string of five consectuive quarters in which the company slashed its capital spending. But Google’s infrastructure costs remained just a fraction of what they were during its 2007 building boom, when it announced four new data centers.    

The second quarter capital expenditure (CapEx) total was up slightly from $139 million in the second quarter but tically lower than the company spent during the same period in 2006 ($492 million), 2007 ($453 million) and 2008 ($452 million). Here’s a look at the recent trend: 
 

YouTube’s Bandwidth: Cheap, But Not Free

How much is YouTube paying for the bandwidth to deliver its 1 billion page views per day? Credit Suisse says $470 million a year. RampRate says $174 million.  Google says “less than you think.” Now Wired.com asserts that YouTube’s bandwidth bill is zero, citing an analysis by Arbor Networks. The gist of the report is that YouTube has slashed its video delivery costs through the use of peering relationships and its in-house GoogleNet connecting its data centers (assembled through the company’s oft-reported purchases of dark fiber).   

Can Google really be paying nothing to deliver video? Dan Rayburn from the Business of Online Videosays Wired has misinterpreted the statment by Arbor Networks’ Craig Labovitz that ”Google’s transit costs are close to zero.” 

“Transit costs are not the same as bandwidth costs and Wired should know that,” Rayburn writes. He also says that although Google can cut its costs by peering with large ISPs, it’s not likely to strike similar deals with smaller providers.