Google Stadia

monquixote

I think it's being discontinued, or at the very least deprioritised. 

I've got one, but I've never used it even before the free trial ran out. 

Greatape

I wonder how much electricity would be consumed by server farms for this if it were scaled up and made to work? Would this be a significant increase from where we are now? 

monquixote

Greatape said:

I wonder how much electricity would be consumed by server farms for this if it were scaled up and made to work? Would this be a significant increase from where we are now? 

That's a good question.

Theoretically they could be more efficient because people are sharing computer resource and you could centralise power and cooling and attach solar farms to the data centre etc.

The question is if that offsets the additional resource consumption of streaming the video.

Axe_meister

Google Cloud happens to be Carbon Neutral with the a of being carbon free by 2030.
Looks like Stadia is now more of a development platform for games developers rather than a consumer platform.

vivalacoulter

monquixote said:

I think it's being discontinued, or at the very least deprioritised. 

I've got one, but I've never used it even before the free trial ran out. 

I hope I get to have a good go of red dead 2 first…

CavemanGrogg

monquixote said:

Greatape said:

I wonder how much electricity would be consumed by server farms for this if it were scaled up and made to work? Would this be a significant increase from where we are now? 

That's a good question.

Theoretically they could be more efficient because people are sharing computer resource and you could centralise power and cooling and attach solar farms to the data centre etc.

The question is if that offsets the additional resource consumption of streaming the video.

Why bother, when you can save a fortune on land, electricity and staffing if you sink the server farm underwater, drop it down to 20m below the surface, and cooling is no longer an issue.  And it's fairly cheap to do, smaller farms linked together in a daisy chain underwater, Microsoft did this over 20 years ago with retrofitted decompression chambers used to house the servers underwater.  Not to mention there is currently a mega server farm being built in Asia, underwater, to take advantage of waters thermal properties, the cheapness of land, wave tidal and current for power, not to mention depth for security - 20m underwater makes a physical breakin to nick data, or do naughty things with the actual servrers next to impossible - I have family involved in this project.

monquixote

CavemanGrogg said:

monquixote said:

Greatape said:

I wonder how much electricity would be consumed by server farms for this if it were scaled up and made to work? Would this be a significant increase from where we are now? 

That's a good question.

Theoretically they could be more efficient because people are sharing computer resource and you could centralise power and cooling and attach solar farms to the data centre etc.

The question is if that offsets the additional resource consumption of streaming the video.

Why bother, when you can save a fortune on land, electricity and staffing if you sink the server farm underwater, drop it down to 20m below the surface, and cooling is no longer an issue.  And it's fairly cheap to do, smaller farms linked together in a daisy chain underwater, Microsoft did this over 20 years ago with retrofitted decompression chambers used to house the servers underwater.  Not to mention there is currently a mega server farm being built in Asia, underwater, to take advantage of waters thermal properties, the cheapness of land, wave tidal and current for power, not to mention depth for security - 20m underwater makes a physical breakin to nick data, or do naughty things with the actual servrers next to impossible - I have family involved in this project.

In the case of stadia you want the server farm relatively close because of latency.

Greatape

CavemanGrogg said:

monquixote said:

Greatape said:

I wonder how much electricity would be consumed by server farms for this if it were scaled up and made to work? Would this be a significant increase from where we are now? 

That's a good question.

Theoretically they could be more efficient because people are sharing computer resource and you could centralise power and cooling and attach solar farms to the data centre etc.

The question is if that offsets the additional resource consumption of streaming the video.

Why bother, when you can save a fortune on land, electricity and staffing if you sink the server farm underwater, drop it down to 20m below the surface, and cooling is no longer an issue.  And it's fairly cheap to do, smaller farms linked together in a daisy chain underwater, Microsoft did this over 20 years ago with retrofitted decompression chambers used to house the servers underwater.  Not to mention there is currently a mega server farm being built in Asia, underwater, to take advantage of waters thermal properties, the cheapness of land, wave tidal and current for power, not to mention depth for security - 20m underwater makes a physical breakin to nick data, or do naughty things with the actual servrers next to impossible - I have family involved in this project.

Sounds very interesting. Do you have links to any articles about that?

Axe_meister

We tried underwater server farms. As soon as you are incased in water costs shoot up massively (water is a bugger and gets in everywhere).
Our compromise at Google is we always build a DC next to sustainable water source.