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Google's Secret Plans For All That Dark Fiber?
beat.net writes "Robert X. Cringely details the plan for all the dark fiber Google has been buying up: "The probable answer lies in one of Google's underground parking garages in Mountain View. There, in a secret area off-limits even to regular GoogleFolk, is a shipping container. But it isn't just any shipping container. This shipping container is a prototype data center. Google hired a pair of very bright industrial designers to figure out how to cram the greatest number of CPUs, the most storage, memory and power support into a 20- or 40-foot box. We're talking about 5000 Opteron processors and 3.5 petabytes of disk storage that can be dropped-off overnight by a tractor-trailer rig. The idea is to plant one of these puppies anywhere Google owns access to fiber, basically turning the entire Internet into a giant processing and storage grid. While Google could put these containers anywhere, it makes the most sense to place them at Internet peering points, of which there are about 300 worldwide.""
...little steal. I hope they're thinking about security.
a Beowulf cluster of these puppies...
...Oh, we don't really need to Google seem to be building one.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
Sounds like Google may be ready to go starbucks.
If most Google employees don't know about the storage container, how does THIS guy know about it???
...I know what I want for Christmas this year.
>Google hired a pair of very bright industrial designers
:o)
I haven't yet met one that didn't think they were very bright. Industrial Designers invent stuff that takes 'ordinary' engineers years to throw away and build something else that will fly. No danger of anything happening here folks
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
I have it on good authority that Google is planning a series of truck stop masturbation booths featuring HD porn.
>>We're talking about 5000 Opteron processors and 3.5 petabytes of disk storage
They're just getting ready to run Windows Vista when it comes out.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
Security?! I'd be more afraid for the geek's security, than the cube's.
Knowing Google, I would think that these shipping container computer things would be covered with sensing devices. It's probably scanning the face, gait, apparent weight, and shoe size of anyone that gets near it, and googling for their name, their address, their family and children, employer, and all other relations. As it prepares to activate the lightning sprocket, it's probably composing emails, editing video footage, and notifying the newspapers of an impending obituary.
I'd sooner touch the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord your God, than touch one of these here Google Skynet Singularity Machines.
Don't forget Crzmblski's Limit.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
computer executed binary code is ALREADY sentient. Just think when it gets mad and crashes.
:p
The same with proggies, OSes or InterNetworks, because each one are based on another.
If I find a metropolitan gateway falling because of a software error that the main developer is unable to spot, i think "erm... ok", but if there are 5000 Opterons to trace registers and code-machine into, I would say: BECAUSE HE WANTS or he DOESNT.
See?
It's already sentient!
gtkaml.org
1W = the amount of power required to heat 1g of water 1 degree celsius in 1 second (1 J/sec).
1 cup of coffee: 0.2 litres (200g) heated from 10 to 100 degrees celsius (90 degrees) = 18 KJ.
250 KW: 14 cups of coffee per second.
The answer to "where do we put these puppies"?
Next to Starbucks.
I hadn't heard of Crzmblski's Limit, so naturally I went to Google to find out what it was
I'm just sitting here imagining a scenario where I steal hardware out of this box I get home and go to google.com to see my picture on the home page at google.com with a caption "have you seen this person?", "we are tracking you" .. scary thought... on the other hand for my 15 minutes of fame .. hmmm ..
Now all we have to do is wait for some Google employee to play a Sony CD on this and these will become spam relays.
Perfect.
One day we will all log on to GoogleNet and do what we're told.
... and turn the entire Internet into a giant game.
You mean it isn't already a giant game?
Rod Taylor
i'm definitely missing smthng 2. all doesn't seem probable in de near future.. & wat spoils de whole thing is dat de guy (author) is just 1 of those MS-bashers out 2 say smthng 2 prove dat he hates MS. wat makes him think he knows the tech (hardware&software) capabilities of MS, Yahoo!, Sun & IBM. unless he's n insider of 1 of those, which i definitely think he isnt! it just spoils de 'surprise' 4 him 2 b so biased... if it's true then big-up 2 Google 4 INNOVATION, which is wat this industry needs. :D
That's it! The opterons produce heat, which boils water which runs the turbines to generate electricity to power the opterons! My god man! It's the Google perpetual motion machine!
With dark energy... duh!
I think it has something to do with the readability of variable names in Hungarian Notation... The memorability of the name decreases as the square of the variable's importance.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Skynet? No I rather think it sounds and looks more like WOPR.
How about a nice game of chess?
You don't need to worry about liquid cooling. You get that automatically once you turn it on, and the whole thing melts into a pool of glowing silicon.
Here's the link http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=176552 3&lastnode_id=1765513
...I immediately thought of the crates from the 'Worms' games.
BytesTemplar.com
I'm pretty sure you had something good to say, but after the first few spelling mistakes started to turn in to a consistent annoyance, I gave up. Get the Google Toolbar and spell check your forms before you submit them... Please.
Are you a physicist too? Is this why we don't have fusion yet?
I've seen something almost as stupid.
Went to an Oracle "development shop" (or so they said), where they called me in because they thought they had an Oracle tuning issue. Turns out that their entire office of 65 people were plugged into a series of daisy-chained LinkSys 10MB hubs, and they were all accessing this Oracle DB with some rather high traffic requests.
I went in and did some investigation, and it was the first time I've EVER seen the actual network connection time out like that.
I raised this to their attention, and mentioned that they should probably go get some mid-range 100MB switches to replace that stuff, and they wouldn't accept my findings. They dismissed them as being wrong, and sent me packing.
I talked to another friend of mine a few weeks later, and it seems that he was also called in as an outside contractor to figure it out... and he came up with the same findings. And they did the same thing... dismissed the findings and sent him on his way.
They just couldn't or wouldn't believe that it was a network issue. I never really figured out why it was so hard for them to even entertain the thought.
What a gong show.
$0.02 (CDN)
I, for one, welcome our new Google overlords.
More importantly, who on Slashdot will be the first to welcome it as their new overlord?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.