Is a Wireless Data Center Possible?

Nerval's Lobster writes "A team of researchers from Microsoft and Cornell University has concluded that, in some cases, a totally wireless data center makes logistical sense. In a new paper, a team of researchers from Cornell and Microsoft concluded that a data-center operator could replace hundreds of feet of cable with 60-GHz wireless connections—assuming that the servers themselves are redesigned in cylindrical racks, shaped like prisms, with blade servers addressing both intra- and inter-rack connections. The so-called 'Cayley' data centers, so named because of the network connectivity subgraphs are modeled using Cayley graphs, could be cheaper than traditional wired data centers if the cost of a 60-GHz transceiver drops under $90 apiece, and would likely consume about one-tenth to one-twelfth the power of a wired data center."

Comments

Re:90% Power Savings???

[sconeu]

Source

Re:ok, no wires then...

[postbigbang]

Unless you can remodulate or make incredibly dense modulation possible, LED transmitters can manage about the same data rate as you see in WDM, and so the data rate among hosts isn't quite so chill. Power would be low, and it would be tough to find background noise to foul things up. But eventually, you'd need to have alternate spectra to modulate (lambdas) and tight tranceiver pairs to make it work. Your engineering cost just shot your low-cost.