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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."
Unless they plan to use microwave beams for power.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
Or Rlly? So a traditional datacenter is sinking > 90% of its power into the wired network connections? Not the actual servers themselves? Not the cooling? The wired network connections? I'm not buying those power saving estimates.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
until the wackadoodles who claim they get headaches from radio signals find out they're living next to a place which runs such an environment.
I can't wait to see the signs they use to protest as they stand outside in the blazing sun:
Stop killing us with radio waves!
Radio waves kill!
Save a life. Turn off your radio.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
They obviously mean computing power. Because the networking is so bad that all processes are blocked on I/O most of the time. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
You can't have nearly infinite bandwidth in a finite frequency spectrum, but you can keep adding a shitload of wires if needed.
Given the problems people have when multiple wi-fi routers are too close together like in an apartment building, I am doubtful that it would work well in a server environment, not matter which frequencies are used.
When the 60Ghz transceiver (which doesn't exist yet commercially) drops to $90 each, won't 10Gig ethernet drop down to $9/port, skewing their cost justifiication results? They mention using 4 - 15gbit transceivers... what's the aggregate bandwidth of a 60Ghz network? If the aggregate bandwidth is 15gbit, that's not going to handle a rack full of servers.
the traffic is sent into the air and its up to each receiver to filter the noise and ignore data not meant for it. lots of interference.
its OK for starbucks or for home use but not by much. i have at least 10 wifi networks around me that constantly interfere with mine. i used to get regular disconnects from x-box live that went away when i tried to connect my x-box to my router with Cat5 cable. same with video streaming.
this is why large events have crappy data speeds. everyone is broadcasting into the same air space and interfering with each other.
So Slashdot is now ripping off other sites, copying their content to Slashdot-hosted pages, adding ads, and breaking links. The original article says "Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. ANCSâ(TM)12, October 29â"30, 2012, Austin, Texas, USA. Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1685-9/12/10 ...$15.00."
In the actual paper, the power consumption bullshit part reads "Power consumption: The maximum power consumption of a 60GHz transceiver is less than 0.3 watts [43]. If all 20K transceivers on 10K servers are operating at their peak power, the collective power consumption becomes 6 kilowatts. TOR, AS, and a subunit of CS typically consume 176 watts, 350 watts, and 611 watts, respectively [9â"11]. In total, wired switches typically consumes 58 kilowatts to 72 kilowatts depending on the oversubscription rate for datacenter with 10K servers. Thus, a Cayley datacenter can consume less than 1/12 to 1/10 of power to switch packets compared to a CDC. That's comparing transceiver drive power with a whole store and forward switching fabric.
It's also not clear how their "Y-switch" thing, which doesn't store anything, handles busy reception points. At some point, in a forwarding network, you either have to store packets or drop them. Or set up end to end channels first.
Hopefully they will also pass out those cancer detecting bras to all of the staff members as well.
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.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.