China dominates underwater data center patents as green computing race heats up.
China holds about 80 percent of the world's patents for underwater data centers, giving it a decisive lead in technology that uses seawater as a natural coolant for energy-guzzling servers, SCMP reports, citing findings from the Journal of Marine Information Technology and Applications.
China's dominance in the field began in 2021, when it overtook the previous leaders - the US, Norway and Canada.
Analysts attribute the Chinese lead to strengths in engineering-oriented technologies such as modular construction and on-site maintenance. China's subsea sector will gradually expand from the nearshore to the deep sea and move from isolated computing facilities to nodes for the maritime economy, experts note. Future research could examine how to combine offshore wind power with underwater data centers and assess their long-term ecological impact.
Subsea facilities cut energy bills and the water needed for cooling while avoiding the use of rare earths, offering a sustainable path to powering energy-intensive applications like artificial intelligence.
The world is now in the midst of a data center construction race, with global capital spending on data center infrastructure set to exceed $1 trillion by 2026 as AI deployment accelerates. With resources increasingly limited in space, some IT giants are now also looking upwards, with the goal of putting data centers into space.
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