> Years ago Google complained that they couldn’t fill up their data centers because they had hit the limits of electrical code. Servers plus A/C took them into no man’s land as far as electrical code was concerned. That also means wasted real estate.
I don't remember that, but I'm guessing it was from the days Google's servers were in datacenters built by other companies. They probably outfitted so many circuits at x volts / y amps each, and there's only so much you can do with that.
(To be precise, Google still runs some servers in non-Google datacenters, as part of running a CDN. But this isn't the bulk of Google's processing power.)
Probably less than you think. To be precise, for every x watts of power Google needs about y = 0.12*x watts of cooling (and other overhead) on average. That's based on the PUE number at <https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/efficiency/internal....
> Years ago Google complained that they couldn’t fill up their data centers because they had hit the limits of electrical code. Servers plus A/C took them into no man’s land as far as electrical code was concerned. That also means wasted real estate.
I don't remember that, but I'm guessing it was from the days Google's servers were in datacenters built by other companies. They probably outfitted so many circuits at x volts / y amps each, and there's only so much you can do with that.
(To be precise, Google still runs some servers in non-Google datacenters, as part of running a CDN. But this isn't the bulk of Google's processing power.)