[Beowulf] More about those underwater data centers

[Prentice Bisbal]

Maybe it really has nothing to do with being close to people, and 
Microsoft really wants to cater to the high-frequency trading (HFT) 
crowd. According to this paper, there's a number of optimal locations 
for HFT between two different markets that are located in the middle of 
the ocean.

https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.82.056104

Prentice

On 11/03/2018 02:27 PM, Lux, Jim (337K) via Beowulf wrote:
> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/11/satya-nadella-the-cloud-is-going-to-move-underwater/
>
> I was amused by this:
> He cites proximity to humans as a particular advantage: about 50 percent of the world's population lives within 120 miles of a coast. Putting servers in the ocean means that they can be near population centers, which in turn ensures lower latencies. Low latencies are particularly important for real-time services, including Microsoft's forthcoming https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/10/microsoft-announces-project-xcloud-xbox-game-streaming-for-myriad-devices/.
> He cites proximity to humans as a particular advantage: about 50 percent of the world's population lives within 120 miles of a coast. Putting servers in the ocean means that they can be near population centers, which in turn ensures lower latencies. Low latencies are particularly important for real-time services, including Microsoft's forthcoming https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/10/microsoft-announces-project-xcloud-xbox-game-streaming-for-myriad-devices/.
>
>   I’m not sure there’s a huge population of Xcloud-Xbox gamers in Orkney.  There's not much daylight this time of year, of course, so maybe that's what those Orcadians are up to.
>
> And I believe that 100% of the UK's population lives within 120 miles of a coast. ("coast" gets around the often contentious discussion of where the "sea" starts in the face of tidal estuaries and tidal flats - I was struck by the sheer volume of discussion related to "what point in the UK is farthest from the sea")
>