The world's first commercial submarine data center has been put into operation in China's Hainan Province, the largest pilot free trade zone in the country, which is striving to attract foreign investment by expanding its blue economy .
The report said that the data center servers can provide support for various digital applications such as restaurant recommendations and travel guides. In Lingshui, Hainan, these servers are installed in an underwater data cabin weighing 1,300 tons (equivalent to 1,000 cars).
Pu Ding, general manager of the Hailan Cloud Data Center Hainan Demonstration Project, told the media: "We put the entire data cabin on the seabed and can use seawater for cooling. Compared with land-based data centers, submarine data centers can reduce a lot of cooling energy consumption... and thus reduce operating costs."
It is reported that the data cabin of the submarine data center is located 35 meters deep on the seabed. Each data cabin is equipped with 24 standard cabinets and can accommodate 400 to 500 servers.
The "14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of Hainan's Marine Economy" proposes to build a Hainan submarine data center, deploy 100 data cabins, and gradually build a comprehensive marine new technology industrial park with the submarine data center as the core.
The report said that amid the increasingly fierce technological competition with the United States, China launched a pilot program in 2024 to allow foreign capital to fully own data centers in Hainan and pilot areas of Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.
"This policy update is a response to growing global demand for data center services, driven by advances in generative artificial intelligence and cloud computing," said Julia Interese, editor of the China Brief website, hosted by the consulting firm Collaborative Management.
She added: "By fully opening up to foreign investment, China aims to attract multinational tech giants eager to tap into its market potential."
In contrast, Microsoft began developing its "Project Natick" submarine data center in 2014, but the US tech giant confirmed in 2024 that the project had ceased operations. The "Project Natick" submarine data center consisted of 855 servers and was deployed by Microsoft on the seabed of Scottish waters in 2018, having already been undergoing two years of testing there. (Compiled by Hu Wei)
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