Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

Google uses fans to blow warm air over water in its data centers for cooling. This takes advantage of water's high heat capacity which makes it far more efficient than standard air conditioning. These researchers have designed membranes that maximize the efficiency of cooling via evaporation. The membranes are positioned right over the circuits and pull water in via capillary action. The membranes have successfully handled up to 800 watts of heat per square centimeter. The obvious unanswered questions include production cost, ease of integrating into servers, and the material's life span.  https://techxplore.com/news/2025-06-evaporative-cooling-tech-curb-centers.html

C-Lion Cable Down In Baltic Sea C-Lion is an 8 fibre pair high capacity linear cable that went live in 2016. Transmission rate is 144 Tbps. The cable connects Helsinki data centers to Frankfurt via a cable traversing the Baltic Sea. C-Lion lands at Rostock, Germany, and at Helsinki. The Finnish government financed, owns, and operates the subsea network in the national interest. One goal of the project was to reduce network dependence on third country transit via Sweden or the Baltics. Another was to provide enough capacity to grow the Finnish data center market.  Finland offers many advantages for large data centers. Its cool climate dramatically lowers cooling costs as well as extending server life spans. There is also attractively priced, reliable, and abundant power in the form of hydro, nuclear, and wind. I think the large Google data center in Hamina, Finland opened the government's eyes to the economic potential that subsea capacity unlocks. Indeed, Google announced just a fe...