One of the main and main items of expenses of the Google corporation is electricity. The computing centers of the search giant consume a lot of energy, while constantly heating up and generating heat, so they also need to be cooled, and this also leads to energy costs. Otherwise, the servers may fail, and this will also cost a pretty penny. Therefore, in order not to waste electricity in vain, and also to increase the efficiency of its capacities, the corporation decided a couple of years ago to start doing something about it, and here the new DeepMind startup came in handy, working on the creation of artificial intelligence, which Google bought on occasion.
Earlier, DeepMind experts taught artificial intelligence how to play video games on the Atari console, a little later they developed a program that beat the world champion in the board game Go, and now the guys, not without the participation of their own developments, are helping Google save money. Now under the wing of Google's parent company Alphabet, the project is bearing some fruit.
DeepMind created a neural network system and connected it to the data center. In addition, a program was included in the circuit that can predict the temperature based on previously obtained data. The system turned out to be quite complex, it works with many parameters, while taking into account the rotation speed of coolers, the efficiency of cooling systems in general, windows and much more.
Artificial intelligence has been used by Google for a long time, it has also been “friends” with servers for a couple of years, but the program developed by DeepMind has made the work of computing centers even more efficient. DeepMind said the cost of electricity needed to cool their own servers has been cut by nearly 40 percent. The indicators measured on Google servers are more modest, but also inspire optimism.
The diagram above shows the power consumption before and after the DeepMind system was launched. The right side of the diagram shows how the indicators fell after turning it off again.
VYACHESLAV LARIONOV