How much cooler can social networking giant Facebook get? Facebook is planning to build a multimillion-dollar server farm on the edge of the Arctic circle to house its computer servers, UK's The Telegraph reported. Such a move will also mark the first time Facebook locates a server farm outside the US. The Telegraph said the facility at Luleå town in northern Sweden - at the northern tip of the Baltic Sea, 62 miles south of the Arctic Circle, once completed, would use as much electricity as a town of 50,000 people. "The climate will allow them to just use only air for cooling the servers," said Mats Engman, chief executive of the Aurorum Science Park. He said the temperature there has not been above 30 degrees Celsius for more than 24 hours since 1961. The average temperature there is around two degrees, he added. Aurorum Science Park is leading the push to turn the city into a "Node Pole" to lure in other international computing giants. Read more here:- http://www.gmanews.tv/story/236784/technology/facebook-to-build-server-farm-in-arctic
This is especially interesting for me as I lived in Luleå for 2 years. This was during my 30 years as a Railway Engineer. I was working on the Iron Ore wagons helping to resolve the many tricky issues caused by extreme cold weather and different types of snow on the operation. It's a very nice town and the people just wonderful. One of the top places I ever lived and I now recall some of the many happy and beautiful memories. So facebook is not all bad.
