From Over-the-Cloud Computing to Energy Production

Basically, men must find new ways to avoid over-heating and polluting the two vital elements for life on Earth: Air and Water. We may say that even deliveries of immaterial goods — such as entertainment and computing processing —and services do cost power and produce heat. It's typically the case for the IT industry as the hardware – both servers and workstations are real heaters and must be cooled down. Consequently, for more than one half of a century our high-tech experts are absurdly trapped in the infernal heat-up/ cool-down cycles:

• IT equipment must be operated in air-conditioned premises… while the ambient temperature rises up further to the same hardware functioning round-the-clock!

• Moreover, energy must be provided to both the calculators and the air-coolers…

• Add another crucial issue to these three CO₂ generator,: The more performant the software, the higher the required power!

Unluckily, with the development of Cloud Computing, computing centers will multiply around the world and accelerate the production of greenhouse gases. Are there any proven solutions to these issues? The most similar problems already encountered were in two domains: Telecommunications and TV Broadcasting. Experts of both sectors found smart answers by operating satellites, which offer quality and easy digital hertzian communications. This is really a prospective way to develop sustainably green IT! Especially when using satellites constellations, it's no more needed to launch a gigantic orbital station for hosting big servers because a group of small satellites allows to operate many gridded Hardware, loosely coupled by Web services. However, other issues need answers before developing such solutions: Data bandwidth and communication synchronicity. The solution will probably rely on terrestrial Data Concentrators connected to an input telecom satellite and reduced double-way transaction between the orbital constellation of computers and the users.

Anyway over-the-clouds computing centers will be the solution for cloud computing operated both either in a private mode or in an IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) approach.

Moreover, the energy needed will be easily produced in space, with solar cells. Heating has much less impacts in space than on Earth as there's no atmosphere to heat…

As the industries of TV, IT and Telecommunication are among the most important and expanding technologies, in the future, all human activities will be monitored and controlled by these three high tech domains.

Figure: A possible architecture for "over-the-cloud" computing