A data server cabin of the Undersea Data Center is lowered into the sea. Photo: Courtesy of the Undersea Data Center

The Undersea Data Center (UDC), the largest of its kind in the world, in Sanya, South China's Hainan Province, has been operating soundly for eight months since it entered commercial operation in December 2022, becoming a pioneer in the global industry of commercializing undersea data centers.

Pu Ding, a representative of the project, told the Global Times during the visit to the UDC that only two countries, the US and China, have the ability and technology to build undersea data centers at present. 

"The US' undersea data center has strict standards for its operation environ-ment, which is why it was located in the sea area near Scotland with a relatively low temperature. China's UDC took another technological approach that can adapt to higher temperatures and the complex geographic environment in Sanya, and realized commercial operations," said Pu.

The UDC is formed by several data server cabins lowered into the sea and transmits data from the seafloor to onshore data centers by cables. Each cabin weighs 1,300 tons, equivalent to the total weight of about 1,000 small cars. The size of the cabin is roughly the same as China's Tianhe space station core module, also the largest in the world.

At present, over 95 percent of global data transmission is carried out on land, according to Pu. "Undersea data centers perform better in terms of energy us-age, occupation space and data transmission speed than onshore data centers," he noted.

For example, undersea data centers with the same computing power as 10,000 onshore data server cabins can save 175 million kilowatt-hours of electricity, 150,000 tons of fresh water and 98, 400 square meters of land, said Pu.

In this July, the UDC's first two clients, China Telecom's Hainan branch and China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, co-issued a half-year report noting that multiple indicators of the UDC had remained nor-mal since it entered commercial operation.

Pu pointed out that the UDC filled the gap of combining China's ocean engi-neering with data center construction technologies. "The UDC will ramp up the transformation from low carbon emission to zero carbon emission by linking to wind power plants in the surrounding sea area," he said.