Read Online Avogadro Corp: The Singularity Is Closer Than It Appears by William Hertling - Free Book Online

Bill’s team had added a thick layer of weather proofing to protect the sensitive electronics contained within.
    Of course, these floating data centers had a few problems that got Bill up in the middle of the night. Resiliency to storms was one big issue. But the weather had been clear last night, so that wasn’t the reason Bill was here this morning to inspect Prototype Offshore Data Center, or ODC, #4. Located 12 miles out from the California coast, ODC #4 was identical to ODC 1 through 3. A quarter mile line of Portland Wave Converters generating 25 megawatts of electricity, divided in the center by two large floating barges.
    The barge behind Bill was surplus, serving simply as a helicopter landing pad. It wasn’t part of Bill’s original design, which had assumed that maintenance would come by boat. Then again, Bill hadn’t realized how many maintenance trips they would end up needing to make to the prototypes.
    Avogadro had ruggedized the containers, communication equipment, and power generation equipment to the maximum feasible level, and they should have required barely any maintenance at all, even out here in the corrosive salt water environment. In fact, the entire system was designed to require only a single maintenance visit each year to replace servers. Unfortunately, the entirety of ODC #4 went offline the previous night at 4:06am. That’s what required this early morning visit. Bill and his team flew out from the company’s land-based Bay Area site as soon as the sun rose.
    As Bill stepped closer to the cargo containers, he felt a sinking feeling in his stomach, and it wasn’t caused by the rolling and pitching motion of the barge. He saw burn marks on the side of the containers that could only have been caused by one thing: a welding torch. Bill shook his head in dismay. No hand-held welding torch should ever have touched these specially treated containers.
    A closer inspection confirmed his fears. Bill saw a ragged hole cut into the side of the container. After the first theft three months ago, the cargo container doors had been hardened against possible thievery attempts, but the sides had no special treatment apart from the additional weather proofing.
    While the other members of the team worked on opening the doors, Bill stuck his head in the container through the hole, and pointed his flashlight around. The racks that should have held hundreds of high performance computer servers were mostly empty, wires dangling everywhere, and various bits of low-value electronic equipment haphazardly strewn about.
    Bill took out his Avogadro phone from his overalls to send a message to the email distribution list for the rest of the Offshore Data Center team. It would take more than a small maintenance team to fix ODC #4. The organization would need to kick into high gear to ship out new containers and servers.
    Bill wanted to bang his head against the wall in frustration. The ODCs were located about ten miles offshore. Between the distance, and the lack of facilities for people, it was impossible for them to station anyone on board twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Besides, anyone stationed on board would be at risk from pirates. Bill knew that he and Jake Riley, the ODC Lead Manager, would be meeting with senior company management later that week to address the piracy issue. The entire ODC rollout plan was on hold pending a resolution. It didn’t bode well for Bill’s chance of getting a bonus or a raise.
    It was a damn tough problem. A full floating data center could contain almost eighty-thousand servers along with their requisite hard drives, power supplies, emergency backup batteries, and communications equipment. Although none of the prototype floating data centers had been at full capacity yet, they still had about twenty-thousand servers onboard worth close to ten million dollars. That was a substantial target. Worse, it wasn’t clear yet whether the target truly was the computer equipment