A Sea Change Coming for Water Cooling in Datacenters

In 1970, Princeton had an IBM 91 computer. It covered the floor of a building. It had two giant racks of bipolar memory (256 bits/chip) with 1 MB in each rack. It had an office for several IBM employees who managed the machine.

On day an IBM tech was bringing up the system using a check-list. He noticed a red light that said "temperature". He noted it in the log and kept going. It turns out he had forgotten to turn the water on. After a short while the room filled with smoke.

The machine was ruined. After the machine was replaced, the IBM office kept one of the old PC boards on the wall. It was curled up like a potato chip.

Microsoft has project Natick.

https://www.naval-group.com/en/news/project-natick-naval-gro...

TL;DR Newer hardware has increased cooling requirement compared to previous generations and the increased efficiency of water cooling may be worth the increased cost of installing and operating a it in a some data-centers in the relatively near future.

Despite the pun in the title seawater will have little to do with it.