“Low-carbon computing is possible!”

Paul Benoit and Miro­slav Svie­ze­ny foun­ded Qar­not Com­pu­ting in Decem­ber 2010. Their idea was to use warmth emit­ted by com­pu­ter ser­vers, known as “waste heat”, to heat entire buil­dings. Rather than reco­ve­ring this heat and trans­por­ting it some­how, they chose to trans­form the ser­vers them­selves into “radia­tors” that can be ins­tal­led direct­ly on pre­mises. To do so, a cen­tra­li­sed digi­tal plat­form sends com­pu­ter cal­cu­la­tions – finan­cial cal­cu­la­tions, 3D ima­ging etc. – to the ser­vers and bri­ning the results back toge­ther to recon­so­li­date them. These “com­pu­ter radia­tors”, cal­led QH‑1, are equip­ped with a ther­mo­stat and a switch, allo­wing them to be adjus­ted on demand.

Three years on, Qar­not tes­ted its first models in homes Paris, fol­lo­wed by a new build in Bor­deaux. Next, they moved on to fun­drai­sing, pres­ti­gious clients, the deve­lop­ment of a digi­tal boi­ler cal­led QB‑1, and a part­ner­ship with the Casi­no group to heat their ware­houses. Today, the com­pa­ny employs around 70 people, inclu­ding 50 engi­neers who deve­lop new “eco­lo­gi­cal heat” applications.

Qar­not says it sells “eco­lo­gi­cal heat”. Can you explain what that is ?

Quen­tin Lau­rens. First and fore­most, Qar­not pri­ma­ri­ly sells a com­pu­ting ser­vice, but we do make use of fatal heat that is a conse­quence of the acti­vi­ty of ser­vers. After crea­ting the “com­pu­ter radia­tor”, i.e. hea­ting a buil­ding with com­pu­ting power, Qar­not exten­ded its range with a digi­tal boi­ler that pro­duces hot water at over 60°C. As a term to define our pro­ducts and the dif­ferent mar­kets they address, we now say that we pro­vide low car­bon com­pu­ting. This means that we pro­duce heat or hot water from the tem­pe­ra­ture relea­sed by com­pu­ter pro­ces­sors. Our exper­tise lies lar­ge­ly in the plat­form that dis­tri­butes the cal­cu­la­tions to be per­for­med in a way that is total­ly trans­pa­rent to the occu­pants of the pre­mises where the devices are installed.

Until now, our acti­vi­ty has main­ly been of inter­est to two types of users : large consu­mers of com­pu­ter pro­ces­sing such as banks, car­toon stu­dios, local autho­ri­ties or social hou­sing land­lords, and ener­gy com­pa­nies that ins­tall our devices in their buil­dings. But now there are new sec­tors that are begin­ning to take inter­est, par­ti­cu­lar­ly in fields like arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and machine lear­ning, fluid mecha­nics soft­ware and medi­cal research.

Would you say that eco­lo­gi­cal heat makes digi­tal tech­no­lo­gy “gree­ner”?

Be care­ful, we are not saying that we are zero car­bon or zero emis­sions. Howe­ver, we do that our tech­no­lo­gy is more than just ano­ther low car­bon solu­tion – our model is a real para­digm shift. For a data centre, you have to construct a buil­ding, sup­ply it with ener­gy for ope­ra­tions and to cool the ser­vers, connect it to inter­na­tio­nal net­works, ins­tall a gene­ra­tor with fuel, etc. Howe­ver, the Qar­not model removes the need for an exter­nal data centre and its sub­sequent cooling. The only thing nee­ded is an ener­gy source for the pro­ces­sing power, which pro­duces heat, and a fibre optic connec­tion. We try to opti­mise the life of ser­vers and micro­pro­ces­sors by using ‘peak power’ (the maxi­mum power of a device) ensu­ring that good per­for­mance and heat emis­sion are com­bi­ned. In doing so, we esti­mate that we reduce CO₂ emis­sions by 81% com­pa­red to a tra­di­tio­nal data centre model because we don’t have any nega­tive exter­na­li­ties, it mini­mises the effects and impacts.

How did you cal­cu­late this reduc­tion in emis­sions ?

Today, we do not have a pre­cise cal­cu­la­tion, so it is rather an esti­mate that we have cal­cu­la­ted our­selves. We have just laun­ched the deve­lop­ment of a cal­cu­la­tion method that allows us to go to a great degree of finesse in mea­su­ring the car­bon foot­print, by inte­gra­ting each of the para­me­ters (car­bon foot­print of the source of elec­tri­ci­ty depen­ding on the coun­try, mate­rial used, rate of heat reco­ve­ry, etc.). With this model, we will be able to pre­ci­se­ly cal­cu­late consump­tion and quan­ti­fy green­house gas emis­sions of a com­pu­ter cal­cu­la­tion or an acti­vi­ty. This metho­do­lo­gy is cur­rent­ly being cer­ti­fied. As such we will be able to esti­mate the cost of com­pu­ting in a data centre, consi­de­ring the dif­fe­rences in elec­tri­ci­ty prices and emis­sions across France, which pro­duces nuclear ener­gy, and other coun­tries that pro­duce elec­tri­ci­ty in coal-fired power stations.

What are the pos­si­bi­li­ties for deve­lo­ping eco­lo­gi­cal heat ?

We recent­ly deve­lo­ped and impro­ved our QB‑1 boi­ler, and we are cur­rent­ly conduc­ting tests with the Open Com­pute Pro­ject to reco­ver ser­vers from large data centres when they renew their fleets and recon­di­tion them into boi­lers. For the moment, we are main­ly sel­ling com­pu­ting or hea­ting ser­vices. In the near future, we plan to sell the boi­ler as a stand-alone ser­vice, i.e. a cus­to­mer could buy boi­lers and use them for both com­pu­ting and hea­ting water.

On the user side, there are many mar­kets that are inter­es­ted and with whom we are deve­lo­ping pro­jects. Far­mers are tes­ting the Qar­not solu­tion to heat green­houses to help pro­duce toma­toes and straw­ber­ries all year round. Bre­we­ries are consi­de­ring using it to heat water. Hea­ting net­works, par­ti­cu­lar­ly in nor­thern Euro­pean coun­tries, are increa­sin­gly inter­es­ted in reco­ve­red ener­gy. We alrea­dy have pro­jects with seve­ral cities. There is no shor­tage of pro­jects. All these chal­lenges are exci­ting for our engi­neers because they respond to their envi­ron­men­tal concerns. Eco­lo­gi­cal heat is still in its infan­cy, there is much yet to come.