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Sun packages extra processing power in steel shipping containers

By Dustin Lushing, Newser Staff

Posted Jun 22, 2007 5:30 PM CDT

(Newser) – Sun Microsystems has a solution for the booming demand for network space, and as a bonus, it lowers energy use: packing servers into steel shipping containers that can be parked wherever they're needed. It's called Project Blackbox, and Sun says it reduces power consumption by 20%. The giant 20-foot boxes sell for $500,000 a pop.

Stanford is the first customer to test the giant container, using it to help run the school's particle accelerator. It will store 252 servers and be kept in a parking lot, connected to a 4-mega watt power supply— enough to fuel a town of 2,500 people. One big worry: A determined thief could just drive a box away.

[Images (3)]

[Videos (2)]

Afghan street boys play on an abandoned shipping container in a river in Kabul, Afghanistan on Wednesday, June 6, 2007. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq) (Associated Press)

Executive director of Sun Foundation Mary Smaragdis gestures... (Getty Images)

A close-up image of an early 6800 CPU. These were used in the Stanford made routers and in the early Sun MicroSystems workstations and early Cisco products. (KRT Photos)

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