What do crash test simulations, medical vaccines, and Pixar all have in common? They could all be heating your home in the future. A French company called Qarnot Computing is channeling computing power and using its byproduct to warm Parisian homes during the inevitably cold winter.
Computing generates heat — no surprise to anyone who owns a laptop. Large companies and research industries often rely on external data centers for high-performance computing (HPC) to run simulations or other processes that take time and energy. These centers, essentially warehouses full of digital servers, not only take up physical space, but also require hefty budgets to air-condition them in order to prevent the hardware from malfunctioning.
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