The intelligence behind Apple’s Siri is going to be run by the data center powered by the largest end-user-owned solar array. The company that Steve Jobs founded more than 30 years ago is now going to catch up with the others, including Google, in what the environment in concerned.
The North Carolina data center has been planned for a long time. While Jobs himself handpicked the place, details about the huge investment haven’t been revealed until these days, when Apple “bragged” that “We know of no other data center of comparable size that has achieved this level of LEED certification.”
The company reportedly spent $1 billion on the North Carolina data center so far, as the amount of space they’ll be occupying is huge: 500,000-square-feet, inside which iCloud and Siri will find their home.
One funny fact is that although they recognize having created some 23 million metric tons of greenhouse gas in 2011, Apple also says it saved 30,000 tons of carbon dioxide by greening up some of their facilities in California, Texas, Ireland and Germany. This is one aspect Jobs would have preferred to be kept in more silence. The discrepancy between these figures is hilarious, but it’s a start for a company that didn’t have any green initiative whatsoever until now.
I like Apple products: they’re well made, they work reasonably well and they’re made for humans, not IT geeks (like myself). And I’m also starting to like their investments as of lately. Nice green touch that data center… very nice.
[via cnet]
