Hello Downriver,
I suffer from tinnitus.
Not a ringing in my ears, but more like the “hiss” we used to get on cassette tapes before that Dolby switch came along.
It’s become my invisible — and annoying — friend over the years.
Yes, I’ve been checked and given some options for help, but I simply try to ignore it most times (and use the hiss to ignore some people, too).
Still, it IS there all the time, always in the background, always nagging me, always struggling to bust through and ruin my interaction with the world around me.
My tinnitus came to mind when I read more about the battle in Allen Park over the data center being proposed for a site along I-94 — about 500 feet south of the “Big Tire” on the expressway.
The center also would be about 1,000 feet from nearby housing and 1,000 feet from Melvindale High School.
(I measured both on Google maps.)
Two weeks ago I wrote about this issue: “Now I don’t know about you, but I can hear the train whistles from a mile and a half away (Gibraltar and Fort Street) — and I can certainly hear the noise from the Ford assembly plant across I-75, which is 2,270 feet away.”
But here’s the thing: while Solstice Data officials say the facility would not create noise above the level of a “normal conversation” for nearby Allen Park neighborhoods, it would be a CONSTANT noise.
Like tinnitus.
Loud?
Maybe, maybe not.
Because also as I wrote two weeks ago, “various sources agree that data center noise falls in the 85-to-100 (and more) decibels range — considered ‘very loud to dangerous.’”
But let’s take Phil Harvey’s word for it; that the sound won’t be more than 50 dBAs.
Harvey is the CEO of Solstice Data who said his company’s preliminary study not only showed the facility’s noise would be “conversation” level, but also that the noise from the facility would be directed toward the I-94 freeway rather than at residential areas.
(Note to self: start directing that tinnitus toward my worst enemy and away from me.)
Well, I did some investigating and such a guarantee is problematic to say the least.
You see, I checked an online site devoted to physics to explore the dynamics of sound — and guess what?
“Sound tends to emanate from sources in roughly all directions,” the site’s experts wrote.
“Some goes towards the listener, some goes away from the listener, and some shoots up into the sky.”
(Duh!)
The question then is “does more sound go into the sky or to the listener?”
The answer? “It will depend on where you stand with respect to the wind.”
Yep, the wind.
There was a lot more detail in the explanation, including concepts of sound propagation, the mechanics of sound waves and “an effect known as refraction that’s a direct result of Snell’s law.”
What’s Snell’s Law, you ask?
Well the shorthand is that it describes “how light bends (refracts) when passing between media with different refractive indices.”
Got that?
Yep, it governs the fundamentals of optics “for designing lenses, fiber optics, and understanding phenomena like mirages.”
But its formulae ALSO governs the movement of sound in the wind.
And with Michigan usually dealing with southerly and/or westerly winds, the sound from this facility is going to travel primarily toward the high school and toward housing in northern Allen Park.
(No, I’m no scientist; I only played one in Allen Park High School for one semester.)
Which means the moaning from the data center — tinnitus for the masses — is going to be there 24/7/365 once the site it built.
Which again begs the question: Why Allen Park?
Why not out in the boonies? (No, this isn’t some NIMBY rant.)
Again, Mr. Harvey had an explanation; that this edge data center needs to be located close to where AI and automation technologies will be used.
Why?
Here’s what a Solstice Data spokesman said about that: “If my kid jumps out in the road, we don’t have one second for the sensor on the car to go to a data center 1,000 miles away and come back — it has to be instantaneous.”
“Therefore,” he said, “it has to be close to a data center.
That, he said, is what an edge data center is — something that is less than 2% the size of larger data center projects in the region — and which is what’s being proposed for AP.
“This is the kind of thing that’s going to become critical infrastructure for industries and academic institutions and hospital systems to leverage the latest technology and remain competitive,” he said.
But here’s the thing: the “instantaneous” aspect of data transmission only applies to autonomous vehicles; you know, the ones that don’t need you.
According to the industry itself, “data centers do not have to be close to users, but proximity is critical for applications requiring low latency, such as gaming, streaming, or financial services.”
Not cars.
“While edge data centers are placed near users to improve speed and user experience,” they wrote, “major cloud providers often prioritize locations with reliable, cheap power and robust fiber, even if far away.”
Getting into the weeds a bit, I found that “In the world of autonomous driving, even a 100-millisecond delay can be critical, potentially being the difference between life and death for a pedestrian or car passenger.”
“Therefore, these vehicles must be equipped to respond to changing situations immediately, making swift data processing vital.”
But that DOESN’T mean a nearby data center; it means equipping vehicles with an onboard computer consisting of about 50 processing cores.
This on-board computer actually powers a range of functions, “like blind-spot monitoring, cruise control, automatic braking, obstacle warning, etc.”
In short, the car’s onboard computer does that instantaneous braking, not some data center; it’s true: it can’t wait for information from a data center, no matter how close or how far away it is.
“While cars process immediate, life-saving data on-board in milliseconds,” the site told me, data centers process “big data” to refine safety features and enable communications from vehicle-to-everything.
So, experts write, remote data centers perform “quite well” in providing the “teaching of on-board computers in vehicles.”
In the end, experts say, while “modern vehicle anti-collision systems and Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems heavily utilize data centers,” such activity is primarily for “training AI algorithms, storing massive sensor data, and delivering software updates, rather than real-time braking decisions.”
Nevertheless, Solstice Data’s selection of Allen Park is clearly an attempt to be as close as possible to Detroit’s hopes of being on the cutting edge of self-driving vehicles someday.
In the meantime, though, does Allen Park need a data center?
No, the Detroit auto industry does.
And that’s the balance city officials must evaluate: the benefits of putting a data center in their back yard vs. tinnitus for the masses.
Hummmmmmmm…
To read my essays, check out Substack.com and look for me at “Farrandipity.” It’s free. Craig Farrand is a former managing editor of The News-Herald. I can be reached at craig.substack@gmail.com
