Microsoft touts far-off high-temperature superconducting tech for datacenter efficiency

Microsoft wants you to know that it has found a new way of saving power at its datacenters using high-temperature superconducting (HTS) power delivery systems. And good news: it'll be possible ... someday.

Redmond is looking to HTS power delivery systems as a replacement for copper and aluminum wires that wind their ways through modern datacenters for several reasons. Chief among those is improved power delivery efficiency, Azure infrastructure GM Alistair Speirs explained in a blog post Tuesday.

High-temperature superconductors offer lossless power delivery thanks to the elimination of nearly all electrical resistance thanks to cooling provided by liquid nitrogen surrounding the superconducting tape used to move electrical energy. HTS cables don't generate heat either, and according to Microsoft, are more spacially efficient than traditional cables. 

Per Speirs, traditional conductors require datacenter operators to choose between substation expansions, adding more feeders, reducing deployment densities, or simply not enlarging a ...