Exploding energy costs have been blamed for the closure of more than 60 public swimming pools across Britain over the past four years. And with the bills for some expected to rise by £100,000 this year, it has left leisure centres scrabbling around for ways to keep the facilities running. It may sound far-fetched, but one leisure centre in Devon is using computer power to heat its swimming pool. The idea works by placing 12 computers inside a white box which is then surrounded by oil to capture the waste heat they produce -- in a similar way to another concept that uses computer servers to heat water in people's homes. Innovative: It may sound far-fetched, but Exmouth Leisure Centre in Devon is using computer power to heat its swimming pool.

Everyone is looking for a way to slash their heating bills amid soaring energy prices and the deepening cost-of-living crisis. Now, a British start-up has come up with a new way of doing so using a method that may seem a little bizarre to some -- by fitting a computer server to a household's hot water tank. Heata claims its shoebox-sized device could help Britons save around £150 a year on their energy bills, while small companies can also make use of the computer power available on the servers rather than them being in a large data centre. As the computer gets hot, the tank takes waste heat away from it and uses this to warm water for showers, baths and washing up. Each unit can deliver up to 4.8kWh of hot water per day, the company says -- approximately 80 per cent of the hot water required in an average UK household. As many people will know, laptops and computers can get very hot when running for long periods, with internal fans used to cool them down.

In a move that could shift the course of multiple technology markets, Google will soon launch a cloud computing service that provides exclusive access to a new kind of artificial-intelligence chip designed by its own engineers. CEO Sundar Pichai revealed the new chip and service this morning in Silicon Valley during his keynote at Google I/O, the company's annual developer conference. This new processor is a unique creation designed to both train and execute deep neural networks--machine learning systems behind the rapid evolution of everything from image and speech recognition to automated translation to robotics. Google says it will not sell the chip directly to others. Instead, through its new cloud service, set to arrive sometime before the end of the year, any business or developer can build and operate software via the internet that taps into hundreds and perhaps thousands of these processors, all packed into Google data centers.

In a move that could shift the course of multiple technology markets, Google will soon launch a cloud computing service that provides exclusive access to a new kind of artificial-intelligence chip designed by its own engineers. CEO Sundar Pichai revealed the new chip and service this morning in Silicon Valley during his keynote at Google I/O, the company's annual developer conference. This new processor is a unique creation designed to both train and execute deep neural networks--machine learning systems behind the rapid evolution of everything from image and speech recognition to automated translation to robotics. Google says it will not sell the chip directly to others. Instead, through its new cloud service, set to arrive sometime before the end of the year, any business or developer can build and operate software via the internet that taps into hundreds and perhaps thousands of these processors, all packed into Google data centers.

Intel is bigger than all but 50 other U.S. companies, and that's because of something called the CPU. If you were around in the '90s or the early aughts, you saw the TV ads. For decades, Intel has supplied a majority of the chips that sit at the heart of our personal computers, including desktops as well as laptops. These chips are called central processing units, CPUs for short. They handle most all of the digital calculations that drive our PCs.

Google has built its own computer chip. And this won't be the last. The Internet's most powerful company sent a few shock waves through the tech world yesterday when it revealed that a new custom-designed chip helps run what is surely the future of its vast online empire: artificial intelligence. In building its own chip, Google has taken yet another step along a path that has already remade the tech industry in enormous ways. Over the past decade, the company has designed all sorts of new hardware for the massive data centers that underpin its myriad online services, including computer servers, networking gear, and more. As it created services of unprecedented scope and size, it needed a more efficient breed of hardware to run these services.

Google has built its own computer chip. And this won't be the last. The Internet's most powerful company sent a few shock waves through the tech world yesterday when it revealed that a new custom-designed chip helps run what is surely the future of its vast online empire: artificial intelligence. In building its own chip, Google has taken yet another step along a path that has already remade the tech industry in enormous ways. Over the past decade, the company has designed all sorts of new hardware for the massive data centers that underpin its myriad online services, including computer servers, networking gear, and more. As it created services of unprecedented scope and size, it needed a more efficient breed of hardware to run these services.

In the 2015 film "Creed," aged boxing legend Rocky Balboa stares up at the sky in confusion after his young protege tells him a smartphone picture has been saved in the cloud. Rocky might feel even more befuddled if he heard about Microsoft's experiment in putting the cloud's computer servers under the sea. As crzay as it sounds, the underwater data center initiative, called Project Natick, could revolutionize the way companies Internet services such as streaming video, music, or games. Microsoft's first underwater test involved a car-sized capsule that weighs more than 17,236 kilograms and has a computing power equivalent to 300 desktop computers. That's tiny compared with existing data centers.