4 ms·

How exactly is this better than standard PID control? I'm thinking if you actually look at what it came up with, is probably some form of PID control on systems

How exactly is this better than standard PID control? I'm thinking if you actually look at what it came up with, is probably some form of PID control on systems that previously didn't have it. Think fans that are simply left on all the time. We're talking about simple physics. Heat transfer. Cooling systems. They should have been installed, operated and programmed correctly using very simple techniques. It's an interesting application but I'm thinking this is a prima facie example of over-engineering.

MichaelBosworth 10y ago
Over-engineering? Possibly, but we don't know what was in place before. Given the cost of data centers, I'm not sure why we should assume it was naive - or less than state-of-the-art, for that matter. State-of-the-art, that is, until the AI solution :)
Xcelerate 10y ago
Chemical engineering process design can become very complex and highly nonlinear (in fact, Nick Sahinidis' group in the chemical engineering department at CMU created BARON explicitly for solving these kinds of problems to global optimality — see http://archimedes.cheme.cmu.edu/?q=baron http://archimedes.cheme.cmu.edu/?q=baron). Granted, Google's systems don't involve chemical reactions, but that doesn't automatically mean that designing these data centers is a simple task.
- niels_olson 10y ago
  I work with a guy who has done ground-breaking linear algebra work, spent most of career at Shell. The systems have been too complex to model for a long time. I can imagine an AI instructed to optimize a parameter could be a huge gain.
ComodoHacker 10y ago
It's not just physics. It's also patterns of workload distribution, changing over time. If you predict them, you can distribute energy more efficiently.
- liquidmetal 10y ago
  +1 There can be hidden variables that the PID system failed to account for. Workload distribution over time, temperature at the time of day, heat leaking into the datacenter, etc. I'm not sure if a PID based controller would account for such things. What remains to be seen, however, is whether these manipulations keep the machines working at similar efficiencies and if they fail at similar rates as before turning on the control system.

MichaelBosworth 10y ago

Over-engineering? Possibly, but we don't know what was in place before. Given the cost of data centers, I'm not sure why we should assume it was naive - or less than state-of-the-art, for that matter. State-of-the-art, that is, until the AI solution :)

Xcelerate 10y ago

Chemical engineering process design can become very complex and highly nonlinear (in fact, Nick Sahinidis' group in the chemical engineering department at CMU created BARON explicitly for solving these kinds of problems to global optimality — see http://archimedes.cheme.cmu.edu/?q=baron http://archimedes.cheme.cmu.edu/?q=baron). Granted, Google's systems don't involve chemical reactions, but that doesn't automatically mean that designing these data centers is a simple task.

niels_olson 10y ago
I work with a guy who has done ground-breaking linear algebra work, spent most of career at Shell. The systems have been too complex to model for a long time. I can imagine an AI instructed to optimize a parameter could be a huge gain.

ComodoHacker 10y ago

It's not just physics. It's also patterns of workload distribution, changing over time. If you predict them, you can distribute energy more efficiently.

liquidmetal 10y ago
+1 There can be hidden variables that the PID system failed to account for. Workload distribution over time, temperature at the time of day, heat leaking into the datacenter, etc. I'm not sure if a PID based controller would account for such things. What remains to be seen, however, is whether these manipulations keep the machines working at similar efficiencies and if they fail at similar rates as before turning on the control system.