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This is a good question and I would like to learn the answer too. According to some napkin calculations, the CPU is $5000 and will be kept in service, I guess,
by fierarul 7y ago
This is a good question and I would like to learn the answer too.
According to some napkin calculations, the CPU is $5000 and will be kept in service, I guess, 5 years.
The US average price is 13 cents / kWh so this 225 watts CPU will cost $1280 in electricity over those 5 years.
Colocation price is probably low, let's say $50 / 1U server / month. So that's another $3000.
Why is electricity the most important here? I guess because you can't lower the other 2 costs very much? But isn't the CPU price itself based on the power savings it does provide?
- tbyehl 7y agoData center space is generally plentiful. Power and cooling, which for most purposes can be considered equivalent, are the scarce resource. CloudFlare is trading half their server density[0] for a ~25% gain in performance-per-watt and performance-per-node[1]. Power is the whole ball-game at scale. [0] https://blog.cloudflare.com/a-tour-inside-cloudflares-g9-servers/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/a-tour-inside-cloudflares-g9-ser... [1] https://blog.cloudflare.com/an-epyc-trip-to-rome-amd-is-cloudflares-10th-generation-edge-server-cpu/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/an-epyc-trip-to-rome-amd-is-clou...
- fierarul 7y agoAh, so it's not about power being a big expense, but being a constraint that is limiting their growth: > We are constrained by the data centers’ power infrastructure which, along with our selected power distribution units, leads us to power cap for each server rack.