5 ms·
Proof that low power, highly efficient computing power needs to become the new standard (ie, ARM). At the same time, I am glad that these NIMBYs and suburbanit
by xyst 4y ago
Proof that low power, highly efficient computing power needs to become the new standard (ie, ARM).
At the same time, I am glad that these NIMBYs and suburbanites get a small taste of what happens when decades of "not in my backyard" and car centric policy comes to bite them in the ass. Nobody wants to be next to the "noisy" data center, but at the same time everybody wants access to the internet. If we had sane city design in the United States of America which emphasized density, walkability, alternative forms of transportation, and accessible and highly available public transportation. Nobody would care if a data center is out in the middle of nowhere.
But this is the good ole US of A, where everyone must have a car. Everyone must have their 8000 sq ft fiefdom. Everywhere needs to be accessible by a 2 ton death machine.
- titzer 4y ago> 2 ton death machine. They are pushing 3 tons now; F-150's are topping out at nearly 7,000lbs! https://shift.com/articles/how-much-does-a-ford-f-150-weigh https://shift.com/articles/how-much-does-a-ford-f-150-weigh
- xyst 4y agoEven worse, the "new" Hummer EV is pushing over 9000 lbs or ~4.5 tons. https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/2022-gmc-hummer-ev-range-battery-pack-and-weight-revealed.html https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/2022-gmc-hummer-ev-range-ba...
- blamazon 4y agoI like to imagine/describe this as like driving three 2004 Toyota Camry at one time. Probably you could do that and have it still weigh in below the Hummer. That would make a good YouTube video.
- vinyl7 4y agoThanks to fuel efficiency regulations
- ceejayoz 4y agoMore accurately, lessened fuel effiency regulations on larger vehicles. (It's also not the whole story. Consumer demand for big plays a significant role.)
- briffle 4y agoOnce a vehicle is over 8k lbs, its considered a commercial vehicle. which is why all 3 major companies '3/4 ton' pickups are just a hair over 8000lbs..
- titzer 4y ago...with a whole host of other tax breaks that kick in, including depreciation, "investment", "infrastructure", or whatever the economic-stimulus du jour is.
- lazide 4y agoCAFE rules are the real reason - fleet wide emissions targets means lots of more efficient cars allows ‘indulgences’ in the form of limited numbers of very high margin larger vehicles. See the ford raptor for another example.
- hikawaii 4y agoYeah I live in a place where the walkscore is like 30, and am able to get more places I need to go via walking than when I lived in downtown Seattle. They're even adding a bike and walk link to the carmall on the outskirts of town, connecting it with the rest of the city on a traffic separated trail. Meanwhile, in Seattle it was 2 miles to get to the grocery store and took all day while dealing with city car traffic. The problem isn't "car centric" design, the problem is that nobody is designing anything at all.
- reaperducer 4y agoI live in a place where the walkscore is like 30 Walkscore isn't a realistic measure of anything. I once lived in a place with a Walkscore of 80+. Looking at the details of the score, it was largely because Walkscore counts pornography shops as bookstores. Along those lines, I imagine Walkscore also counts peep shows as movie theaters, and strip clubs as general family entertainment centers. Meanwhile, in Seattle it was 2 miles to get to the grocery store and took all day while dealing with city car traffic. When I lived in Seattle, I didn't even own a car. I could get everywhere I need to on a bus, or train, or walking. Perhaps you have a different definition of "downtown" than where I lived. If you were two miles away from the Whole Foods on Westlake, then you weren't downtown.
- dghlsakjg 4y agoHaha. I had the same reaction. What Seattle were they living in? I suppose parts of north Seattle can kind of be like that. My experience living in Seattle was that it was hard to live in a place where there wasn't a small commercial district within a few blocks. Seattle does wonderfully with mixing small commercial into residential zones.
- hikawaii 4y agoI put my car in storage, it was doable but it wouldn't have been without uber, going anywhere via transit would've involved at least one twenty minute transfer. I mostly just hoofed it everywhere, but it did limit my access substantially. Meanwhile, unless it's very cold or I'm going to a different city I have much less of a need for a car in my more rural locale.
- virtuallynathan 4y agoWouldn’t you then just put more servers in and use the same 32MW footprint?
- Anechoic 4y agoNobody wants to be next to the "noisy" data center, but at the same time everybody wants access to the internet. If we had sane city design in the United States of America which emphasized density, walkability, alternative forms of transportation, and accessible and highly available public transportation. Nobody would care if a data center is out in the middle of nowhere. The downside is that instead of being exposed to noise from data centers, you're exposed to noise from nearby buildings, neighbors, transit, etc. We get plenty of work in city centers from folks annoyed by noisy neighbors (residential and commercial). You're not wrong about the US needing to better emphasize density, but it's not a panacea.
- tzs 4y ago> The downside is that instead of being exposed to noise from data centers, you're exposed to noise from nearby buildings, neighbors, transit, etc. We get plenty of work in city centers from folks annoyed by noisy neighbors (residential and commercial). It's worse than that. In his proposed carless utopia where everyone lives in high density housing and walks or bikes or takes public transit, the data centers would be built in the city because that's where the workers are. They wouldn't built them out in the middle of nowhere because public transit generally is not going to go to the middle of nowhere.
- Tijdreiziger 4y agoThis is a disingenuous reply. Giving people more and better mobility options does not imply banning cars altogether.
- tzs 4y agoThe comment I was referring to also used the phrase "2 ton death machine" instead of calling them cars. That's usually a good sign that what a person is advocating for is more than merely adding more non-car transportation. :-) And indeed, checking their other comments they also want to greatly reduce parking spaces for cars in cities. That would make it so most people in cities could not own cars, and greatly raise the cost of parking for those that do own cars meaning cars could probably be owned by people in the top income groups. So I think my inference that the type of city they are advocating would be one where data center employees would very likely not have cars, and so data centers would not be in the middle of nowhere.
- bob1029 4y ago> Proof that low power, highly efficient computing power needs to become the new standard The hardware architecture is not the problem. How we use the hardware accounts for most of the waste you see today. Less containerization and more in-process SQLite would have a dramatic impact on the # of servers out there.
- bombcar 4y agoHow does walkability or the lack thereof require datacenters to be near anyone at all? Light travels 300 kilometers in 1 millisecond; we're talking one millisecond additional latency to be outside of most metro areas, two or three and we're in unpopulated rural areas for sure.
- gfv 4y agoDatacenters should have good, reliable and redundant supplies of power and connectivity. It is much easier to build a data center near or in a population center where fiber and electricity substations are plentiful, than to build your own long-haul fiber and high voltage lines into the middle of nowhere. Of course you can do the latter if you have unlimited capital, but most companies choose the path of least resistance. Don't know what the walkability argument is supposed to mean though: Amsterdam is famously walkable and cyclable, yet there are quite a few data centers right next to the center of the city; same goes for London.
- bombcar 4y agoYeah I suspect that datacenters congregate near areas that multiple fiber connections come together, and those ares are near where multiple roads and rivers come together, which have traditionally been where cities are located.
- fomine3 4y agoŌtemachi, Tokyo is a famous location for datacenters. It's literally almost center of Tokyo so its land is really expensive. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Equinix+TY4+%E6%9D%B1%E4%BA%ACIBX%E3%83%87%E3%83%BC%E3%82%BF%E3%82%BB%E3%83%B3%E3%82%BF%E3%83%BC/@35.6874681,139.7608964,16z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x60188bff47cf6d09:0xf0b9f11de562ab13!8m2!3d35.6883734!4d139.7658088!16s%2Fg%2F12xqfpdk1 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Equinix+TY4+%E6%9D%B1%E4%B...
- pclmulqdq 4y agoARM vs x86 vs RISC-V makes very little difference in power efficiency of servers. Cooling efficiency and efficiency of power distribution circuits are some of the biggest impacts on energy usage. The most energy-efficient datacenters today use liquid cooling vats for their computers, which are much more efficient than air cooling but come with tons of other problems.
- tzs 4y ago> If we had sane city design in the United States of America which emphasized density, walkability, alternative forms of transportation, and accessible and highly available public transportation. Nobody would care if a data center is out in the middle of nowhere. Nobody cares if a data center is out in the middle of nowhere with the current American city design. The article is about data centers that are not in the middle of nowhere.