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They don't even consider the energy consumed to produce the chips AI/ML is running on at all. The biggest chip producer TSMC ysed 22000 gigawatt hour last year.
by bgnn 3y ago
They don't even consider the energy consumed to produce the chips AI/ML is running on at all. The biggest chip producer TSMC ysed 22000 gigawatt hour last year. This doesn't include oder foundries, memory etc.. AI is now morebthan 15% of TSMC revenue. AI/GPU chips ate often in advanced nodes consuming orders of magnitude more energy than older nodes. So one can assume energy consumption share is much more than 15% of that 22000 gigawatt hour. Let's say 25%. That would be 5500 gigawatt hour. That's like 0.15% of whole US energy consumption of 2020. So 1-2% during operation is totally fathomable.
- littlestymaar 3y agoDoes TSMC produce the pure silicon themselves from silica or is the refinery done by a supplier? I suspect it's the latter, but idk. It's a very energy intensive process, and huge source of CO2 emissions as well because you use coal to provide carbon in order to reduce the silica and get silicon + CO2.
- bgnn 3y agoThey get raw wafers from other suppliers AFAIK. It comes pre-doped even.