2 ms·
If rack mounted, you are ending up with something like a reverse power station. So why not use it as an energy source? Spin a turbine.
by lostlogin 2y ago
If rack mounted, you are ending up with something like a reverse power station.
So why not use it as an energy source? Spin a turbine.
- sebzim4500 2y agoIf my very stale physics is accurate then even with perfect thermodynamic efficiency you would only recover about a third of the energy that you put into the chips.
- dylan604 2y ago1/3 > 0, so even if you don't get a $0 energy bill I'd venture that any company that could get 1/3 of energy bill would be happy
- bentcorner 2y agoI'm aware of the efficiency losses but I think it would be amusing to use that turbine to help power the machine generating the heat.
- twic 2y agoHey, we're building artificial general intelligence, what's a little perpetual motion on the side?
- kristjansson 2y agoIf you let the chip actual boil enough water to run a turbine you're going to have a hard time keeping the magic smoke inside. Much better to run at reasonable temps and try to recover energy from the waste heat.
- ericye16 2y agoWhat if you chose a refrigerant with a lower boiling point?
- kristjansson 2y agoThat's basically the principle of binary cycle[1] generators. However for data center waste heat recovery, I'd think you'd want to use a more stable fluid for cooling, and then pump it to a separate closed-loop binary-cycle generator. No reason to make your datacenter cooling system also deal with high pressure fluids, and moving high pressure working fluid from 1000s of chips to a turbine of sufficient size, etc. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_cycle
- renhanxue 2y agoThere's a bunch of places in Europe that use waste heat from datacenters in district heating systems. Same thing with waste heat from various industrial processes. It's relatively common practice.