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The moon doesn't make a ton of sense, but Antarctica sure does. It's cold, it's dry, and if you load it up with GPUs, the latency is not a huge problem because
by jedberg 2y ago
The moon doesn't make a ton of sense, but Antarctica sure does. It's cold, it's dry, and if you load it up with GPUs, the latency is not a huge problem because you'd mostly be using it for training runs. And it's still on Earth, so you can connect it with an undersea cable.
Biggest issue would be power. Not sure what the geothermal situation is there, but given that they get most of their power from diesel, it's probably not great. You could build a big solar array, but then you can only use it for 1/3 of the year.
- eru 2y agoThe moon would make more sense for solar. Btw, instead of Antarctica, you could put your data centre in Iceland (with more or less the same pros, but fewer cons). And: people are actually doing that!
- jedberg 2y agoIceland has a great geothermal power story, but the air is not nearly as cold. The reason Antarctica is good is because you would just blow outside air into the datacenter, no chillers required.
- eru 2y agoYes, Iceland is a bit warmer than Antarctica. But cooling is still relatively easy: Iceland only gets to about 14C in summer days. Round it up, and say it's definitely below 30C. If you run your computers at about 60C, that's still plenty of difference. You can also look into dumping your heat into water. Either ocean or freshwater.
- genewitch 2y ago> You can also look into dumping your heat into water. Either ocean or freshwater. Sure, boil the oceans we don't need em
- eru 2y agoHuh? It approximately doesn't matter in the longer run and on a global scale whether you release your heat into the ground, atmosphere or sea. It's all conducted around sooner or later anyway.