5 ms·

> the only cooling option is radiative. It does say he's planning an AI sun, I'm guessing that's the temperature you need to run at for radiation to work.

by jopsen 8mo ago

pantalaimon 8mo ago
There are already large communication satellites that consume several kW of power.
- FireBeyond 8mo ago
  Oh, good. So we only need to multiply that by 200 million times, per space datacenter.
  - pantalaimon 8mo ago
    The data center would still consist of many individual satellites, much like a earth based data center consists of many individual servers
    - Bootvis 8mo ago
      A large telecommunications satellite operates at about 15kW. A Blackwell GPU consumes 1kW so you would be at 15 Blackwells per satellite. The cooling surface needs to scale linearly so there is little return to scale. This doesn't sound like a good idea to me.
    - esskay 8mo ago
      tbh you could just combine them with starlink sats. didn't they just apply for (and get?) a license for 1 million sats? Stick a single racks worth of gpu power on those and hey presto you've just got yourself the largest ai cluster in the world by far.
      - CamperBob2 8mo ago
        The problem is, they need so much more power than a Starlink satellite that they need to be placed in a sun-synchronous orbit. The orbits that Starlink satellites need to use are nothing like the orbits that would have to be used for this rejected attempt at an Ed Wood sci-fi tribute script. And if you accept that the duty cycle of the AI+Starlink satellites will be less than 50%, it would be much better to build the data centers in random deserts and wastelands on Earth and use the Starlink network to talk to them.
AceJohnny2 8mo ago
> It does say he's planning an AI sun Everything I've heard from Musk in the past decade has been against my will and has made me dumber. (no I do not care to verify or know whether the above is true) Edit: ah fuck ya got me "the next book in SpaceX and xAI's mission: scaling to make a sentient sun to understand the Universe" what the cultish bullshit is this. In a just world investors would be fleeing in droves from this cuckoo behavior (I know xAI & SpaceX are private)

> the only cooling option is radiative. It does say he's planning an AI sun, I'm guessing that's the temperature you need to run at for radiation to work.

by jopsen 8mo ago

> the only cooling option is radiative. It does say he's planning an AI sun, I'm guessing that's the temperature you need to run at for radiation to work.

pantalaimon 8mo ago

There are already large communication satellites that consume several kW of power.

FireBeyond 8mo ago
Oh, good. So we only need to multiply that by 200 million times, per space datacenter.
- pantalaimon 8mo ago
  The data center would still consist of many individual satellites, much like a earth based data center consists of many individual servers
  - Bootvis 8mo ago
    A large telecommunications satellite operates at about 15kW. A Blackwell GPU consumes 1kW so you would be at 15 Blackwells per satellite. The cooling surface needs to scale linearly so there is little return to scale. This doesn't sound like a good idea to me.
  - esskay 8mo ago
    tbh you could just combine them with starlink sats. didn't they just apply for (and get?) a license for 1 million sats? Stick a single racks worth of gpu power on those and hey presto you've just got yourself the largest ai cluster in the world by far.
    - CamperBob2 8mo ago
      The problem is, they need so much more power than a Starlink satellite that they need to be placed in a sun-synchronous orbit. The orbits that Starlink satellites need to use are nothing like the orbits that would have to be used for this rejected attempt at an Ed Wood sci-fi tribute script. And if you accept that the duty cycle of the AI+Starlink satellites will be less than 50%, it would be much better to build the data centers in random deserts and wastelands on Earth and use the Starlink network to talk to them.

AceJohnny2 8mo ago

> It does say he's planning an AI sun Everything I've heard from Musk in the past decade has been against my will and has made me dumber. (no I do not care to verify or know whether the above is true) Edit: ah fuck ya got me "the next book in SpaceX and xAI's mission: scaling to make a sentient sun to understand the Universe" what the cultish bullshit is this. In a just world investors would be fleeing in droves from this cuckoo behavior (I know xAI & SpaceX are private)