3 ms·

It's the water use that concerns me

speed_spread 8mo ago
In theory the water stays clean and can be reused. But I assume these cheapskates will go for evaporative cooling everytime? Then yeah, we need laws against that.
- carlosft 8mo ago
  I keep hearing people claiming that water is just as much as issue as energy for operating these DCs, but that just doesn't make any sense to me. However, I haven't had to step inside a DC for almost two decades.
  - fc417fc802 8mo ago
    Continuously dissipating 1 gigawatt of energy by boiling room temperature water would require approximately 1.38 million liters of water per hour. Seems like the environmentally responsible thing to do be to build the datacenter near the coast and use the waste heat to desalinate water. Or at least dissipate the heat into the ocean rather than boiling off an inland freshwater supply.
    - dylan604 8mo ago
      And kill the local aquatic life as you raise the temp beyond their happy place?
      - fc417fc802 8mo ago
        Setting aside a small patch of ocean for the task seems like a much better plan than the current practice. Provided you dump it in a place with a decent current any adversely affected area should be exceedingly small. Keep in mind that the sun is constantly dumping energy on us. Absorption averaged across the entire earth is ~200 W/m^2. Assuming I didn't misplace some zeros somewhere then a gigawatt corresponds to ~5 km^2 of ocean surface. That's the daily flux. Penetration falls off exponentially so 75% of that only ever makes it ~10 m down. I think the takeaway here is the utterly incomprehensible scale of the ocean.
    - Imustaskforhelp 8mo ago
      This idea is probably more worth it in middle eastern countries given that 90% of their water comes from Desalination Plants. But given the recent war within region, I don't really expect Datacenters to be built within the region for quite a long time.
    - blitzar 8mo ago
      run it through a turbine and generate electricity to power the datacenter - infinite energy and infinite ai unlocked.
- fc417fc802 8mo ago
  I guess when you're dissipating upwards of a gigawatt of power at a single site boiling water starts to look attractive. It's a pretty impressive curveball; I definitely would never have predicted "an evil corporation boils off all the local drinking water" to be a legitimate concern. I'm pretty sure that's too absurd a plot point for even a children's movie.
  - Imustaskforhelp 8mo ago
    > an evil corporation boils off all the local drinking water Nestle jumps into my mind whenever I want to think of an evil corporation and water together.
- Rapzid 8mo ago
  Yeah because it's cheaper they go evaporative. That's an easy fix by just making it more expensive. People talk about the water usage like it's an intrinsic feature of datacenters; it's not. You just make it more expensive so they are forced to conserve. But you wait till you have to so you don't push them to build elsewhere.
keeda 8mo ago
This may help you feel better: https://andymasley.substack.com/p/the-ai-water-issue-is-fake https://andymasley.substack.com/p/the-ai-water-issue-is-fake

In theory the water stays clean and can be reused. But I assume these cheapskates will go for evaporative cooling everytime? Then yeah, we need laws against that.

carlosft 8mo ago
I keep hearing people claiming that water is just as much as issue as energy for operating these DCs, but that just doesn't make any sense to me. However, I haven't had to step inside a DC for almost two decades.
- fc417fc802 8mo ago
  Continuously dissipating 1 gigawatt of energy by boiling room temperature water would require approximately 1.38 million liters of water per hour. Seems like the environmentally responsible thing to do be to build the datacenter near the coast and use the waste heat to desalinate water. Or at least dissipate the heat into the ocean rather than boiling off an inland freshwater supply.
  - dylan604 8mo ago
    And kill the local aquatic life as you raise the temp beyond their happy place?
    - fc417fc802 8mo ago
      Setting aside a small patch of ocean for the task seems like a much better plan than the current practice. Provided you dump it in a place with a decent current any adversely affected area should be exceedingly small. Keep in mind that the sun is constantly dumping energy on us. Absorption averaged across the entire earth is ~200 W/m^2. Assuming I didn't misplace some zeros somewhere then a gigawatt corresponds to ~5 km^2 of ocean surface. That's the daily flux. Penetration falls off exponentially so 75% of that only ever makes it ~10 m down. I think the takeaway here is the utterly incomprehensible scale of the ocean.
  - Imustaskforhelp 8mo ago
    This idea is probably more worth it in middle eastern countries given that 90% of their water comes from Desalination Plants. But given the recent war within region, I don't really expect Datacenters to be built within the region for quite a long time.
  - blitzar 8mo ago
    run it through a turbine and generate electricity to power the datacenter - infinite energy and infinite ai unlocked.
fc417fc802 8mo ago
I guess when you're dissipating upwards of a gigawatt of power at a single site boiling water starts to look attractive. It's a pretty impressive curveball; I definitely would never have predicted "an evil corporation boils off all the local drinking water" to be a legitimate concern. I'm pretty sure that's too absurd a plot point for even a children's movie.
- Imustaskforhelp 8mo ago
  > an evil corporation boils off all the local drinking water Nestle jumps into my mind whenever I want to think of an evil corporation and water together.
Rapzid 8mo ago
Yeah because it's cheaper they go evaporative. That's an easy fix by just making it more expensive. People talk about the water usage like it's an intrinsic feature of datacenters; it's not. You just make it more expensive so they are forced to conserve. But you wait till you have to so you don't push them to build elsewhere.

keeda 8mo ago

This may help you feel better: https://andymasley.substack.com/p/the-ai-water-issue-is-fake https://andymasley.substack.com/p/the-ai-water-issue-is-fake