4 ms·

»Don't understand why.« Because you cannot turn a large datacenter with thousands of aggregates, power supplies and so on off and on like a toaster.

by cbmuser 2mo ago

XorNot 2mo ago
Datacenters literally have UPS power supplies to let them gracefully shutdown and start up. A 4 hour grid battery and a weather forecast would easily let a training run follow energy availability.
- turbert 2mo ago
  when the GPU capex overshadows everything else your idle hardware is burning enormous amounts of money
- podocarp 2mo ago
  Are the UPSes actual batteries or just backup generators? If they're generators then that defeats the point. If they're batteries then it's kinda just regular solar then?
  - XorNot 2mo ago
    But that's the point. It's not like a solar DC would suddenly lose power because of cloud cover. Large scale batteries can provide amble ride through inclement weather to allow a graceful shutdown, and weather forecasts at that scale are accurate enough to predictively model your energy availability. AI training is unique because it's not interactive workload serving.
deepsun 2mo ago
I totally can. And if it's powered by solar (low inertia) there's less obligations to supply side, solar panels will just get warmer a tiny bit.
skywhopper 2mo ago
Batteries exist, and are getting better all the time.
podocarp 2mo ago
You totally can. I've seen cases a rat gnawed a circuit breaker and blacked out a DC. Fires too. It's not an industrial manufacturing facility. Computers can just be shut off and on. There's also nothing needed to bootstrap the other parts like cooling etc.
- fragmede 2mo ago
  A rat taking out a DC resulting in a black start event isn't the same thing as being able to turn a DC on and off at will. The thousands of computers in an DC running various bits of software don't just power on like your Windows computer and result in a working data center after a couple of minutes automatically.

»Don't understand why.« Because you cannot turn a large datacenter with thousands of aggregates, power supplies and so on off and on like a toaster.

by cbmuser 2mo ago

»Don't understand why.« Because you cannot turn a large datacenter with thousands of aggregates, power supplies and so on off and on like a toaster.

XorNot 2mo ago

Datacenters literally have UPS power supplies to let them gracefully shutdown and start up. A 4 hour grid battery and a weather forecast would easily let a training run follow energy availability.

turbert 2mo ago
when the GPU capex overshadows everything else your idle hardware is burning enormous amounts of money
podocarp 2mo ago
Are the UPSes actual batteries or just backup generators? If they're generators then that defeats the point. If they're batteries then it's kinda just regular solar then?
- XorNot 2mo ago
  But that's the point. It's not like a solar DC would suddenly lose power because of cloud cover. Large scale batteries can provide amble ride through inclement weather to allow a graceful shutdown, and weather forecasts at that scale are accurate enough to predictively model your energy availability. AI training is unique because it's not interactive workload serving.

deepsun 2mo ago

I totally can. And if it's powered by solar (low inertia) there's less obligations to supply side, solar panels will just get warmer a tiny bit.

skywhopper 2mo ago

Batteries exist, and are getting better all the time.

podocarp 2mo ago

You totally can. I've seen cases a rat gnawed a circuit breaker and blacked out a DC. Fires too. It's not an industrial manufacturing facility. Computers can just be shut off and on. There's also nothing needed to bootstrap the other parts like cooling etc.

fragmede 2mo ago
A rat taking out a DC resulting in a black start event isn't the same thing as being able to turn a DC on and off at will. The thousands of computers in an DC running various bits of software don't just power on like your Windows computer and result in a working data center after a couple of minutes automatically.