4 ms·

The reasons are: - Running billions of dollars worth of GPUs only 30-50% of the time insanely wasteful. Everyone else is running them at 99% duty cycle or clos

The reasons are: - Running billions of dollars worth of GPUs only 30-50% of the time insanely wasteful. Everyone else is running them at 99% duty cycle or close to it. - Solar is big and generally has to be built far from where the data centres are. Transmission is already a bottleneck in many states. Adding tens of gigawatts requires non-trivial large scale infrastructure investment by… the utility companies, not SpaceX. Not to mention regulatory hurdles, etc. - Battery production is already mostly maxed out, so obtaining tens of gigawatt hours of capacity on short notice is a decent percentage of global production. Gas and other fossil fuel power plants can be deployed adjacent to the data centres for effectively zero transmission loss and no long powerlines that upset the NIMBY types. They can work 24/7 and are largely available right now, but as others have pointed out the turbine blades are a limiting factor with these too.

8note 2mo ago
> Solar is big and generally has to be built far from where the data centres are. these data centers dont care that much about network throughput - you can sneakernet the training set into place and inference on the text isnt that taxing on the network there's a reason the ai datacenters are being built wherever the power is cheapest and theres the lowest regulations. there's no real physical location requirement, so you could actually put them close to the solar power generation
- jiggawatts 2mo ago
  Solar works as well as it does only because we’ve spread it out and connected it to a grid. When it is overcast in one spot it is sunny elsewhere. That “elsewhere” has to be far enough away to get different weather. This means a grid capable of transferring 100% of the needed power. So even if you plopped a new DC in the middle of a field of panels you’d still need a ~1 GA grid connection… or a battery array many times the size as you’d otherwise need just to cover night time usage.
  - int_19h 2mo ago
    All those companies are sitting on literally hundreds of billions of dollars in cash. If they need this so badly, let them build the connection and other infrastructure.
    - jiggawatts 2mo ago
      Cash doesn't buy time machines. They want to build the data centres right now, but the power companies and other energy suppliers are booked solid for 5+ years out. Money or not, you can't just click your fingers and instantly get regulatory approval, or spin up a facility to build parts that only a handful of places have ever figured out how to mass-manufacture. Gas turbine blades are especially difficult, but batteries and panels are not far behind. There are a surprisingly small number of shops capable of making power switching gear and transformers too.
      - watwut 2mo ago
        > They want to build the data centres right now, And I want them to behave in a decent way, but universe does not ensure we get what we want. They should be forced to build a grid in a way that does not speeds up global warming. What they want should be irrelevant.
skywhopper 2mo ago
I hope you get paid for apologizing for the worst people in the world.

8note 2mo ago

> Solar is big and generally has to be built far from where the data centres are. these data centers dont care that much about network throughput - you can sneakernet the training set into place and inference on the text isnt that taxing on the network there's a reason the ai datacenters are being built wherever the power is cheapest and theres the lowest regulations. there's no real physical location requirement, so you could actually put them close to the solar power generation

jiggawatts 2mo ago
Solar works as well as it does only because we’ve spread it out and connected it to a grid. When it is overcast in one spot it is sunny elsewhere. That “elsewhere” has to be far enough away to get different weather. This means a grid capable of transferring 100% of the needed power. So even if you plopped a new DC in the middle of a field of panels you’d still need a ~1 GA grid connection… or a battery array many times the size as you’d otherwise need just to cover night time usage.
- int_19h 2mo ago
  All those companies are sitting on literally hundreds of billions of dollars in cash. If they need this so badly, let them build the connection and other infrastructure.
  - jiggawatts 2mo ago
    Cash doesn't buy time machines. They want to build the data centres right now, but the power companies and other energy suppliers are booked solid for 5+ years out. Money or not, you can't just click your fingers and instantly get regulatory approval, or spin up a facility to build parts that only a handful of places have ever figured out how to mass-manufacture. Gas turbine blades are especially difficult, but batteries and panels are not far behind. There are a surprisingly small number of shops capable of making power switching gear and transformers too.
    - watwut 2mo ago
      > They want to build the data centres right now, And I want them to behave in a decent way, but universe does not ensure we get what we want. They should be forced to build a grid in a way that does not speeds up global warming. What they want should be irrelevant.

skywhopper 2mo ago

I hope you get paid for apologizing for the worst people in the world.