Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by eru 856 days ago
You are right to worry about power efficiency. Though do keep in mind that power is also fungible with money, especially in a data centre.

I suspect a lot of AI inference (thought probably not the majority) will happen on mobile devices in the future. There power is also at a premium, and less fungible with money.
1 comments
latchkey 855 days ago
> Though do keep in mind that power is also fungible with money, especially in a data centre.

Untrue. I have filled 3 very large data centers where there was no more power to be had. Data centers are constrained by power. At some limit, you can't just spend more money to get more power.

It also becomes a cooling issue, the more power your GPUs consume, the more heat they generate, the more cooling that is required, the more power that is required for cooling. Often measured in PUE.

link
eru 855 days ago
You are right about any given data centre in the short run.

But you can use money to rent more data centres.

link
latchkey 855 days ago
Hate to break it to you. That is getting harder and harder. Certainly you can get a couple mw, but if you want 50, you are going to find that to be extremely challenging, if not impossible.
link
eru 855 days ago
Are you saying people stopped building data centres?

You can also pay to get more data centres built.

link
latchkey 855 days ago
The large ones being built today are spoken for already. That is how crazy the demand is right now. People aren't talking about it in the general news. They can't build them fast enough cause things like transformers, generators and cooling are all having supply issues.

Even still, power is limited. You can build DC's but if you can't power them... what are you going to do? This isn't just throw more money at the problem.

Have you noticed that data center stock, like EQIX, are at all time highs?

link
eru 855 days ago
> Have you noticed that data center stock, like EQIX, are at all time highs?

Though the FTSE All-World index (or the S&P 500) is also at all time highs, so I would expect most stocks to be at all time highs, too.

> Even still, power is limited. You can build DC's but if you can't power them... what are you going to do? This isn't just throw more money at the problem.

I guess you can try to outbid other people? But thanks: I didn't know the data-centre-building industry was so supply constrained at the moment.

link