[NitpickLawyer]

> Don't these data centers have pretty elaborate cooling setups that use large volumes of water?

Depending on where, and (more importantly) when you last read about this, there's been some developments. The original book that started this had a unit conversion error, and the reported numbers were off by about 4500x what the true numbers are (author claimed 1000 times more water than an entire city consumption, while in reality it was estimated at ~22% of that usage).

The problem is that we're living in the era of rage reporting, and corrections rarely get the same coverage as the initial shock claim.

On top of this, DCs don't make water "disappear", in the same way farming doesn't make it disappear. It re-enters the cycle via evaporation. (also, on the topic of farming, don't look up how much water it takes to grow nuts or avocados. That's an unpopular topic, apparently)

And thirdly, DCs use evaporative cooling because it's more efficient. They could, if push came to shove, not use that. And they do, when placed in areas without adequate water supply, use regular cooling.

[Ekaros]

I always find water use and farming weird. Living in part of planets where water for farms mostly if not fully rains down from the sky. So it getting on farm land is inconsequential one way or an other.

Still, I do feel there must be some difference between farming and cooling use by evaporation. As at least part of water is run off back to rivers and then seep back to ground water. These again depend largely on location.

[yesco]

I have no idea what book you're talking about, and I never claimed water "disappears" or made any argument about consumption statistics. Why would you assume I think water vanishes from existence? That's absurd.

My point is simple: the utility infrastructure is the hard part. The silicon sitting on raised floors is disposable and will be obsolete in a few years. But the power substations, fiber connections, and water infrastructure? That takes years to permit and build, and that's where the real value is.

Building that infrastructure (trenches for water lines, electrical substations, laying fiber) is the actual constraint and where the long term value lies. Whether they're running GPUs or something else entirely, industries will pay for access to that utility infrastructure long after today's AI hardware is obselete.

You're lecturing me about evaporative cooling efficiency while completely missing the point.

[NitpickLawyer]

Sorry if it came out that way, it was not my intention. I just thought you asked and provided some info that I'd recently read.