[stavros]

I don't understand how a server (the "washing-machine-sized datacenter") can heat up any fraction of a swimming pool appreciably. Wouldn't it be a few kW tops?

[chippiewill]

Pre-GPU times you'd be right, but these days a 4U server could have 8 GPUs pulling 350+ watts each. A washing machine sized unit could contain perhaps 4 of these 4U servers so the unit as a whole could be drawing upwards of 11kW.

[swiftcoder]

You can fit, according to Nvidia, ~40 H100 GPUs in a 16U rack. That's 40 kW of power draw (and heat!) in roughly the space of a washing machine

[sushibowl]

This washing machine sized box draws 50kW of power. It wouldn't be able to heat up a cold swimming pool very much, but it would be enough to keep a pool that's already hot at a stable temperature.

[driverdan]

GPU power density is very high. The B300, for example, is rated at 1400W TDP. You can fit a lot of B300s in the space of a washing machine.

[chucksta]

No expert but I would think an indoor pool in a temperature controlled environment would control for a lot of heat loss from the water.

[gravel7623]

And more importantly, once the pool is warm enough (or in a very hot day), doesn't it lose its cooling efficiency?

[swiftcoder]

A 30C swimming pool vs a 70C GPU is plenty of temperature difference for a heat exchanger to work with. And even indoor swimming pools have horrific levels of heat loss due to evaporation. But I think the key thing here is that they've undersized the server rack - if its only offsetting 60% of the heating bill, there's a fair margin still being handled by a regular heat pump, which can cycle down in warmer weather.