“To the best of our knowledge, it is the largest data center — we think of it as a campus — in the world,” OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane told The Associated Press last week. “It generates, roughly and depending how you count, about a gigawatt of energy.”
Why is this guy saying a datacenter generates energy? It does literally the exact opposite. I guess you don’t need to actually know anything to get a leadership role at openai, as long as you can say lots of words.
Yeah that language is pure corporate BS - data centers CONSUME energy at massive scales (up to 1 gigawatt in this case, which is insane), they’re literally just giant heaters that occasionally produce AI outputs as a byproduct of all that wasted electricty.
Every square kilometer of land (0.38 Sq miles in freedom units) gets about a GW of heat from the sun (depending on latitude). I doubt one datacenter will contribute that much…
I don’t know, I’ve been in some hot places but massive cooling towers tend to radiate a bit more (now I know what I’m reading about today) and a data center without the ability to pump heat outside isn’t going to make it a whole day before it’s toast.
Not necessarily disagreeing, just curious about how much heat is dispersed by the ones here.
1 gigawatt is not that insane, and I doubt it’s what the datacenter consumes. A rack can easily get into double, even triple digits kW for GPU heavy setups. So let’s say 10 racks per Megawatt. I’m sure such a datacenter has more than 10.000 racks. Plus A/C, and all other “ancillary” uses. A normal datacenter can get close to 1 GW, this thing might be double digits, but I doubt they will publish exact numbers.
But this proposed data center is so big, it would have its own dedicated energy from gas generation and renewable sources, according to Collins and company officials.
The “depending on how you count” probably refers to the renewables.
Some of these facilities do generate a significant portion of their own electricity via various means. It’s not like that amount of energy is just sitting out there on the grid waiting to be used. Somebody has to generate it and if you’re already investing millions in rectifiers, batteries, and other data center power systems, why wouldn’t you consider taking it a step further?
Tell me it’s not gonna be generating power with “portable“ generators that narrowly avoid stricter regulation thanks to the guy who bought Twitter pushing them around the data center parking lot every few months.
My data center has 35MW of generators onsite. No modern DC is designed nor built without backup generators to allow continuous operation during any utility power outages.
Why is this guy saying a datacenter generates energy? It does literally the exact opposite. I guess you don’t need to actually know anything to get a leadership role at openai, as long as you can say lots of words.
Yeah that language is pure corporate BS - data centers CONSUME energy at massive scales (up to 1 gigawatt in this case, which is insane), they’re literally just giant heaters that occasionally produce AI outputs as a byproduct of all that wasted electricty.
I guess they could say they are generating 1GW of computing power
More like a GW of heat… Thankfully I’m sure that will counteract whatever has caused it to be over 80 degrees on my way to work before 0700.
Every square kilometer of land (0.38 Sq miles in freedom units) gets about a GW of heat from the sun (depending on latitude). I doubt one datacenter will contribute that much…
I don’t know, I’ve been in some hot places but massive cooling towers tend to radiate a bit more (now I know what I’m reading about today) and a data center without the ability to pump heat outside isn’t going to make it a whole day before it’s toast.
Not necessarily disagreeing, just curious about how much heat is dispersed by the ones here.
1 gigawatt is not that insane, and I doubt it’s what the datacenter consumes. A rack can easily get into double, even triple digits kW for GPU heavy setups. So let’s say 10 racks per Megawatt. I’m sure such a datacenter has more than 10.000 racks. Plus A/C, and all other “ancillary” uses. A normal datacenter can get close to 1 GW, this thing might be double digits, but I doubt they will publish exact numbers.
The “depending on how you count” probably refers to the renewables.
AI Data centers noticeably fuck with the grid. As a result they are facing internal and external pressure to generate more of their own power. Microsoft is opening a nuclear power plant. I would not be shocked to learn through solar, wind, and coal they provide the majority of their own power
Some of these facilities do generate a significant portion of their own electricity via various means. It’s not like that amount of energy is just sitting out there on the grid waiting to be used. Somebody has to generate it and if you’re already investing millions in rectifiers, batteries, and other data center power systems, why wouldn’t you consider taking it a step further?
Tell me it’s not gonna be generating power with “portable“ generators that narrowly avoid stricter regulation thanks to the guy who bought Twitter pushing them around the data center parking lot every few months.
the only thing that makes sense is heat
My data center has 35MW of generators onsite. No modern DC is designed nor built without backup generators to allow continuous operation during any utility power outages.