CNBC
The power needs of artificial intelligence and cloud computing are growing so large that individual data center campuses could soon use more electricity than some cities, and even entire U.S. states, according to companies developing the facilities.
The electricity consumption of data centers has exploded along with their increasingly critical role in the economy in the past 10 years, housing servers that power the applications businesses and consumers rely on for daily tasks.
Now, with the advent of artificial intelligence, data centers are growing so large that finding enough power to drive them and enough suitable land to house them will become increasingly difficult, the developers say. The facilities could increasingly demand a gigawatt or more of power — one billion watts — or about twice the residential electricity consumption of the Pittsburgh area last year. more here
SNIP: They use tons of water, too.
The human brain looks pretty efficient compared to the artificial version doesn’t it…
I don’t see the problem here. Electricity just comes out of the wall socket and water out of the faucet! Just put more faucets and sockets in the buildings!
I could be Amish, except for the funky clothes.
Had to look it up, but the inter-tubes say the human brain uses somewhere between 12 and 20 Watts of power.
Even tho he was never too bright, I think Jackass Joe is down to a Watt or less by now!
Used to do what exactly? And last 10 years? Sure, Jan.
@Harry — Yes! It’s pretty amazing what human brains have accomplished lately when their input consisted mostly of pizza, Doritos, and Mountain Dew.
We’re seeing the first small steps in a shift to have private/corporate power-hungry data center get their juice from dedicated on-site SMRs. Small Modular Reactors. More reasonably sized nuclear power generators.
Google (no surprise) is working on it, and there are others.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/21/future-google-supplier-kairos-gets-approval-to-build-two-small-nuclear-reactors/
And last year the NRC certified a small SMR. That’s a big step, regulatorily. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/nrc-certifies-first-us-small-modular-reactor-design
Listen, the Navy has been operating SMR’s for quite some time. Don’t let those folks in “big power” lie to you.
The tech bros will build SMR/AMR’s, on site, to feed the machines. They call it “behind the meter”. Shortly after that, Dow Chemical will do the same with its process plants.
Then it will filter down to the cities who can afford and support it. Which to be honest, is something that should have been embraced 60 fucking years ago but hey, boomers be booming
Instead of limiting cow farts because of glowbull warming let’s use them to create electricity.
Local power company supplies a Cargill ethanol (fake green energy) plant and getting ready to supply a new Google center.
They want me to install a new smart thermostat so they can cycle my AC/Heat during peak hours.
I don’t see any reason Cargill and Google can’t throttle their consumption.
If ethanol was actually a good energy source, couldn’t it be used to supply their own energy? Gov’t subsidies.
…so is half the building a UPS system?
Because you’re gonna need one HELL of a buck-and-boost battery to insulate your gear from the vagarites of shore power, from spikes to outages, and Granger doesnt typically make them in the flux capacitor supporting range…
check what they pay for electricity. i know when extreme drought in california, some people could purchase bulk water at walmart (5 gallons) cheaper than the cost of water supplied by the water company supplying their tap. no doubt the mega corps are getting a sweet deal on electric.
How about artificial electricity?
Close to everything I’ve heard about Artificial “Intelligence” doesn’t sound remotely intelligent.
This article isn’t quite right. AI systems are typically small (100s of individual systems…)
At the risk doxing myself, i have worked on what was recently the two fastest HPC systems on the planet – Frontier and Aurora (https://top500.org/).
These systems have around 10k computers integrated in such a way so they ccan act as a single overall system. Frontier pulls 28MW and Aurora pull around 40MW.
They need to contact the power companies prior to booting the entire system so they don’t take the entire grid down.
These systems are used for globull warming and aircraft engine research to name a few.
I suppose there is some AI research done on these, but it would only use a small portion on these systems.
Oh, and the water used to cool these systems is recirculated.
Skynet is coming.
yes, the Dirty Little Secret is finally sneaking out. musk recently said that there AI supercomputer is planned to require up to 500 megawatts soon. that’s the power required to try to get full self driving and autonomous Bots walking around. that’s more than most local power plants, for reference. the South Texas Nuclear Plant is rated at 480 megawatts for example.
I spent much of my career as a power optimization person for the world’s largest notebook maker, so this really gets home with me at least
LOL, the libs will kill the environment so they can have AI generate images of Rachel Maddow naked.
Cynic,
You just ruined my day!