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Google is investing $3.3B to build clean data centers in Europe

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Re: Google is investing $3.3B to build clean data centers in Europe

#81

Post by dmix »

mav3rick wrote: post #59
badrequest wrote: post #41

At Google Next in April, I attended a talk by the C-level in charge of Google's Datacenters, and they bragged about using machine learning to manage/anticipate their power draw, and the subsequent efficiencies those brought. They also bragged about how much they're trying to make these centers powered by renewables. When an audience member asked if they would be releasing their models that help them manage power, the…

They could have saved Earth and you would find a fault. This is a great initiative, but you're criticizing about not "open sourcing" it. Google open sources plenty of things. The solution maybe heavily coupled to their infrastructure.

And who knows it was probably out of the scope of the presentation and he simply didn't know if they had any plans to publish research or directly open source it.

I doubt Google's being super protective of data center power optimization stuff. Demand optimization sounds like a relatively straightforward software problem for Amazon, Microsoft, etc to solve. Most of the utility would be for the smaller players.

Re: Google is investing $3.3B to build clean data centers in Europe

#82

Post by BeatLeJuce »

Jyaif wrote: post #50
badrequest wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a fair point, though I still think if your genuine motivation was the well-being of the Earth, then you'd, I dunno, _try?_

That I agree with: they should have shared their methodology for saving energy.

They did, the papers behind their tech are published and available free of charge (someone else here linked to https://deepmind.com/research/publications/safe-exploration-... )

Re: Google is investing $3.3B to build clean data centers in Europe

#83

Post by 1-6 »

bt848 wrote: post #76
chvid wrote: post #46

Will these data centers still be subject to mass data collection by the us government (under arrangements similar to the prism program described in the Snowden relevations)? Does it matter at all that these centers are placed outside the us?

Just like basically this biggest nit ever, but Snowden revelations didn't reveal anything and nothing was described in them. Snowden exfiltrated a bunch of powerpoints that neither he nor you nor I can understand out of context. The most supportable conclusion you can really glean from Snowden's slide decks is the US intelligence agencies were able to intercept traffic of undersea cables.

Fiber is encrypted you know...

Re: Google is investing $3.3B to build clean data centers in Europe

#84

Post by cooljacob204 »

Analemma_ wrote: post #80
bigbaguette wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Following this logic, I often thought electric heaters are a waste of energy since they perform no computation. But a French company is having a go at this: https://www.qarnot.com/computing-heater_qh-1/

This is not true. A computer heater can only ever be 100% efficient, but most electric heaters are actually heat pumps and can be up to 400% efficient, depending on conditions. Heating your home with bitcoin miners (or any other computing device) is a staggering waste of energy.

Can you go into more details about what a heatpump is and how something can be 400% efficient?

Re: Google is investing $3.3B to build clean data centers in Europe

#85

Post by Zenst »

cheez wrote: post #78
cameronbrown wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder, would it be feasible for them to use wind power to run time insensitive batch jobs in the daytime - crank down the processing power on these jobs when there's less green energy around?

Google has insane optimization for power consumption at data centers, if there is something you can think of, they will have either done it or will be trying it.

For many a datacenter - balancing the loads across the three-phase power supply is one area that makes one of, if not the biggest difference in the bill/power charged for using. Though that for many a tech, is an area they are more inclined to overlook.

Then quality of the power (clean sine or noise spikes) auditing, then the factor that UPS's do square wave. Though that's more stability and indeed longevity of your kit plugged that appreciates those nuances.

It is one big rabbit hole and can imagine the likes of Google having dedicated teams to focus just on power optimisations as the dividends at that scale - more than pay for the team.

Re: Google is investing $3.3B to build clean data centers in Europe

#86

Post by on_and_off »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #75
bigbaguette wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Following this logic, I often thought electric heaters are a waste of energy since they perform no computation. But a French company is having a go at this: https://www.qarnot.com/computing-heater_qh-1/

That's amazing, but what sort of computation does it do while heating? Are you supposed to queue up your rendering until it's cold outside, or does it mine bitcoins?

I hope it does something more useful than mining bitcoins.

There are many research projects that could use some more computing power and that would bring a gain to humanity.

Re: Google is investing $3.3B to build clean data centers in Europe

#87

Post by repiret »

cooljacob204 wrote: post #84
Analemma_ wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not true. A computer heater can only ever be 100% efficient, but most electric heaters are actually heat pumps and can be up to 400% efficient, depending on conditions. Heating your home with bitcoin miners (or any other computing device) is a staggering waste of energy.

Can you go into more details about what a heatpump is and how something can be 400% efficient?

A heat pump is basically an air conditioner running backwards - it runs uncompressed refrigerant through a radiator outside to pick up heat from the outdoors, and compressed refrigerant through a radiator indoors to release the heat. Because they can move more heat than they dissipate (and some of the dissipated heat is indoors anyway) they can be more than 100% efficient. (edited to fix compressed/uncompressed sides)

But I'd venture to say the statement "most electric heaters are heatpumps" is in fact false. There are a lot of heat pumps in the world, but there are also a lot of pure resistive electric heaters. I suspect that most things people call electric heaters are resistive electric heaters.

Re: Google is investing $3.3B to build clean data centers in Europe

#88

Post by apearson »

cooljacob204 wrote: post #84
Analemma_ wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not true. A computer heater can only ever be 100% efficient, but most electric heaters are actually heat pumps and can be up to 400% efficient, depending on conditions. Heating your home with bitcoin miners (or any other computing device) is a staggering waste of energy.

Can you go into more details about what a heatpump is and how something can be 400% efficient?

A heatpump moves heat around instead of creating new heat. To move 1 unit of heat takes less than 1 unit of energy

Re: Google is investing $3.3B to build clean data centers in Europe

#89

Post by josephpmay »

grezql wrote: post #3

This is not relevant to the article, but why is there so many full screen popups with newsletter on american websites? I have never ever written my email on such form. The first thing I do when I see it is to close it and think its a low-budget website or something.

Newsletters can be incredibly profitable for media organizations because it 1) gets people to return to your content on a regular basis 2) can allow for more targeted advertising

I personally hate this trend, but almost everybody's doing it these days

Re: Google is investing $3.3B to build clean data centers in Europe

#90

Post by Brakenshire »

cooljacob204 wrote: post #84
Analemma_ wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not true. A computer heater can only ever be 100% efficient, but most electric heaters are actually heat pumps and can be up to 400% efficient, depending on conditions. Heating your home with bitcoin miners (or any other computing device) is a staggering waste of energy.

Can you go into more details about what a heatpump is and how something can be 400% efficient?

It’s in effect moving heat around, rather than generating it. That’s why it can be more than 100% efficient.
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