Live data from Hacker News

Dell exec reveals Nvidia has a 1,000-watt GPU in the works

theregister.com

41–50 of 59 posts

Re: Dell exec reveals Nvidia has a 1,000-watt GPU in the works

#41
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? This is an AI accelerator card. So you should be looking at performance per Watt, instead of absolute numbers. The linked article doesn't mention anything about that.

As long as we insist on doing the same thing, we will never use less in total. Point me to any sizable consumption field where gains in efficiency didn't translate to more usage.

Heating / cooling. People keep their houses at roughly the same temperature regardless of consumption. You don't get your house from 21 C to 26 just because your heater became more efficient.

Re: Dell exec reveals Nvidia has a 1,000-watt GPU in the works

#42

With the recent breakthrough in ternary weight models it'll be interesting to see how needed this kind of bruteforce power will be.

Why not have both software and hardware improvements? This is like saying we shouldn't have any new CPUs after the the PDP-1 because quicksort got invented

> This is like saying we shouldn't have any new CPUs after the the PDP-1 because quicksort got invented

I didn't assert anything here, I merely pondered. However, lets pretend that I did say that we shouldn't need heavy GPUs anymore. I don't think that's an entirely bad take because it would be fantastic if we could run larger models with more parameters on lower spec hardware. Especially phones that aren't flagship models.

Re: Dell exec reveals Nvidia has a 1,000-watt GPU in the works

#43
post #31

The big question is "Will it blend (with the datacenter dynamics, power distribution and cooling)?". Considering a conservative 4GPU system adds a 1.2KW additional overhead, packing these together densely in racks is a huge ordeal.

The big questions is, my heat pump is 2.6 kW, can I remove the heat pump and run 2 of these GPUs instead?

Considering that heat pumps have a coefficient of performance of greater than 1 (meaning they are moving more than 2.6 kw of heat), no. You'd probably need 3 to 5 GPUs to get comparable levels of warmth.

Re: Dell exec reveals Nvidia has a 1,000-watt GPU in the works

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not have both software and hardware improvements? This is like saying we shouldn't have any new CPUs after the the PDP-1 because quicksort got invented

> This is like saying we shouldn't have any new CPUs after the the PDP-1 because quicksort got invented I didn't assert anything here, I merely pondered. However, lets pretend that I did say that we shouldn't need heavy GPUs anymore. I don't think that's an entirely bad take because it would be fantastic if we could run larger models with more parameters on lower spec hardware. Especially phones that aren't flagship…

Sure, the analogy was a bit exaggerated perhaps :)

I also of course didn't necessarily want to imply whether it's actually a good idea to have a 1000W hogging monster card, vs e.g. putting more memory on consumer cards

Re: Dell exec reveals Nvidia has a 1,000-watt GPU in the works

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as we insist on doing the same thing, we will never use less in total. Point me to any sizable consumption field where gains in efficiency didn't translate to more usage.

Lighting using using LEDs vs incandescent bulbs: streets and buildings are not ten times brighter than a couple of decades ago.

Good example. Indeed light bulbs didn't get 6-10x brighter than before. But there are that many more of them now, sources: Kyba, Christopher CM, et al. “Artificially lit surface of Earth at night increasing in radiance and extent.” Science advances 3.11 (2017): e1701528. http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/11/e1701528.full?in...; Tsao, Jeffrey Y., et al. “Solid-state lighting: an energy-economics perspective.” Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics 43.35 (2010): 354001. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228627788_Solid-sta...

Re: Dell exec reveals Nvidia has a 1,000-watt GPU in the works

#47
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as we insist on doing the same thing, we will never use less in total. Point me to any sizable consumption field where gains in efficiency didn't translate to more usage.

Heating / cooling. People keep their houses at roughly the same temperature regardless of consumption. You don't get your house from 21 C to 26 just because your heater became more efficient.

Based on this https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indica... it doesn't look like it's going down to me.

Re: Dell exec reveals Nvidia has a 1,000-watt GPU in the works

#48
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We will nuke ourselves before resources are fully wasted.

There’s zero evidence for that.

I would assert is plenty of evidence that it will come, given the current state of the world.

This is one of those times I would rather be wrong.

Re: Dell exec reveals Nvidia has a 1,000-watt GPU in the works

#49
post #23

Nice, we'll be able to consume the Earth's resources even faster. Congrats everyone!

We will nuke ourselves before resources are fully wasted.

Maybe. The increased competition and other side effects of increased resource usage also increase the chance of us nuking ourselves, so it's liable to be a close-run thing.

Re: Dell exec reveals Nvidia has a 1,000-watt GPU in the works

#50
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've never consumed resources faster, yet there's never been more resources made accessible by our efforts for us all to consume. Every tech advance unlocks more! Space exploration and mining will be a step change in accessible resources. Why not enjoy the non-scarcity!

We'll blow ourselves up before climate and scarcity are solved. AI might help with this.

Yes, AI might help blow ourselves up.
Post reply on HN