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A power shortage could short-circuit Nvidia's rise

economist.com

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Re: A power shortage could short-circuit Nvidia's rise

#41

Post by beeflet »

estimator7292 wrote: post #30
wmf wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The work started around 10-15 years ago and is now largely done. Many people confuse large absolute numbers like 1 kW with inefficiency but today's GPUs/TPUs are close to the practical efficiency limit with today's 3 nm technology.

I think it's mostly because laypeople think that all heat is wasted heat. Most people are pretty surprised to learn that there's a fundamental energy cost to flip a bit and that there even is a lower limit to the amount of heat generated by a bit flip.

I think the problem is that you can't get the chips hot enough to drive an efficient industrial process unless you are using GaN or something.

The carnot cycle on waste heat is bad

Re: A power shortage could short-circuit Nvidia's rise

#42

Post by XorNot »

nemomarx wrote: post #36
protocolture wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the brits were at it (With insourced nuclear engineering and low regulatory overhead) they could crank them out every 6 - 8 years. The brits let all that technical capability wither and could not do it again right now. But if someone was willing its still theoretically possible. Just takes total alignment between government and private.

How do you get the expertise back on a dime? You have to tack on a few slow builds that create talent and local knowledge for that, or poaching people from China Operation Paperclip style maybe.

It's why the Vogtle plant is on track to lead to the worst possible outcome: yes it was very expensive. So the best thing to do is to start building another one right away while all those lessons and skills are still current.

Re: A power shortage could short-circuit Nvidia's rise

#43

Post by bsder »

beeflet wrote: post #39
mullingitover wrote: post #35

One really interesting strategy the US could pursue here would be to heavily tariff solar[1] and just randomly attack wind projects[2]. Just completely self-own itself on the two cheapest energy sources. It wouldn't make any sense, but it would be provocative , really drive engagement. [1] https://seia.org/news/solar-tariff-impacts/ [2] https://www.npr.org/2025/08/31/nx-s1-5522943/trump-offshore-...

Maybe the tariff could encourage local manufacturing of solar? I have no idea, but I suppose that our local manufacturing could be getting killed by economies of scale abroad. Or I am overthinking it and solar is something that (D) politicians support so the (R) president tautologically must oppose it. Therefore we must not have nice things

> Maybe the tariff could encourage local manufacturing of solar?

That's what tariffs do ... if you leave them in place for extended periods of time.

The problem is that nobody is going to bet their business on what the tariffs will be tomorrow when it could be 10x or zero.

Businesses are just going to stop and hold their breath until Trump goes away.

Re: A power shortage could short-circuit Nvidia's rise

#44

Post by jeffbee »

XorNot wrote: post #42
nemomarx wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you get the expertise back on a dime? You have to tack on a few slow builds that create talent and local knowledge for that, or poaching people from China Operation Paperclip style maybe.

It's why the Vogtle plant is on track to lead to the worst possible outcome: yes it was very expensive. So the best thing to do is to start building another one right away while all those lessons and skills are still current.

Or we could just use solar and batteries that can be installed by a combination of literally any basic carpenters, electricians, and truckers.

Re: A power shortage could short-circuit Nvidia's rise

#45

Post by downrightmike »

beeflet wrote: post #39
mullingitover wrote: post #35

One really interesting strategy the US could pursue here would be to heavily tariff solar[1] and just randomly attack wind projects[2]. Just completely self-own itself on the two cheapest energy sources. It wouldn't make any sense, but it would be provocative , really drive engagement. [1] https://seia.org/news/solar-tariff-impacts/ [2] https://www.npr.org/2025/08/31/nx-s1-5522943/trump-offshore-...

Maybe the tariff could encourage local manufacturing of solar? I have no idea, but I suppose that our local manufacturing could be getting killed by economies of scale abroad. Or I am overthinking it and solar is something that (D) politicians support so the (R) president tautologically must oppose it. Therefore we must not have nice things

We have tried locally, with huge government backing, but that failed. But since it was an Obama initiative, a new attempt will never be tried.

Farmers make more money from wind turbines on their land than their crop. https://ambrook.com/offrange/farm-finance/there-will-be-wind

And that is stable money, works without rain, which crops don't.

Re: A power shortage could short-circuit Nvidia's rise

#46

Post by bob1029 »

jedberg wrote: post #2

I worked for a company making GPU clouds. The biggest problem we had for deployments was not getting GPUs -- we had plenty of those sitting in warehouses. The biggest issue was finding data center space with sufficient power and cooling. There was plenty of square footage, just not enough power for it all. They're now building gigawatt datacenters to handle all the GPUs. The big question is were to build them. There…

I think Texas (ERCOT) is a terrible option these days. Meta recently made a fantastic choice by picking Louisiana for their new monster. The MISO grid tends to be cheaper and less volatile than ERCOT.

Re: A power shortage could short-circuit Nvidia's rise

#47

Post by XorNot »

blackoil wrote: post #24

Remove restrictions on solar import from China. 62 GW may sound a large number, but China added 277GW solar in just 2024. They have the surplus capacity and hence cheapest price.

This is honestly one of the stupidest things about this sort of policy: solar panels last 20 years and China can't take them away once you have them.

If you're doing something much more valuable with the power, then buying a lot of PV from China makes sense. If you think the panels are being unfairly subsidized then buying a lot of PV from China is effectively having the Chinese government pay you to have cheap power.

There's an enormous difference between being dependent on short term consumable resources,.and acquiring multidecadel productive assets.

The US at all points seems to not understand it's relationship with China at all.

Re: A power shortage could short-circuit Nvidia's rise

#49

Post by Panzer04 »

XorNot wrote: post #47
blackoil wrote: post #24

Remove restrictions on solar import from China. 62 GW may sound a large number, but China added 277GW solar in just 2024. They have the surplus capacity and hence cheapest price.

This is honestly one of the stupidest things about this sort of policy: solar panels last 20 years and China can't take them away once you have them. If you're doing something much more valuable with the power, then buying a lot of PV from China makes sense. If you think the panels are being unfairly subsidized then buying a lot of PV from China is effectively having the Chinese government pay you to have cheap power…

Most people are economically illiterate and don't understand what subsidies actually imply.

They literally only "hurt" you if you have the local industry to harm to begin with. Otherwise, if someone else is paying the subsidy, it gives you a good for cheaper than you could have had otherwise.

The current admin just turns this up to 11 with their ideologically driven nonsense.

Re: A power shortage could short-circuit Nvidia's rise

#50

Post by worik »

senectus1 wrote: post #18
joak wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear power plants take something like a decade to build (after permitting) It makes more sense to go for PV plus batteries that can be installed in a matter of weeks

South Korea built 13 nuclear reactors in recent decades, with an average construction period of 56 months... Apparently Japan is the fastest builder (46 months). the 10 year+ issue is a western problem.

That did not go well for the Japanese
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