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Hyperscalers have already outspent most famous US megaprojects

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Re: Hyperscalers have already outspent most famous US megaprojects

#171

Post by tester756 »

bigfatkitten wrote: post #142
jhide wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re unclassified public cloud GPUs today , much the same as the massive industrial base of the United States was churning out harmless consumer widgets in 1939. Those widget makers happened to be reconfigurable into weapon makers, and so wartime production exploded from 2% to 40% of GDP in 5 years [1]. But the total industrial output of course didn’t expand by nearly that much. I think it’s maybe plausible that p…

The United States has almost no domestic capability to produce advanced semiconductors. There is no abundance of industrial capacity cranking out GPUs that can be quickly diverted from AI companies into weapon systems. Even if private compute was at a level of maturity where you could use it for classified workloads, knowing that the infrastructure is being managed by someone in India or China, securely getting data…

wut? Intel with 18A can do it

Re: Hyperscalers have already outspent most famous US megaprojects

#172

Post by bigfatkitten »

tester756 wrote: post #171
bigfatkitten wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The United States has almost no domestic capability to produce advanced semiconductors. There is no abundance of industrial capacity cranking out GPUs that can be quickly diverted from AI companies into weapon systems. Even if private compute was at a level of maturity where you could use it for classified workloads, knowing that the infrastructure is being managed by someone in India or China, securely getting data…

wut? Intel with 18A can do it

Its low yields and tiny volumes are part of what gets the US from “no capacity” to “almost no capacity.”

Re: Hyperscalers have already outspent most famous US megaprojects

#173

Post by [deleted] »

lukeschlather wrote: post #98
therobots927 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your argument basically boils down to, the datacenter build out is not a waste of resources because if it was, these companies wouldn’t be building them. Got it.

I mean, your argument is that Google has had increasing revenue and profit for a decade, to the point that they have $400B in revenue + profit this year, and that they are going to lose money because they plan to spend $180B on capital projects for new data centers next year, because you know their business better than they do.

[deleted]

Re: Hyperscalers have already outspent most famous US megaprojects

#175

Post by cousin_it »

timmg wrote: post #3

This tweet shows it as a percentage of US GDP: https://x.com/paulg/status/2045120274551423142 Makes it a little less dramatic. But also shows what a big **'n deal the railroads were!

Wild graphic. US spending on one flying killing machine (the F-35) is comparable to total spending on the Marshall plan to reconstruct Europe after WWII, or the interstate highway system, or all datacenters combined. Priorities!

Re: Hyperscalers have already outspent most famous US megaprojects

#176

Post by 7952 »

jhide wrote: post #123
wr2 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also railways would always have alternative uses at that time - e.g. logistics in warfare. What other uses do GPU's have that are critical...? lol In addition to your points, this is why I always laugh when people do backward comparisons. What characteristics do they share in common? Very little.

On the topic of warfare, wars are fought differently now. Compute will be mentioned in the same breath as total manufacturing output if a global war between superpowers erupts. In highly competitive industries this is already the case. Compute will be part of industrial mobilization in the same way that physical manufacturing or transportation capacity were mobilized in WWII. I’m not an expert on military computing b…

Is that in terms of data centres or chips on the battlefield? Surely the latter is most important. Or will war alwys have perfect connectivity.

Re: Hyperscalers have already outspent most famous US megaprojects

#177

Post by therobots927 »

spprashant wrote: post #174

I think all misgivings about AI would go away fast, if it solved one important problem for humanity. Carbon nanotubes for space elevators, sustainable nuclear fusion, or something in that ilk.

Well it can build a killer front end and that’s great at impressing investors.

Re: Hyperscalers have already outspent most famous US megaprojects

#178

Post by therobots927 »

mattas wrote: post #39

Is this _actual_ spend? Like dollars actually changing hands? Or is this "we said we are going to invest $X"? What about the circular agreements?

A lot of this is committed capital and the datacenters haven’t even broken ground.

Re: Hyperscalers have already outspent most famous US megaprojects

#179

Post by therobots927 »

rangestransform wrote: post #77
measurablefunc wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't run a data center on solar or wind (even w/ batteries included). Everything they're building runs on gas & coal like what Musk got running for xAI.

That’s because Rs let NIMBYs and the fossil fuel lobby call the shots, and Ds let NIMBYs and degrowthers call the shots. I bet China isn’t powering their datacenters with gas turbines

They aren’t building out datacenters the way the US is. The arms race is a myth.
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