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Anthropic is expanding to Colossus2. Will use GB200

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Re: Anthropic is expanding to Colossus2. Will use GB200

#291

Post by ashley95 »

wongarsu wrote: post #282
utopiah wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> space compute Heard anybody remotely competent about space talk the topic? It's pretty much a literal laugh every time.

Some of the proposals are laughable, some of the example calculations are. The idea of running AI training sounds extremely challenging. But the idea of inference in space doesn't seem absurd The power budget of a starlink v2 mini satellite is estimated at around 20kW based on the known solar panel size. That also matches what a satellite of that size would roughly dissipate without dedicated radiators, using just so…

How is this not absurd? What is the benefit? Space is a harsh environment, with issues due to solar radiation etc, etc. And it's permanently 100ms away from any user.

Re: Anthropic is expanding to Colossus2. Will use GB200

#292

Post by jasondigitized »

petesergeant wrote: post #174
tristanj wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's very doubtful given recent news that Colossus is running at 11% capacity and has hundreds of thousands of idle GPUs. xAI acquired too many GPUs and currently doesn't have enough customers to use them. That's why they are making compute deals with Anthropic and Cursor. xAI is bleeding money and this compute deal with Anthropic will pay for all of xAI's capex ($25 billion) in 2 years.

> will pay for all of xAI's capex ($25 billion) in 2 years This is a confusing framing; you pay down capex with profit not revenue, and there is presumably a high opex cost.

free cash flow pays down capex

Re: Anthropic is expanding to Colossus2. Will use GB200

#293

Post by selectodude »

altcognito wrote: post #284
sebmellen wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with you on the merit of the idea, rockets that can take off and then land vertically without damage were also laughable pre-SpaceX.

NASA had literally done it. It was never laughable, just thought to be an incredibly difficult engineering challenge. I think compute in space suffers less from being "impossible" and more from being "impractical". It is plenty easy to put compute in space. It is just still silly expensive and by the time your equipment makes up the cost of putting it in space, it will be well out of date.

The non-deterministic nature of LLMs will get a whole lot more fun when we add randomly flipping bits to the situation.

Re: Anthropic is expanding to Colossus2. Will use GB200

#294

Post by sulam »

wongarsu wrote: post #282
utopiah wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> space compute Heard anybody remotely competent about space talk the topic? It's pretty much a literal laugh every time.

Some of the proposals are laughable, some of the example calculations are. The idea of running AI training sounds extremely challenging. But the idea of inference in space doesn't seem absurd The power budget of a starlink v2 mini satellite is estimated at around 20kW based on the known solar panel size. That also matches what a satellite of that size would roughly dissipate without dedicated radiators, using just so…

Tl;dr — but it’s too heavy

You’re making some decent points here, but you’re either forgetting or ignoring the major thing that people usually neglect to mention when they want to make a case for this (crazy) idea — weight. Unless SpaceX is going to completely redesign hardware such that it is optimized entirely for its mass, it requires many (many) launches to even get a small set of racks into space. I don’t normally get up in arms about the CO2 emissions of data centers, I think there is offsetting value created by their use, but I would absolutely protest trying to put data centers in space and do my best to shut down the hundreds, if not thousands of launches it would take to achieve even a tiny fraction of an AI data center.

Re: Anthropic is expanding to Colossus2. Will use GB200

#295

Post by jtr1 »

_heimdall wrote: post #201
Kelteseth wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So for a guy that literally has a company that produces batteries and solar panels, choose to use gas turbines. So much for saving the planet.

Solar and batteries are a bad choice for a constant 24/7 load. That's the exact reason we will never go fully solar (or wind) unless an insanely impressive battery breakthrough makes storage effectively free while using only common, renewable components rather than rare earths. Solar, wind, etc are excellent parts of an energy system, but its nearly impossible to cover base load at scale with generation that may only…

You may want to update your priors [1][2][3]

1. https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-how-solar-panels-and-...

2. https://www.fastcompany.com/91500104/google-minnesota-data-c...

3. https://www.rootsanalysis.com/sodium-ion-battery-market

Re: Anthropic is expanding to Colossus2. Will use GB200

#296

Post by tootie »

gaze wrote: post #18

I think that's the datacenter with the gas turbine generators that operate without permits because they're "portable." Data centers have tremendous externalities but colossus is a particularly nasty offender, and not just due its size. Edit: They did it with Colossus and now they're doing the exact same thing with Colossus2. https://www.selc.org/news/xai-built-an-illegal-power-plant-t...

And Anthropic can pay money to Musk to absorb all that liability while they keep training models.

Re: Anthropic is expanding to Colossus2. Will use GB200

#297

Post by beAbU »

wongarsu wrote: post #282
utopiah wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> space compute Heard anybody remotely competent about space talk the topic? It's pretty much a literal laugh every time.

Some of the proposals are laughable, some of the example calculations are. The idea of running AI training sounds extremely challenging. But the idea of inference in space doesn't seem absurd The power budget of a starlink v2 mini satellite is estimated at around 20kW based on the known solar panel size. That also matches what a satellite of that size would roughly dissipate without dedicated radiators, using just so…

The starlink satellites have hall effect thrusters, and presumably beefy laser and radio comms systems that will account for a lot of the energy budget. Also, they are sometimes in the earth's shadow, a naive calculation says they have 2x the solar budget they need, in order to charge up batteries for shade-time operations. There is no where near 20kw of compute in a single satellite, and thus no where near 20kw of heat to get rid of.

Furthermore, xAI's colossus supercomputer is specced at 250MW. And this seems to be a number that'll just increase over the coming years with new bigger DCs.

To match this level of performance they will have to launch what, ~15k satellites _per_ equivalent datacentre?

Regarding cooling: you can't just cover the outer surface with pipes. You cant't dissipate the heat, you need to _radiate_ it away. You need to point that surface to the deep dark cold of space. If you point it to the sun, you will heat your satellite. Think a massive "reverse solar panel" that works with infrared. You need surface area, and loads of it.

I'm not saying this is impossible. Obviously elon will prove us all wrong because he's stubborn like that. But there is no way this will ever be economically viable when competing with terrestrial based systems.

Re: Anthropic is expanding to Colossus2. Will use GB200

#298

Post by jpadkins »

sulam wrote: post #294
wongarsu wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the proposals are laughable, some of the example calculations are. The idea of running AI training sounds extremely challenging. But the idea of inference in space doesn't seem absurd The power budget of a starlink v2 mini satellite is estimated at around 20kW based on the known solar panel size. That also matches what a satellite of that size would roughly dissipate without dedicated radiators, using just so…

Tl;dr — but it’s too heavy You’re making some decent points here, but you’re either forgetting or ignoring the major thing that people usually neglect to mention when they want to make a case for this (crazy) idea — weight. Unless SpaceX is going to completely redesign hardware such that it is optimized entirely for its mass, it requires many ( many ) launches to even get a small set of racks into space. I don’t norm…

Have you calculated the CO2 output of Terran datacenters run on natural gas vs. space datacenters run on solar? The launch CO2 usage is one time, the datacenter energy is for the life of the equipment.

Re: Anthropic is expanding to Colossus2. Will use GB200

#299

Post by _heimdall »

_heimdall wrote: post #205
HDThoreaun wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont know, Id say the enraging thing is that the government is so incompetent and unable to expand electricity supply that datacenters are forced into using loopholes to get power the only way they can.

That isn't a problem of inept government, its a problem of over regulation and what amount to state-sponsored monopolies in many areas. We don't need the government to fix it by expanding power grids from the top down, we need free markets allowing competition.

I'd be curious to hear from the silent down votes. Do you disagree that power companies are effectively regional monopolies? Or do you disagree that government oversight and regulation isn't the reason for poor maintenance and lack of capacity?
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