91–100 of 346 posts
This datacenter stuff is such populist brainrot.
Big Tech isn't exactly doing a great job of marketing them. Saying they're for AI while doing mass layoffs attributed to AI isn't a winning message.
But at the macro level, it is not really a big number so far. From ~2.48 million in 2023 to ~2.37million now. Or a 5% drop in employment in 3 years.
Fred: All Employees, Computer Systems Design and Related Services (CES6054150001)
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Different I/O, power and cooling requirements for majority GPU workloads?
GPUs have been in high demand since cryptocurrency became a thing? Are you saying that something built for AI can't be used for other workloads?
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* if that's a sarcastic / troll comment, congratulations, you got me but good :-) * if it's serious, what in the world do you eat, to compare farming, with AI datacentres, on equal / comparable footing in terms of necessity and efficiencies -- or call farming a "heritage business"? :->
I purchase surplus xeons on ebay, grind them into powder, and mix them into my milkshakes. If you aren't going that route then the real question here is what you're supplementing with to get the necessary computational boost. I'm aware of the complaints that surplus gear has a lower overall nutritional value but you'll see that it's highly cost effective if you can just be bothered to do the math. Failing to invest i…
The Erin Brockovich page itself repeats the canard, on the front page, that these sites endanger ecosystems with their water consumption.
I do think the tech industry would be wise to do more outreach and less sneering, though. Freakouts about AI (which ultimately is what this is) aren't "rational" but they're eminently "reasonable". This isn't like electrification or aviation or the internet or whatnot (technologies that had clear, tangible benefits that everyone could see and understand), there is real discussion happening, by real experts, about essentially all non-physical labor being replaced!
And... what do regular folks get from that? Talking to robots doesn't look like a quality of life improvement!
Basically we in the upper stands here are having a "Let Them Eat Cake" moment, and we should stop. Things are getting ugly.
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> I wonder if they think data centers didn't exist before 2025
They of course call them “hyperscalers” because they’re the same size as all the other things. /s
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Replacing good jobs with subscriptions that funnel money to the oligarchs
Yeah, only think about your job that’s gonna go away anyways. Zero global perspective or long-term thinking.
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Different I/O, power and cooling requirements for majority GPU workloads?
GPUs have been in high demand since cryptocurrency became a thing? Are you saying that something built for AI can't be used for other workloads?
What makes a data center an 'AI data center' vs other kinds? I am sure that certain workloads are better suited for a particular server rack vs another; but can't a data center built for other computing needs also do AI and vice-versa?
One side effect of higher density is less footprint on the building to exhaust the heat, which is one reason (the main one being efficiency) that cooling towers and indirect evaporative cooling are favoured over air cooled condensers which leads to large amounts of water consumption.
Cooling towers are also much quieter than air cooled condensers which is a significant factor near any residential areas. It would be great to see more use of data center waste heat for process or district heating to save on water consumption.
Another issue with AI training in particular is huge (multi-MW) swings in power consumption at the start and end of each training run which must be a nightmare for the sparkies.
Why go through the effort when such work has already been done? https://www.datacentermap.com/datacenters/ Not being negative. But isn’t there existing highly reliable data that already exists for this?