Earlier quoted context omitted.
Orbital datacenters sound like a dangerous bet. I couldn't think of a worse place for a lot of delecate electronics.
Boomers and luddites won't let them be built on earth so no other option really
Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers
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Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers
#262Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
Water in orbit: famously cheap.
Ah yes: computation. Famous for annihilating water. Every bit you flip consumes an H2O molecule.
Looking forward to watching spacex defeat physics.
Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would it ever be more economical to put datacenters in orbit, rather than on some dirt cheap land?
There are no NIMBYs in space. No government permitting on land use. And solar power is plentiful. It's like having a dollar store Dyson sphere. Making use of that is predicated entirely on being able to put a lot of hardware into space cheaply. SpaceX is the undisputed best at that, no one comes close. The question is whether their "best" is good enough to make space datacenters economical.
Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers
#265I’ll be switching off the Gemini model at work (Composer’s been off since their xAI deal). This is the final straw for me to move completely off Google services.
Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers
#266Google renting infra from xAI, I did not see that coming. My understanding of what computers are doing, what companies are doing and what governments are doing seems to be getting worse day by day.
> Google renting infra from xAI, I did not see that coming. Actually that seems to be fairly logical? Hardware is what xAI has , and it's in great demand. So sell what makes you money. The real story here is that that xAI hardware is going to be running Gemini and not Grok. Which is to say: Grok basically failed as a frontier AI and they need to pivot to a business model which makes money. Obviously not everything Mu…
Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
Grok has plenty of "non-woke AI" cred which will make it a preferred choice for lots of government-side and politically sensitive workloads.
What do you think the term woke actually means?
Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are paying for the existing earth-bound data centers SpaceXai owns.
Oh wow did not realize xai has data centers. So are they completely abandoning xai or do they just have that much capacity left over?
There are other companies besides Google and Anthropic that are considering renting capacity in xaispacex's datacenters.
Global capacity for GPU hosting is tight at the moment. That TN DC is the only one not totally 110 percent already allocated for five years in the world .
Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
The earthbound equivalent would be strapping each chassis to the back of a dedicated solar panel and having the panel double as a giant heat sink. The problem is that doesn't work on the surface due to (at least) rain, the day/night cycle, and the cost of real estate.
Isn't a solar panel going to be a poor heatsink, though? It's flat, and thus has relatively small surface area compared to its size.
But it doesn't matter since in this scenario each chassis is powered exclusively by the respective panel. How hot does a black panel sitting in the midday sun get? That's your equilibrium temperature. As long as it's within the operational limit of the device there's no problem.
The reason earthbound DCs are difficult to cool is because of density. When you match up panels to devices and shelter in their shadow you no longer have anywhere near the same power density.
Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers
#270Wait, are these the same GPUs that were diverted from Tesla into xAI a couple of years ago?