Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Oracle could face $7B collateral bill for Wisconsin data centre

ft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–116 of 116 posts

Re: Oracle could face $7B collateral bill for Wisconsin data centre

#111

Post by treis »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #102
wmf wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UPSes are designed to run for minutes not hours. I guess enough Megapacks to run overnight would be more expensive than gas generators.

If grid storage batteries are economical in the general case then why wouldn't they be doubly so in a place where the inverters are a sunk cost and you're saving the transmission costs because the load is at the same site as the batteries? The competition isn't the cost of generators, it's the cost of grid power, or the cost of operating gas generators every day.

They aren't economical in the general sense. They are economical to provide frequency stabilization, grid efficiency, and maybe a few hours of demand shifting. They're not yet economical to store solar power during the day and discharge it at night. We are getting closer but I don't think we are quite yet there.

Re: Oracle could face $7B collateral bill for Wisconsin data centre

#112

Post by AnthonyMouse »

treis wrote: post #111
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If grid storage batteries are economical in the general case then why wouldn't they be doubly so in a place where the inverters are a sunk cost and you're saving the transmission costs because the load is at the same site as the batteries? The competition isn't the cost of generators, it's the cost of grid power, or the cost of operating gas generators every day.

They aren't economical in the general sense. They are economical to provide frequency stabilization, grid efficiency, and maybe a few hours of demand shifting. They're not yet economical to store solar power during the day and discharge it at night. We are getting closer but I don't think we are quite yet there.

As far as I can work out, the cost is competitive as long as you're using the capacity every day, especially when it lets you avoid paying transmission costs. The thing that doesn't work is to have enough battery storage to handle extended periods of low generation, because for that you need dramatically more storage capacity while only using the surplus on rare occasions. But a data center could use the grid or backup generators on those rare occasions while still using batteries overnight every night.

Re: Oracle could face $7B collateral bill for Wisconsin data centre

#113

Post by pseudohadamard »

rwmj wrote: post #95
27183 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my limited second-hand understanding of orcl, a team that operates in a smooth and well greased manner is quite the anomaly. I could see why the company would have an immune response to it.

I have to imagine that their legal team is a smooth, well oiled machine. The technical side on the other hand ...

Minor nit, the lubricant there isn't mineral oil but blood.

Re: Oracle could face $7B collateral bill for Wisconsin data centre

#114

Post by mike_hearn »

rented_mule wrote: post #103
mike_hearn wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole thing does assume Starship works, so at that point satellites could be launched much faster. I assume Starmind would use Tesla designed chips, which removes Nvidia's margin and so the cost of the chips is not necessarily so high. Rad hardening isn't important at low altitudes, and inferencing can smoothly recover from glitched calculations/lockups. I don't know if it makes economic sense or ever will, but t…

In terms of what we decide to build, impossible vs. impractical is not a particularly interesting distinction (that distinction can give rise to fun science fiction). Practicality is at the core of good engineering, and possibility is just the first of many steps in evaluating practicality. If we're going with a distributed approach, there are other ideas that are more practical. For example, send 1 KW boxes to a mil…

I've thought of that but it wouldn't be easier.

1. Running modern models requires a whole rack of extremely loud equipment that can easily consume 130kw. That's not a load you can or should run at home.

2. It would require a very strong end-to-end implementation of confidential computing to keep the prompts encrypted. If there is any flaw in that infrastructure at all, like someone discovers a way to physically tamper with the hardware to read the GPU memory, then the entire network is a writeoff and would have to be replaced. That's a massive risk. Confidential computing can work in cases where hardware replacements aren't an issue or where the vendor has a long history of successfully defending the platform. But Nvidia is the only GPU vendor with these capabilities and their CC is untrusted.

Putting the workloads in space means noise and data privacy aren't an issue, assuming you trust SpaceX to not peek at your prompts on their way to the cluster.

Re: Oracle could face $7B collateral bill for Wisconsin data centre

#115

Post by henry2023 »

ai-x wrote: post #106
ZoneZealot wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean if we're replying with videos at this point, here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qpdUNMt2yg

One is actually building while the other is making Youtube videos. Also the video literally answers the economic question. I'm happy with my bet

As a friendly advice, try critical thinking for a while. It will help you avoid scams in your real life.

Some people have incentives to lie and it’s important to be able to think for oneself and distinguish among them.

Re: Oracle could face $7B collateral bill for Wisconsin data centre

#116

Post by mike_hearn »

mike_hearn wrote: post #114
rented_mule wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of what we decide to build, impossible vs. impractical is not a particularly interesting distinction (that distinction can give rise to fun science fiction). Practicality is at the core of good engineering, and possibility is just the first of many steps in evaluating practicality. If we're going with a distributed approach, there are other ideas that are more practical. For example, send 1 KW boxes to a mil…

I've thought of that but it wouldn't be easier. 1. Running modern models requires a whole rack of extremely loud equipment that can easily consume 130kw. That's not a load you can or should run at home. 2. It would require a very strong end-to-end implementation of confidential computing to keep the prompts encrypted. If there is any flaw in that infrastructure at all, like someone discovers a way to physically tampe…

Sorry, by "their CC is untrusted" I meant it's not clear how much it's been attacked in the wild, not that there's consensus it's bad or anything.
Post reply on HN