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Google tells employees it must double capacity every 6 months to meet AI demand

arstechnica.com

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Re: Google tells employees it must double capacity every 6 months to meet AI demand

#21

Post by RevEng »

These growth requirements are simply infeasible.

Semiconductor density, speed, and power efficiency grow much slower than doubling every six months. Creating custom silicon for this won't help - plenty of companies, including Nvidia, are already optimizing their hardware for these tasks and they are very good at it. Production capacity can't scale nearly that fast for myriad reasons, including access to materials, production capacity of inputs, the time and complexity of building new production facilities, the lack of experts available for all of this, and the long time frames for training new people.

This to me is the biggest sign that this is a bubble. Even if demand shrinks, it could still be huge. Even if many use cases are impractical, we will still find some where it's valuable. But the market is basing its valuations on forecasts of tremendous growth that simply can't be supported physically.

Re: Google tells employees it must double capacity every 6 months to meet AI demand

#23

Post by izacus »

austin-cheney wrote: post #3

What happens when this bubble pops? I am trying to avoid any time or financial investment in AI as I look around the corner. I am also looking back at the last big bubble. I got my first house for $129k at 2800sqft when the housing bubble popped. There were just so many empty houses available. So now I am wondering what will be available once the AI investment implodes. I am thinking about computer hardware, availabl…

What happens? Said executive leaves for "a more exciting project" at another company after prudently cashing in on his stocks before the pop.

Re: Google tells employees it must double capacity every 6 months to meet AI demand

#24

Post by nightshift1 »

quickthrowman wrote: post #12
austin-cheney wrote: post #3

What happens when this bubble pops? I am trying to avoid any time or financial investment in AI as I look around the corner. I am also looking back at the last big bubble. I got my first house for $129k at 2800sqft when the housing bubble popped. There were just so many empty houses available. So now I am wondering what will be available once the AI investment implodes. I am thinking about computer hardware, availabl…

If it collapses, lenders will own (in general) giant tip-up buildings with two separate substations tied to two different utility circuits, a shitload of generators and UPSes, a shitload of chillers and cooling towers, and miles of cable tray. Plus whatever computing hardware is inside. I assume the excess electrical and HVAC gear would be stripped out and sold before converting the tip-up building into another yet a…

With a quick search, it looks like some ai datacenters are not designed/built with hyperscaler grade reliability in mind so the would have to be upgraded for that purpose.

https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2025/11/12/infinite-scale-t...

We are pushing the envelope in serving this compute with cost-efficient, reliable power. The Atlanta site was selected with resilient utility power in mind and is capable of achieving 4×9 availability at 3×9 cost. By securing highly available grid power, we can also forgo traditional resiliency approaches for the GPU fleet (such as on-site generation, UPS systems and dual-corded distribution), driving cost savings for customers and faster time-to-market for Microsoft.

Re: Google tells employees it must double capacity every 6 months to meet AI demand

#25

Post by babelfish »

kylecazar wrote: post #16
Tenoke wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it internal or speculative? Chatgpt is the 5th most poplar website. Gemini is 30th but they have increasing demand and a ton of it isn't on the gemini main site. And that isn't their only external demand of coruse.

I think they are referring to the fact that Google has shimmied AI into every one of their products, thus demand surge is the byproduct of decisions made internally. They are themselves electing to send billions of calls daily to their models. As opposed to external demand, where vastly more compute is needed just to keep up with users torching through Gemini tokens. Here is the relevant part of the article: "It’s un…

ChatGPT being the #5 website in the world is still indicative of consumer demand, as their only product is AI. Without commenting on the Google shims specifically, AI infrastructure buildouts are not speculative.

Re: Google tells employees it must double capacity every 6 months to meet AI demand

#27

Post by ThrowawayTestr »

babelfish wrote: post #25
kylecazar wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they are referring to the fact that Google has shimmied AI into every one of their products, thus demand surge is the byproduct of decisions made internally. They are themselves electing to send billions of calls daily to their models. As opposed to external demand, where vastly more compute is needed just to keep up with users torching through Gemini tokens. Here is the relevant part of the article: "It’s un…

ChatGPT being the #5 website in the world is still indicative of consumer demand, as their only product is AI. Without commenting on the Google shims specifically, AI infrastructure buildouts are not speculative.

Google isn't chatgpt. Normal people have no idea what Gemini is and are annoyed by the crappy AI summaries in their Google searches.

Re: Google tells employees it must double capacity every 6 months to meet AI demand

#29

Post by diamond559 »

babelfish wrote: post #25
kylecazar wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they are referring to the fact that Google has shimmied AI into every one of their products, thus demand surge is the byproduct of decisions made internally. They are themselves electing to send billions of calls daily to their models. As opposed to external demand, where vastly more compute is needed just to keep up with users torching through Gemini tokens. Here is the relevant part of the article: "It’s un…

ChatGPT being the #5 website in the world is still indicative of consumer demand, as their only product is AI. Without commenting on the Google shims specifically, AI infrastructure buildouts are not speculative.

It's indicative of the demand when it's free yeah, try charging every user just to operate at cost and we'll see what the real demand is.

Re: Google tells employees it must double capacity every 6 months to meet AI demand

#30

Post by halJordan »

kylecazar wrote: post #16
Tenoke wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it internal or speculative? Chatgpt is the 5th most poplar website. Gemini is 30th but they have increasing demand and a ton of it isn't on the gemini main site. And that isn't their only external demand of coruse.

I think they are referring to the fact that Google has shimmied AI into every one of their products, thus demand surge is the byproduct of decisions made internally. They are themselves electing to send billions of calls daily to their models. As opposed to external demand, where vastly more compute is needed just to keep up with users torching through Gemini tokens. Here is the relevant part of the article: "It’s un…

What you're quoting is Ars' pandering and need to placate its peanut gallery. The clique of tech bros hating ai is the exception not the norm.
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