Direct Current Data Centers • Hacker News Board

Re: Direct Current Data Centers

#21

Post by leetrout » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 12:08 PM UTC

cinntaile wrote: post #14

bob1029 wrote: post #6

From a purely engineering perspective I think it becomes difficult to argue with the gas turbine once you get into the gigawatt class of data center. The amount of land required for this much solar is not to be understated. In many practical scenarios the solar array would need to be located a distance away from the actual data center. This implies transmission infrastructure which is often the hardest part of any el…

If you have predictable demand at that scale, nuclear might make more sense than the combination of gas and solar.

I am hoping nuclear batteries make a comeback by the desire for all this compute and its voracious appetite for energy.

Re: Direct Current Data Centers

#22

Post by preisschild » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 12:23 PM UTC

Galanwe wrote: post #13

Havoc wrote: post #2

Slightly OT, but I see the Chinese are talking about space DCs now too which would suggest they reckon it could work too. (Unlike me and others here)

Not a physician, but wouldn't space be terrible for heat dissipation?

Yes, you would need massive amounts of radiators

Re: Direct Current Data Centers

#23

Post by alansaber » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 12:27 PM UTC

leetrout wrote: post #21

cinntaile wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have predictable demand at that scale, nuclear might make more sense than the combination of gas and solar.

I am hoping nuclear batteries make a comeback by the desire for all this compute and its voracious appetite for energy.

We have rolls royce small modular reactors (SMRs) driving a similar functionality in the UK

Re: Direct Current Data Centers

#24

Post by alansaber » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 12:28 PM UTC

stingraycharles wrote: post #7

hambes wrote: post #5

it is difficult to comprehend for me that soneone spends all this time thinking through and calculating how to harness as much energy as possible and then wants to use it for large language models instead of something useful, like food production, communication, transport or any other way of satisfying actual human material needs. what weird priorities.

Sometimes (often) solving the problem is the most fun part, regardless of how it’s used. The scale of AI energy consumption is quite unique from what I heard, and there’s a lot of money flowing into that direction. So that seems to me a decent reason to think about that. I haven’t heard yet that food production is constrained by these kind of things. It appears to make that you’re just taking a cheap jab at AI.

Exactly this, you need a (big) problem to motivate people to actually take a serious jab at a (big) new idea

Re: Direct Current Data Centers

#25

Post by alansaber » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 12:29 PM UTC

Havoc wrote: post #2

Slightly OT, but I see the Chinese are talking about space DCs now too which would suggest they reckon it could work too. (Unlike me and others here)

I think it's more of a classic mirror move where IF they do work, they're at danger of falling behind.

Re: Direct Current Data Centers

#26

Post by alansaber » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 12:30 PM UTC

hhh wrote: post #4

Havoc wrote: post #2

Slightly OT, but I see the Chinese are talking about space DCs now too which would suggest they reckon it could work too. (Unlike me and others here)

datacenters in space are a great way to claim vast amount of viable orbit space for a stupid project to eventually sell the slot for something else when it’s rarer.

This is basically the same argument made by people in domain-specific language models but rather than physical space (in space) it's mind-share, so actually your argument makes more sense? lol.

Re: Direct Current Data Centers

#27

Post by alansaber » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 12:30 PM UTC

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #3

Why are we wasting resources on toy chatbots?

Because fusion energy isn't cool anymore.

Re: Direct Current Data Centers

#28

Post by stogot » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 1:09 PM UTC

hjoutfbkfd wrote: post #16

sethops1 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simply because latency is a competitive advantage, one worth paying for. At the speed of light, making a trip out to the desert and back is too slow.

20 ms extra, for models which respond in 5 minutes

Right It is a use case where humans are not latency sensitive

Re: Direct Current Data Centers

#29

Post by sandworm101 » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 1:12 PM UTC

hambes wrote: post #5

it is difficult to comprehend for me that soneone spends all this time thinking through and calculating how to harness as much energy as possible and then wants to use it for large language models instead of something useful, like food production, communication, transport or any other way of satisfying actual human material needs. what weird priorities.

Tell that to the 1000-watt space heater in the corner that i tasked with upscaling some old home movies! Four GPUs worked very hard all night to get footage of my first dog up to 1080p. My living room is a little warm this morning.

Re: Direct Current Data Centers

#30

Post by bgnn » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 1:19 PM UTC

phtrivier wrote: post #18

I'm curious about Handmeier's opinion on location of data centers. Should they be close to the solar arrays (that is, in the desert, with data networks connecting them to were the tokens are used) Or close to their customers (which mean far from the solar arrays, with electricity networks) He's talking a lot about removing movable parts, but aren't the wires going to be an limiting factor ?

Fiber is much much less of a cost and technical challenge compared to transfering GWs of power. Unless the customer cannot handle up to 100ms latency, it's totally logical to place the data centers close to the power source, or vice versa (power source close to the data center).