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

Destroying a Community with a Gigantic "Clogged Vacuum Cleaner"

gizmodo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 72 posts

Re: Destroying a Community with a Gigantic "Clogged Vacuum Cleaner"

#51

Post by m4rtink »

ckozlowski wrote: post #10
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #7

Can someone explain why the new crop of datacenters are considered to be noisy?. I've been around the Wall Street datacenters in Jersey and they are basically the same as nondescript office buildings surrounded by a fence. The ones running on generators 24/7 are a problem but what is making the rest such an issue?

I wrote this in another reply here, but from this article and others I've read on Space X's/Tesla's datacenters, it's the use of turbine generators that cause that enormous whine sound. (Note how similar it is to a jet engine.) I live in Ashburn, where we have datacenters all over the place. But none of them sound like this. At worst, we get a dull hum, much lower in volume, if the air handlers are working especially…

These simple natural gas turbine generators are also massively inefficient - the same natural gas used in a combined cycle district heating plant would have its energy used much more efficiently, but here instead most of it ends up as waste heat, for the same amount of CO2 generated.

Not to mention the same natural gas could be used for chemical processes, like fertilizer production. You know, helping make the stuff we eat to survive.

Last I checked, you can't eat AI.

Re: Destroying a Community with a Gigantic "Clogged Vacuum Cleaner"

#52

Post by illliillll »

m4rtink wrote: post #51
ckozlowski wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote this in another reply here, but from this article and others I've read on Space X's/Tesla's datacenters, it's the use of turbine generators that cause that enormous whine sound. (Note how similar it is to a jet engine.) I live in Ashburn, where we have datacenters all over the place. But none of them sound like this. At worst, we get a dull hum, much lower in volume, if the air handlers are working especially…

These simple natural gas turbine generators are also massively inefficient - the same natural gas used in a combined cycle district heating plant would have its energy used much more efficiently, but here instead most of it ends up as waste heat, for the same amount of CO2 generated. Not to mention the same natural gas could be used for chemical processes, like fertilizer production. You know, helping make the stuff…

[flagged]

Re: Destroying a Community with a Gigantic "Clogged Vacuum Cleaner"

#53

Post by bob1029 »

The most annoying part of this for me is that acoustic treatment is usually unbelievably effective if you make even the slightest attempt at applying it. A box lined with mineral wool is not exactly an expensive or complicated engineering solution.

I see this kind of ignorance everywhere. Rooms where people suffer all day every day that could be made 10x more comfortable with $50 of treatment and literally 30 minutes of labor. Same thinking applies to these hyperscalars. There are some frequency ranges that are more difficult to control (infrasonic), but those are not typically found in a datacenter site.

Re: Destroying a Community with a Gigantic "Clogged Vacuum Cleaner"

#55

Post by K0balt »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #32
ckozlowski wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote this in another reply here, but from this article and others I've read on Space X's/Tesla's datacenters, it's the use of turbine generators that cause that enormous whine sound. (Note how similar it is to a jet engine.) I live in Ashburn, where we have datacenters all over the place. But none of them sound like this. At worst, we get a dull hum, much lower in volume, if the air handlers are working especially…

There are no turbine generators at the DC in the video and that's not what gas turbine power plants sound like. they're much higher pitched. But yeah, the ones with the turbine generators are even louder and more shrill. The xAI DC in Memphis last year had thirty five portable gas turbine generators.

That’s 35 jet engines operating at high power coming to a neighborhood near you. Sounds like fun.

Re: Destroying a Community with a Gigantic "Clogged Vacuum Cleaner"

#56

Post by K0balt »

margalabargala wrote: post #49
guessmyname wrote: post #3

Make John Stewart, Chief Marketing Officer of Hyperscale Data, live in one of those houses for a month. See how he likes the sound.

To be fair a large amount of the fault here lies with the city, who permitted a data center to be built in a residential neighborhood. There are plenty of dirty, noisy, disruptive industrial buildings out there. Smelters, quarries, incinerators, etc. Fine to build them. Don't build them next to houses, build them next to each other.

What it really comes down to is a political and legal environment that allows or even encourages grift at an industrial scale and has largely erased public accountability by turning everything into a divided political issue (and proletariat politics into a sort of “sports team” identity)

It’s genius in a malevolent way, and absolutely nullifies the democratic process in favor of corporate oligarchy.

Re: Destroying a Community with a Gigantic "Clogged Vacuum Cleaner"

#57

Post by K0balt »

bob1029 wrote: post #53

The most annoying part of this for me is that acoustic treatment is usually unbelievably effective if you make even the slightest attempt at applying it. A box lined with mineral wool is not exactly an expensive or complicated engineering solution. I see this kind of ignorance everywhere. Rooms where people suffer all day every day that could be made 10x more comfortable with $50 of treatment and literally 30 minutes…

The salvaged aviation turbines are the majority of the issue. Non turbine-powered data centers mostly are reasonably quiet.

Re: Destroying a Community with a Gigantic "Clogged Vacuum Cleaner"

#58

Post by K0balt »

SoftTalker wrote: post #25

Also depends on what you were used to before. I live in a rural area and it can be annoying when a neighbor half a mile away is running a lawn mower. In a downtown urban center there is so much noise from traffic, emergency vehicles, construction, and equipment of various types that a new data center would probably just blend in unnoticed.

The problem is the salvaged aviation turbines. Airplanes are prevented from operating at high power levels above cities. These engines-from-old-airplanes are likely being operated in their high efficiency range, around 80 percent, so they are loud. Living next to a runway loud.

Re: Destroying a Community with a Gigantic "Clogged Vacuum Cleaner"

#59

Post by K0balt »

protocolture wrote: post #20
metalman wrote: post #14

what I want to know is why the fuck dont they put these data monstrocities in any number of thousands of empty giant office towers littering city centers everywhere, catch all the heat and sell it to the few buildings with actual tenants, and as soon as the much less flamable sodium batteries come on at scale stack the rest of the empty buildings with those,and then run the whole mess from cheap solar

>why the fuck dont they put these data monstrocities in any number of thousands of empty giant office towers littering city centers everywhere Big problem is providing enough electricity to an office tower. A local company built a test T3 datacenter in an office building. Heaps of floorspace. But they cant get enough juice in, they started selling racks with less and less guaranteed supply. IIRC the site is basically…

Room temperature superconducting cables will be really nice, one day.

Re: Destroying a Community with a Gigantic "Clogged Vacuum Cleaner"

#60

Post by euroderf »

K0balt wrote: post #55
KennyBlanken wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no turbine generators at the DC in the video and that's not what gas turbine power plants sound like. they're much higher pitched. But yeah, the ones with the turbine generators are even louder and more shrill. The xAI DC in Memphis last year had thirty five portable gas turbine generators.

That’s 35 jet engines operating at high power coming to a neighborhood near you. Sounds like fun.

35 consumer drones delivering 35 chunks of metal.
Post reply on HN