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Stargate Norway

openai.com

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Re: Stargate Norway

#71

Post by saubeidl »

0points wrote: post #62
saubeidl wrote: post #49

Have we as a species considered that the very last thing we need given our climate crisis and already near-apocalyptic state (fires, floods, storms - it's biblical!), is some risky tech bro vanity project gamble eating up the rest of our resources and accelerating the death of our species? That maybe the attempt of capital to finally replace pesky labor with cheap machines isn't worth risking it all? No? Guess it's t…

> That maybe the attempt of capital to finally replace pesky labor with cheap machines isn't worth risking it all? Who's gonna purchase the goods if noone gets a salary? That will work out like the french revolution.

You don't need to tell me, I agree, though I think the Bolshevik revolution is a more likely model.

Capital was never known for its foresight. The planning horizon is quarterly results

Re: Stargate Norway

#72

Post by martin_a »

perlgeek wrote: post #70

"Stargate" in the name really sounds like OpenAI has lost touch with reality. (Didn't they at some point also say they wanted to build their own semiconductor fabs? That went in the same direction).

I think they wanted others to build semiconductor labs for them for free, because... I don't know, "we're OpenAI" or so...

Re: Stargate Norway

#73

Post by netsharc »

aussieguy1234 wrote: post #55
londons_explore wrote: post #41

In the past few decades, data centers have been placed with latency in mind - ie. Typically you don't want to be more than 1000 miles from users. However, in the world of AI, latency is already 1 second plus, so the economics change - you do better to build where there is cheap electricity and free cooling. I forsee Iceland as a good place to invest.

Iceland is a small country, so it'll depend on what power infrastructure is already there, too much power consumption will overload the grid - unless they build new power plants and other infra.

Historically they had so much "cheap" energy that they built aluminium smelting plants.

Re: Stargate Norway

#74

Post by marcyb5st »

littlestymaar wrote: post #68
marcyb5st wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it pops, I think the cat is already out of the bag. About LLMs: Maybe there won't be much training going around as model we might starting to hit diminishing returns with the current model architectures/approaches, but I believe inference is here to stay. Scaffolding code, trivial functions, ... are things that LLMs excel at doing and once you get used to offload those to the LLM it is really hard to get back…

> scaffolding code, trivial functions, ... are things that LLMs excel at doing and once you get used to offload those to the LLM it is really hard to get back to doing it manually. True, but local models cover that use-case very well already and consume little power doing so.

That is a fair point. Honestly, for programmers/technical people I believe you are right and it is trivial already to get started. However for non technical people I believe it is just easier to open claude/gemini/openai web interfaces and chat away. Especially if they have already great integrations (say Google Drive) out of the box.

Re: Stargate Norway

#75

Post by pu_pe »

> The facility will target to deliver 100,000 NVIDIA GPUs by the end of 2026, with the intention to expand significantly in the years ahead.

This is massive. As a point of comparison: Denmark just unveiled a new supercomputer recently which has only ~1,500 GPUs [1]

[1] https://novonordiskfonden.dk/en/news/denmarks-first-ai-super...

Re: Stargate Norway

#76

Post by TeMPOraL »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #63
TeMPOraL wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. I guess I'm old now, but my first thought was obviously the interstellar transportation device with a big honkin' rotary dial to select your destination. ᐰ

A serpent guard, a Horus guard and a Setesh guard meet on a neutral planet. It is a tense moment. The serpent guard's eyes glow. The Horus guard's beak glistens. The Setesh guard's nose drips.

I miss those Jaffa jokes.

Re: Stargate Norway

#77

Post by einarfd »

aussieguy1234 wrote: post #55
londons_explore wrote: post #41

In the past few decades, data centers have been placed with latency in mind - ie. Typically you don't want to be more than 1000 miles from users. However, in the world of AI, latency is already 1 second plus, so the economics change - you do better to build where there is cheap electricity and free cooling. I forsee Iceland as a good place to invest.

Iceland is a small country, so it'll depend on what power infrastructure is already there, too much power consumption will overload the grid - unless they build new power plants and other infra.

Power is why you would build in Iceland. There is a lot of geothermic potential there. It's after all, the land of hot springs and volcanoes. So if you need more power, build a new geothermic power plant.

Re: Stargate Norway

#78

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan »

qoez wrote: post #45
astahlx wrote: post #10

I do not understand why they chose Norway. I would choose a country where it is easy to build up a new power plant quickly with solar and wind, close to the site of the data center. Maybe they just have too much electricity up there that is not needed by the population or existing industry?

A big reason to not do it lower down in europe is also just that it's naturally very cold in northern norway so you already save on energy that would be needed to cool it. Meta has datacenters at around the same latitude but in sweden for the same reason.

I've imagined for a long time that eventually we'll shift the bulk of our heavy computation closer to the poles, and use those data centers to power our society. You either use solar power and shift the computation from north pole to south pole seasonally depending on which place is in eternal sunshine, or, since these places are so far away from major population centers, you could just plop down a bunch of giant nuclear reactors without too much resistance.

Re: Stargate Norway

#79

Post by piva00 »

adrianN wrote: post #54
lelanthran wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the plus side, a ton of electricity generation capacity is being built for AI datacenters. If this is a bubble and it pops, electricity prices are going to fall faster than you've ever seen before.

Electricity prices have a pretty hard bottom that additional supply can't lower. At least where I live distribution is more often the bottle neck than supply.

Same for me, I pay more for distribution fees per month than the kWh generated.

Re: Stargate Norway

#80

Post by veunes »

londons_explore wrote: post #41

In the past few decades, data centers have been placed with latency in mind - ie. Typically you don't want to be more than 1000 miles from users. However, in the world of AI, latency is already 1 second plus, so the economics change - you do better to build where there is cheap electricity and free cooling. I forsee Iceland as a good place to invest.

That's why places like Norway, Iceland, and even parts of Canada are starting to look like prime real estate
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