Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

I'm not going to be talking about the company per se. I'm talking about a generalized problem with AI and a very real problem with the worldwide growth of data centers.

This company just built a supercomputer with 22,000 H100 GPUs. That is TWENTY-TWO THOUSAND EXTREMELY HIGH-END SPECIALIZED GRAPHICS CARDS.

This computer consumes THIRTY-ONE MEGAWATTS OF POWER. That is how much power 6,000 HOMES consume in a DAY.

There are questions as to how this almost constant construction of data centers are going to be powered. For example, in Dublin, Ireland, they have a moratorium in building data centers in the town center because they can't power them without cutting power to the residents! And there are more important questions as to how all this heat will be dealt with.

A few months ago I posted about a data center in England that put a pod of computers into a mineral oil bath and is using a heat exchanger to help heat a local pool. That's pretty awesome. But there are a finite number of pools that need heating. Microsoft and others have been experimenting with putting pods of data centers underwater for cooling.

But the demand for AI has just begun. I just read an article about Y Combinator, a tech startup incubator, over 35% of new projects coming to them for assistance are AI.

We have not yet begun to truly cook this planet! Makes me glad that I'll be gone in 20-30 years or fewer.

Oh, and those H100 GPUs? Can be used for no other purpose. Like crypto mining cards, they can be used for only high-intensity computing. Now, those 22,000 cards don't represent 22,000 computer chassis. They can put like 10-20 cards in one chassis. The cards are designed with no fans and the chassis have big forced air and water-cooling systems to keep them cool. Very different from most conventional PCs.

So the next time someone says global warming isn't real, tell them about ONE supercomputer eating the power of 6,000 homes!

"You have stolen my dreams, my childhood, with your empty words...We are in the beginning of a massive extinction, and all you can talk about is the money, and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you. For more than thirty years the science has been crystal clear."
-- climate change activist Greta Thunberg to world leaders at UN

"She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future."
-- Trump

"I can't wait for Stephen King's sequel, 'Children of the Climate.'"
-- Laura Ingraham

"She is the Greta Effect. She's causing and instilling fear in millions of kids around the world, and actually has them believing that Government can legislate our climate...It's almost like medieval witchcraft again."
-- industry-funded climate denier Mark Morano

After Trump's tweet, she changed her Twitter 'bio' to read "A very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future." If what she said isn't a remarkable slam, considering her speech, I don't know what is.

She's absolutely right. Greed is destroying the planet under the name of capitalism. Eternal economic growth is against the laws of physics: at some point it's going to come crashing back, and that point might be the destruction of the ecosphere. Every time there's an economic boom and "economists" say there's no end in sight, guaranteed there's going to be a resounding crash in the not distant future.

"There is no such thing as global warming."
— Rick Santorum

*sigh*

In a recent NPR article, a poll showed that Americans are more skeptical than ever that climate change is real. A poll also shows that 97% of American scientists believe that global warming is real.