Amazon's $100B DC spend similar to entire Costa Rica GDP The level of investment pouring into new infrastructure from datacenter operators is comparable to the turnover of some mid-sized economies. ab man o war jellyfish physalia News from a possible future: 'Rampant jellyfish cause AI outage by taking datacenter offline' READ MORE According to figures from researchers at Omdia, …
Where does this loop end I wonder?
Is it just throw money at it, because, let's be honest here, these players have too much accumulated cash as it is.
Are these vanity spends? Does a single company need to be in control of, and spending more than a whole country?
Crazy times we live in I tell you!
It is a combination of:
"we know there's lots of consumer/business interest though we haven't yet figured out how to possibly monetize it the levels we're investing"
"we don't want investors to see us as being behind"
"we don't want to be behind in case this is going to be a multi trillion dollar industry"
"we are afraid there will be only one 'winner' - whoever gets the first AI that is able to improve upon itself and we want that to be us"
El Reg said: "and the capacity of the largest sites is expanding, with multi-gigawatt facilities - equivalent to the entire current capacity of a country like Canada – putting in an appearance."
I have to question that claim from Omdia, assuming that's what they really meant. Canada's electrical generating capacity ranks 8th in the world by most figures. and 7th in terms of actual electrical energy produced (China, US, India, Russia, Japan, Brazil, Canada, in that order).
Canada in fact has several individual generating plants, nuclear and hydro-electric, which are bigger than the demand from the 5GW AI data centres mentioned in the story as being in the early planning stages. A new nuclear generating plant which is to be somewhere around 10 or 11 GW has already been announced to be built just east of Toronto to meet demand from things like electric cars and electric heat.
A 5GW giant data centre as mentioned in the story would require less than 3 per cent of Canada's current generating capacity, and most of that generating capacity is hydro-electric or nuclear, and so can actually deliver that around the clock, not just under optimal peak conditions as with say wind.
Now if they were going to claim that all AI data centres world wide put together, existing and planned, were to have a total cumulative demand equivalent to that of Canada's total output, then that might be a bit more plausible. However, that would still only amount to about 2 per cent of total electricity produced world wide. That's a lot, but not an inconceivable amount.
The real problem is more likely that the AI companies want to build their AI data centres in places with weak electrical infrastructure. They should instead be taking cues from the aluminum smelting industry and locating where the supply is.
I was thinking about what might happen if AI does not produce the revenue these large companies expect. Or perhaps some innovation in AI computing reduces the need for so much capacity...
Perhaps they could pivot some of the electricity being generated onto the electrical power grid. Doing so in the US at least could improve grid resilience, provide more incentive for electrifying transportation, reduce coming grid stress predicted for increasing use of air conditioning, maybe even reduce utility costs (although even I, the eternal optimist, doubts that last one).
Of course there would be all the infrastructure needed to get the power from these AI data centers to the power grid and keep it from burning out everything along the way. But that is probably a lot less challenging than building entirely new power plants when there might be a lot of excess capacity just sitting around in an underutilized AI data center.
Could all this happen? Yes. Will any of it happen? Maybe. Are there a multitude of challenges if it were to happen? Definitely. Could these challenges be accomplished? Another definitely (provided everyone pulls their head out of their collective you-know-whats and works together on it).
Being just a lay person I acknowledge all this is probably just impractical or unfeasible pie in the sky thoughts and not worth posting.
But then that defeats the purpose of looking out the window and daydreaming...
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