10 years ago, I was running 4 CPU servers with 48 cores and 128GB of RAM in 2U enclosures with a maximum power consumption of 500W or so. I was able to stick ~20 of them in a 42U rack, totaling 10kW.
A data center full of these can be cooled with CRACs and hot/cold aisles without much problem. This is still too much for a bog-standard server colocation operation, but for HPC, that was normal and manageable.
Now, a ~1U server houses 4 SOTA NVIDIA GPUs, 64 cores, magnitudes more RAM. This server alone uses ~3KW of power. This means you go anywhere between 30kW to 50kW per rack, and you have many racks.
Of course this means more power comes in, more heat comes out. This means more sophisticated infrastructure: bigger and beefier primary and secondary power systems, beefier cooling, more heat, more noise, in short "more of everything".
Of course when you cram this much energy and heat into a relatively small space, its effect on the environment will be much more pronounced.
Facebook's previous SOTA datacenter used water infused, HEPA filtered free flowing air accross the datacenter. Now, it's server level direct liquid cooling with extensive water treatment and oversight on coolant parameters.
Compare this having a hand warmer vs. coal ember in your hand. The latter needs a much more elaborate setup to prevent it burning you badly.
You can stuff GPU servers into existing buildings- but even with significant upgrades you end up with a lot of empty space on the floor that can't be used.
1. Article is about AI, so I have given the example for an AI datacenter.
2. In pure CPU datacenters, the power dynamics do not change much. I can add more servers to a single rack, but the rack power is again in the 30kW to 50kW range, so you're planning and building for the same power capacity.
> You can stuff GPU servers into existing buildings-
Yes.
> but even with significant upgrades you end up with a lot of empty space on the floor that can't be used.
Yes & No. It's not impossible to convert an old datacenter to support ~35KW/rack capacity, but it's not cheap, and you'll have more worries than holes, piping, building and power. Namely, can your floor handle that much weight to begin with?
If we had regulations on noise, vibration, emissions, water use, electromagnetic radiation, whatever else, then it wouldn’t matter what people tried to build — if it fits within the guidelines great, otherwise back to the drawing board.
Putting “data center” in your ordinances is as lazy and ineffective as putting “abattoir.”
We certainly do! It’s just often overridden and ignored for these companies and data centers
Sane jurisdictions do have regulations regarding these things. Not all jurisdictions are sane, some of them are run by people who sell out their residents.
Suburbs and cities around me all have noise regulations, my state has its own pollution regulations, and the local water utilities don’t hook up customers that stress the system. Unfortunately there are places like Texas, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi that don’t give two shits about their citizens and let companies run temporary natural gas turbines permanently and all kinds of other nonsense.
This does sound plausible, but it's also pretty sad and not a sign of a healthy democracy