China will most probably win the AI race in the long run because of one major bottleneck the US has - energy. The electric energy and grid buildout in China has been massive since a long time and there is simply no way for the US to quickly catch up.
No matter how much cash you throw you can't just materialize a 100 nuclear reactors to power the data centers.
I was curious how much energy is actually needed to power these datacenters, so I did a little bit of math.
Looking at Nvidia revenues in the past few years, there's maybe $300 billion worth of GPUs currently deployed in the U.S. The B200 costs ~$40k, so we have 7.5 million B200-equivalents, which draw 1000W. Running these at full capacity requires 66 TWh a year, or ~1.5% of total current U.S. electricity consumption. Maybe a bit more to account for inefficiencies, cooling, and other components, but not more than ~2.5% total I would guess.
So it's not that much in reality, but will definitely grow fast.
> Running these at full capacity requires 66 TWh a year,
I think your numbers are off.
For a start you are effectively calculating a GPU only number.
I think 100Twh would be the minimum level to think about "all-in". And even that is probably being generous.
Remember, afterall that Google have just bought half the capacity (4.1Twh) of a nuclear power plant in Finland, on top of 630 MW of wind and 94MW of battery.
This is to cater for three new sites at Kajaani, Muhos, and Vaala and expansion at Hamina. So basically 3.5 datacentres.
But Finland is quite a small place. The US has more sites and bigger sites, so the numbers probably grow exponentially very quickly.
margorczynski · · focus · HN ↗
No matter how much cash you throw you can't just materialize a 100 nuclear reactors to power the data centers.
xynelius · · focus · HN ↗
Looking at Nvidia revenues in the past few years, there's maybe $300 billion worth of GPUs currently deployed in the U.S. The B200 costs ~$40k, so we have 7.5 million B200-equivalents, which draw 1000W. Running these at full capacity requires 66 TWh a year, or ~1.5% of total current U.S. electricity consumption. Maybe a bit more to account for inefficiencies, cooling, and other components, but not more than ~2.5% total I would guess.
So it's not that much in reality, but will definitely grow fast.
traceroute66 · · focus · HN ↗
I think your numbers are off.
For a start you are effectively calculating a GPU only number.
I think 100Twh would be the minimum level to think about "all-in". And even that is probably being generous.
Remember, afterall that Google have just bought half the capacity (4.1Twh) of a nuclear power plant in Finland, on top of 630 MW of wind and 94MW of battery.
This is to cater for three new sites at Kajaani, Muhos, and Vaala and expansion at Hamina. So basically 3.5 datacentres.
But Finland is quite a small place. The US has more sites and bigger sites, so the numbers probably grow exponentially very quickly.