Thread

1. aliasxneo · 1791145670 · focus · HN ↗

   I lived in a smaller rural town near a Google datacenter. During my career there I had routinely come across some outlandish accusations made about our water/power usage from the locals. But for obvious reasons I could never dispute them. I remember we hired a local who'd grown up in the town and he was "really surprised" when he started to see what we were doing to remain efficient.

   The current data center craze just feels like the same thing but on a bigger scale.

   1. BearOso · 1791154950 · focus · HN ↗

      The disparity is that older data centers were for storing and serving data. They have a lot of bandwidth and storage, but aren't consuming much energy. Plus, they are there to provide quicker access to data, to provide a service to actual people.

      New AI data centers are obviously compute-oriented instead. That means they consume a lot more power, like hundreds of megawatts. For perspective, on average a U.S. household uses only 1.2KW. Because of this, cooling needs are significantly increased, and while water usage is often overblown, noise volume is a major problem. At (edit) 10m, it often exceeds the 90dB threshold for hearing loss.

      Then there's the fact that millions of dollars of GPUs are inside these things, so security means lots of bright lights at all times of day.

      These are just problems with the physical presence of a data center, not to mention the electric bill hikes, land value loss, environmental effects, etc. And there's no obvious positives to one going up. No new jobs. No tax money because it's often elided with incentives from bribing local officials.

      With all the negatives and seemingly no benefits, ask yourself who wants these data centers, and why? If the only way to improve AI is using more and more compute like this, what is the end-game?

      1. doodlesdev · 1791158399 · focus · HN ↗

            > At 100m, it often exceeds the 90dB threshold for hearing loss.
         

         This is absolutely false. Those are the noise levels _inside_ the facilities. Noise attenuates by inverse-square law by distance. 90dB at 100 meters means 116dB at 5 meters distance... That's industrial alarms level of noise and would never fly in a residential area.

         1. BearOso · 1791160131 · focus · HN ↗

            Extra zero. Noise level ~10m outside a facility is 90dB. Even traditional server facilities can hit 80-90dB inside. I've read reports from people living near data centers having almost constant 60-70dB noise levels at their houses, which, yeah, it still shouldn't fly.

            1. doodlesdev · 1791162123 · focus · HN ↗

                  > I've read reports from people living near data centers having almost constant 60-70dB noise levels at their houses, which, yeah, it still shouldn't fly.
               

               So, first of all, I agree, that's still top much. But I think it's important to point out that 60dB is, _literally_, 1.000 less than what OP was claiming (90dB).

               I absolutely believe that there's leftover noise around the facilities, too, specially low-frequency humming for electrical equipment, but I have yet to see _actual_ reporting demonstrating newer AI-centered datacenters produce even near the amount of noise OP was claiming.

                  > Noise level ~10m outside a facility is 90dB.
               

               That would mean 130dB of noise inside the facility, which sounds (pun intended) impossible to me, no matter how bad the acoustic planning is.

               edit: just understood what "Extra zero" meant. The original comment before being edited said 100m and that's what I was quoting.

               1. BearOso · 1791166447 · focus · HN ↗

                  Apparently the noise emanates from massive fans for evaporative cooling on the roof. It's not coming from inside, which is why it carries so easily.

                  1. doodlesdev · 1791171939 · focus · HN ↗

                     That makes sense, indeed. I've yet to see one of these new datacenters, but I've recently visited a hyperscaler's datacenter and most of the noise did seem to come from the outside ventilation.

                     I still heard almost nothing ~20m from it, but neither I (nor the company who built it) knew what kinds of workloads ran there and I suspect it was mostly traditional workloads.

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