- cross-posted to:
- technology
- cross-posted to:
- technology
One million Blackwell GPUs would suck down an astonishing 1.875 gigawatts of power. For context, a typical nuclear power plant only produces 1 gigawatt of power.
Fossil fuel-burning plants, whether that’s natural gas, coal, or oil, produce even less. There’s no way to ramp up nuclear capacity in the time it will take to supply these millions of chips, so much, if not all, of that extra power demand is going to come from carbon-emitting sources.
Boil water with the heat coming off their GPUs, use the steam to turn turbines, use the generated electricity to power the GPUs! Free unlimited power! Why hasn’t anyone gotten in on this yet?
/s
You’re not far off: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20171013-where-data-centres-store-info---and-heat-homes