Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick claimed data centers do not use water, despite reports indicating significant usage and a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing scheduled for Thursday.
My understanding is that all of the AI slop factories are liquid cooled, and that’s where a lot of the major new investment is going. They are mainly using evaporative cooling, because it is cheaper. But, we could require them to spend the extra money (and power) to use closed-loop cooling, and then they would not use up nearly as much water.
It’s a solvable problem. All we need to do is force them to do it.
I am not anti-datacenter. Your phone apps need a back-end somewhere. But these datacenter companies are making gazillions of dollars. If they want to exist, we should force them to pay whatever it takes to have as little effect on the environment as possible, even if it means their profits are a few million off this month. They can afford it.
My understanding is that all of the AI slop factories are liquid cooled, and that’s where a lot of the major new investment is going. They are mainly using evaporative cooling, because it is cheaper. But, we could require them to spend the extra money (and power) to use closed-loop cooling, and then they would not use up nearly as much water.
It’s a solvable problem. All we need to do is force them to do it.
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All the new nVidia stuff is liquid cooled, full stop
https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/nvidias-ai-chips-making-liquid-213103744.html
NVidia understands this too, and are trying to convince all their customers to go closed-loop. We’ll see if they pony up.
https://marketwise.com/investing/nvidia-liquid-cooling-tech-ai-data-centers-energy/
The blog that references: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/liquid-cooling-ai-factories/
I am not anti-datacenter. Your phone apps need a back-end somewhere. But these datacenter companies are making gazillions of dollars. If they want to exist, we should force them to pay whatever it takes to have as little effect on the environment as possible, even if it means their profits are a few million off this month. They can afford it.