These spikes threaten cascading power failures and affect houses and companies that feed the same network network. Last summer, the supply providers in Virginia had to deal with a sudden power supply drive after a group of institutions had been converted as a security for backup generators, which led to excessive care in which the grid infrastructure risked.
With plenty of performance, the operators also ended up in areas with considerable water restrictions. Hyperscale and colocation website consumed in the USA 55 billion liter water in 2023According to researchers at LBNL. The indirect consumption, which is bound with energy consumption, is significantly higher at 800 billion liters per year US houses.
In 2023, Microsoft said that 42 percent of his water came from “areas with water stress”, while Meta said that around 16 percent of its water consumption were derived from similar areas in the same period. According to Google, almost 30 percent of its water from water catchment areas came with a medium or high risk of “water raving or scarcity” last year. Amazon does not reveal His figure.
Data centers in Dürrel -based states such as Arizona and Texas have led to concern among the locals, while the residents of Georgia have complained Water rationed.
Some believe that this endless race for ever serious computer power is out of place.
Sasha Luccioni, AI and climate leader in open source start-up mooring face, said alternative techniques to train AI models, such as: distillation Or the use of smaller models gained popularity and could enable developers to create powerful models with a fraction of the costs.
“It is almost like a mass hallucination in which everyone is on the same wavelength that we need more data centers without really asking why” she said.
cooling
An increased chip density has another undesirable effect: warmth. About two fifths of the energy used by an AI data center Consultant McKinsey.
Early data centers with cloud workloads were used in industrial wheel air conditioning systems, similar to those in offices that are used to cool off servers. However, when the chips draw more electricity, it has become more difficult to keep them between 30 and 40 ° C in their secure operating area, whereby data centers require more advanced cooling methods to avoid malfunctions. The challenge has led to significant investments in the latest innovations.
The operators have turned the installation of pipes with cold water in the server room to reduce the heat from the devices. This water is then aimed at large cooling towers that use evaporation to reduce the temperature of the furnishings to a secure area. However, the approach leads to water loss, with a single tower running through about 19,000 liters per minute.
Microsoft and others have applied a system with a closed circuit, which depends on the cooler, actually a refrigerator to cool down the water. This process is less wasteful and more efficient than Evaporation options.
