Hacker News with Generative AI: Data Centers

So You Want to Build Your Own Data Center (railway.com)
Since the beginning, Railway’s compute has been built on top of Google Cloud Platform. The platform supported Railway's initial journey, but it has caused a multitude of problems that have posed an existential risk to our business. More importantly, building on a hyperscaler prevents us from delivering the best possible platform to our customers.
Enterprises in for a shock when they realize power and cooling demands of AI (theregister.com)
Most businesses rushing to adopt AI are unprepared for the energy demands it'll place on their infrastructure, and few have a handle on the power consumption of AI systems or the implications for their datacenters.
Why is Ashburn the data center capital of the world? (datacenters.com)
Ashburn, a city in Virginia’s Loudoun County about 34 miles from Washington D.C., is widely known as the Data Center Capital of the World.
UK prepared to throw planning rules out the window for datacenters (theregister.com)
Britain's planning system is still seen as a significant barrier to the development of datacenters.
Microsoft to spend $80 billion on AI data centers this year (yahoo.com)
Microsoft Corp. plans to spend $80 billion this fiscal year building out data centers, underscoring the intense capital requirements of artificial intelligence.
Electrical circuits encased in fluid may reshape data-center design (sandia.gov)
Keeping electrical circuits dry is generally considered a vital safety measure, but at Sandia’s High Performance Computing center, technicians adjust live circuits submerged in liquid.
Power Demand at Data Centers Is Disrupting Harmonics in Nearby Electrical Grids (cleantechnica.com)
According to Bloomberg, the enormous demand for electricity by data centers is leading to a phenomenon known as bad harmonics.
Proxmox Announces Proxmox Datacenter Manager (proxmox.com)
We’re excited to announce the alpha preview of Proxmox Datacenter Manager! This is an early-stage version of our software, giving you a first impression at what we’ve been working on and a chance to collaborate.
AI's emissions are about to skyrocket even further (technologyreview.com)
Data center emissions have tripled since 2018. As more complex AI models like OpenAI’s Sora see broad release, those figures will likely go through the roof.
Ente Photo Storage – Reliability and Replication Architecture (ente.io)
The sibling of security is reliability.
Next-generation datacenters consume zero water for cooling (microsoft.com)
This summer, we released our Datacenter Community Pledge, detailing our commitment to the local economies and communities in which we operate our datacenters. Protecting local watersheds is an important part of this pledge—especially in areas where water stress is growing.
Day after nuclear power vow Meta announces largest-ever fossil fueled datacenter (theregister.com)
Richland Parish, an idyllic rural area in northeast Louisiana, USA, is set to host a gigantic new Meta datacenter.
HPE Slingshot 400 Brings a Liquid Cooled 51.2T Switch and 400Gbps Networking (servethehome.com)
HPE is joining the 400Gbps generation for its Ethernet-based HPC interconnect. The new HPE Slingshot 400 not only increases the switch ASIC speed to 51.2Tbps, but it also will usher in significantly faster HPC interconnect speeds to keep pace with solutions like the NVIDIA Spectrum-X we showed in the 100K GPU xAI Colossus Cluster that are being used in AI clusters. We saw the new liquid-cooled switch on the SC24 show floor.
Cloudy with a chance of GPU bills: AI's energy appetite has CIOs sweating (theregister.com)
Organizations are being forced to rethink where they host workloads in response to ballooning AI demands combined with rising energy bills, and shoving them into the public cloud may not be the answer.
Hetzner - New tariff structure for Cloud servers and Load balancers in the USA (ycombinator.com)
Starting on 1 December 2024, 01:00 am CET, we will begin charging new prices for newly-created Cloud servers and introduce new amounts for included traffic for Cloud Servers and Load balancers at the US locations in Ashburn (ASH) and Hillsboro (HIL). This also applies to existing Cloud servers and Load balancers that are switched to a different tariff using the “Rescale” function.
AI Data Centers May Consume More Electricity Than Entire Cities (cnbc.com)
How oxide cuts data center power consumption in half (oxide.computer)
Here’s a sobering thought: today, data centers already consume 1-2% of the world’s power, and that percentage will likely rise to 3-4% by the end of the decade. According to Goldman Sachs research, that rise will include a doubling in data center carbon dioxide emissions. As the data and AI boom progresses, this thirst for power shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. Two key challenges quickly become evident for the 85% of IT that currently lives on-premises.
Finland Says Subsea Germany Link Serving Data Centers Is Severed (bnnbloomberg.ca)
An undersea data cable connecting Finland and Germany was severed in the early hours of Monday by what was likely an external impact, authorities in the Nordic country said.
It's time to replace TCP in the datacenter (2023) (arxiv.org)
In spite of its long and successful history, TCP is a poor transport protocol for modern datacenters.
Micron launches 60TB PCIe gen5 SSD with 12GB/s read speeds (micron.com)
The Micron 6550 ION SSD is the world’s first 60TB PCIe Gen5 data center SSD, built to deliver unparalleled performance, energy efficiency and density.
Oxide cuts data center power consumption in half (oxide.computer)
Here’s a sobering thought: today, data centers already consume 1-2% of the world’s power, and that percentage will likely rise to 3-4% by the end of the decade. According to Goldman Sachs research, that rise will include a doubling in data center carbon dioxide emissions. As the data and AI boom progresses, this thirst for power shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. Two key challenges quickly become evident for the 85% of IT that currently lives on-premises.
Private Cloud Compute Security Guide (apple.com)
AMD outsells Intel in the datacenter space (tomshardware.com)
Meta's plan for nuclear-powered AI data centre thwarted by rare bees (ft.com)
AMD overtook Intel for the first time in data center revenue in 3Q24 (twitter.com)
Amazon's nuclear datacenter dreams stall as regulators reject power deal (theregister.com)
Amazon has hit a roadblock in its plans for nuclear-powered US datacenters. Federal regulators rejected a deal that would let it draw more power from a Susquehanna plant to supply new bit barns next to the site, on the grounds this would set a precedent which may affect grid reliability and increase energy costs.
Meta's plan for nuclear-powered AI data centre thwarted by rare bees (ft.com)
Speed, scale and reliability: 25 years of Google datacenter networking evolution (cloud.google.com)
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was Google’s network. But 25 years in, we’ve built out network infrastructure with scale and technical sophistication that’s nothing short of remarkable.
AMD Q3'2024 Financials (morethanmoore.substack.com)
Both with regards to technology and financials, AMD 0.00%↑ has been on a tear for the last several quarters, and their new Q3 numbers has seen that company continue that trend – with no immediate signs of it stopping. Not only are the Q3 numbers the biggest, but it means the datacenter business is now more than half the company, and Q4 numbers are expected to shatter the ceiling once again.
A look inside the datacenter behind Elon Musk's Grok AI (servethehome.com)
Today, we are releasing our tour of the xAI Colossus Supercomputer. For those who have heard stories of Elon Musk’s xAI building a giant AI supercomputer in Memphis, this is that cluster. With 100,000 NVIDIA H100 GPUs, this multi-billion-dollar AI cluster is notable not just for its size but also for the speed at which it was built. In only 122 days, the teams built this giant cluster. Today, we get to show you inside the building.