The massive computer clusters powering artificial intelligence consume vast quantities to answer the world’s queries, but how is Big Tech redressing the balance?

Writing a 100-word email using ChatGPT (GPT-4, latest model) consumes 1 x 500ml bottle of water It uses 140Wh of energy, enough for 7 full charges of an iPhone Pro Max

  • vinnymac@lemmy.worldEnglish
    32·
    29 days ago

    Why does the article make it sound like cooling a data center results in constant water loss? Is this not a closed loop system?

    I’m imagining a giant reservoir heat sink that runs throughout a complex to pull heat out of the surrounding environment where some liquid evaporates and needs to be replenished. But first of all we have more efficient liquid coolants, and second that would be a very lazy solution.

    I wonder if they’ve considered geothermal for new data centers. You can run a geothermal loop in reverse and use the earth as a giant heat sink. It’s not water in the loop, it’s refrigerant, and it only needs to be replaced when you find the efficiency dropping, which can take decades.

    • Munkisquisher@lemmy.nzEnglish
      1·
      29 days ago

      Evaporative coolers save a ton of energy compared to refrigerator cycle closed loop systems. Like a swamp cooler, the hot liquid that comes from cooling the server is exposed to the atmosphere and enough evaporates off to cool the liquid by a decent percentage, then it’s refrigerated before going back into the servers.

      Data centre near me is using it and the fire service is used to be being called by people concerned the huge clouds of water vapor are smoke

    • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      29 days ago

      Yes, the vast majority are closed loop systems and the water isn’t really used up, like a lot of these headlines imply.

      That’s not to say the energy being used can’t be put to better uses, though.

        • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.eeEnglish
          01·
          29 days ago

          The math on this doesn’t really check out. The USA uses 322 billion gallons of fresh water per day. A hyperscale datacenter uses only 5 million gallons per day.

          There are about 1,000 hyperscale datacenters in the USA, so that comes out to 5 billion gallons of water every day.

          That’s 1.5% of our annual freshwater usage, half of which is in closed loop systems and not going anywhere, and the other half being returned to the atmosphere where it will rain back down as fresh water again.

          And of course, the water cycle doesn’t really care about national borders or annual evaporation rates so much, and there is about 1 quintillion gallons of liquid fresh water available worldwide, so its not like sequestering 5 million gallons really offsets the available freshwater needed for hydration and agriculture.

    • someguy3@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      29 days ago

      You can run a geothermal loop in reverse and use the earth as a giant heat sink.

      You need something to move the heat away, like water or air. Having something solid that just absorbs will reach its heat capacity pretty quick.

    • DarkCloud@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      29 days ago

      It is a closed loop, but the paper treats it as if it’s an open loop, and counts all water use for the building, as well as all the water that went into creating any equipment used… and the water that escapes power plants in powering the buildings… it also includes any other buildings that might house related services. Here is the original “study” which is about what maths could be done given the above assumptions:

      http://arxiv.org/pdf/2304.03271

      In short, it has nothing to do with reality, and is more just an attempt at the authors to get their names out there (on bad science that the media is interested in publicizing for click bait reasons).