I'm still puzzled over the stated need to cool with water. I surmise it is related to the high power utilization, but am still doubtful. Most computing equipment, by its nature, is well-cooled by airflow. Food canning operations have long ago perfected the art of massive, storehouse cooling by refrigeration, no water required. I would normally have considered Alaska (Anchorage & parts north) to be the "frozen north," but I guess I haven't seen the worst! (I've been in Anchorage during winter. You can drive on streets that are perfectly clear and well-lighted---but the walls of cleared snow on either side of the road are 20 feet high. You feel like a rat in a maze.)
I did a little reading on the data center complex being built near Abilene, Texas. They described what they were doing: constructing huge neural networks, with each neuron being tended to like a miniature computer in itself, for specific training and tasking. The picture became clear to me: they were attaining Artificial Intelligence by the most incredible scale of brute force operations. Which tells me that this will likely be superseded by more efficient methods, perhaps within a decade. I have no idea what such methods might be, but their present approach is like removing a hillside with an army of spade-workers carrying dirt in pails. I don't think it is "sustainable." Perhaps this will be leapfrogged by quantum computing.
But I get the picture that they are trying to pair up an eyeball and a larynx to think and talk, believing that massive pattern recognition / correlation and language translation is tantamount to conceptualization. I don't think it is. You might get an idiot-savant who drools and doesn't know how to use the toilet...
I'm still puzzled over the stated need to cool with water. I surmise it is related to the high power utilization, but am still doubtful. Most computing equipment, by its nature, is well-cooled by airflow. Food canning operations have long ago perfected the art of massive, storehouse cooling by refrigeration, no water required. I would normally have considered Alaska (Anchorage & parts north) to be the "frozen north," but I guess I haven't seen the worst! (I've been in Anchorage during winter. You can drive on streets that are perfectly clear and well-lighted---but the walls of cleared snow on either side of the road are 20 feet high. You feel like a rat in a maze.)
I did a little reading on the data center complex being built near Abilene, Texas. They described what they were doing: constructing huge neural networks, with each neuron being tended to like a miniature computer in itself, for specific training and tasking. The picture became clear to me: they were attaining Artificial Intelligence by the most incredible scale of brute force operations. Which tells me that this will likely be superseded by more efficient methods, perhaps within a decade. I have no idea what such methods might be, but their present approach is like removing a hillside with an army of spade-workers carrying dirt in pails. I don't think it is "sustainable." Perhaps this will be leapfrogged by quantum computing.
But I get the picture that they are trying to pair up an eyeball and a larynx to think and talk, believing that massive pattern recognition / correlation and language translation is tantamount to conceptualization. I don't think it is. You might get an idiot-savant who drools and doesn't know how to use the toilet...