With the wafers used for RAM being gobbled up by AI...I wonder how this will affect Fractal and the Axe Fx 3 and possible 4?

[HerrSquid]

Take a drive around Northern Virginia. There are hideous f**king data centers all over. They're just these humongous soul-sucking blobs of concrete that look like prisons. And the massive power stations definitely look like something you don't want to live close to. ... And for what? Displacing workers? Shitty AI art and music? Answering mundane questions nobody really gives a crap about?

The data centers are all over eastern WA and OR, too. Just look at Quincy, WA or Hood River, OR in Google maps.

At the same time the DOE National Lab I worked for was told to cap power increases for the next few years because of the demand on the regional power grid. I was running petascale HPC systems running into the megawatt range. The AI data centers are intended to consume gigawatts -- that's nuclear power plant territory. The tech CEOs seem to think they're going to save the world and make All Teh Moneyz with this nonsense. I've watched the CEO of Nvidia say we need "all available kinds of power and need it right now." Some of 'em seem to think they're messiahs and you know that goes hand in hand with them believing the old rules don't apply anymore.

 

[hippietim]

Northern Virginia has more data centers than the entire west coast. It's the largest concentration in the world. And none of them pay any state taxes. So they make the place look like shit and consume massive amounts of resources and contribute a relatively small amount to the local economy vs what that land could produce otherwise.

 

[Gregmang]

Northern Virginia has more data centers than the entire west coast. It's the largest concentration in the world. And none of them pay any state taxes. So they make the place look like shit and consume massive amounts of resources and contribute a relatively small amount to the local economy vs what that land could produce otherwise.

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Ashburn VA is nothing but a huge data center these days.