I work in the datacenter space. The power consumption of a data center is the "canonical" way to describe their size.
Almost every component in a datacenter is upgradeable—in fact, the compute itself only has a lifespan of ~5 years—but the power requirements are basically locked-in. A 200MW data center will always be a 200MW data center, even though the flops it computes will increase.
The fact that we use this unit really nails the fact that AI is basically refining energy.
Almost every component in a datacenter is upgradeable—in fact, the compute itself only has a lifespan of ~5 years—but the power requirements are basically locked-in. A 200MW data center will always be a 200MW data center, even though the flops it computes will increase.
The fact that we use this unit really nails the fact that AI is basically refining energy.