There have been presistent rumors that electricity generation was somehow bottlenecking new data centers. This claim was recently repeated by Donald Trump, who implied that San Francisco donors requested the construction of new power plants for powering new AI data centers in the US. While this may sound unlikely, my research suggests it's actually quite plausible.

Electricity generation, capacity, and sales in the United States - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)Electricity generation, capacity, and sales in the United States - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

US electricity production has been stagnant since 2007. Current electricity generation is ~ 500 million kW. An H100 consumes 700 W at peak capacity. Sales of H100s were ~500,000 in 2023 and expected to climb to 1.5-2 million in 2024. "Servers" account for only 40% of data center power consumption, and that includes non-GPU overhead. I'll assume a total of 2 kW per H100 for [...]

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First published:
June 20th, 2024

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DsoqEcnCu8vQeeeBe/actually-power-plants-may-be-an-ai-training-bottleneck

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Actually, Power Plants May Be an AI Training Bottleneck.” by Lao Mein

LessWrong (30+ Karma)