dissipate

We call it a cloud, but in reality it lives on solid ground, more specifically in mammoth buildings with endless corridors, or that’s how it has been until now. The idea of ​​​​taking data centers into space It sounds increasingly louder and is presented as the solution to the insatiable energy appetite of artificial intelligence. In the midst of this growing obsession, the player who holds the key to all current hardware has just had a reality check. NVIDIA puts on the brakes. Google, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos…everyone has talked about taking data centers to space. Even NVIDIA itself He has participated in projects of this type, but it seems that he has changed his mind. As published in BezingaDuring the company’s latest earnings call, Jensen Huang took the opportunity to lower short-term expectations for orbital data centers. dissipate heat. The idea of ​​bringing data centers to space was born from the need for energy. In space, energy is practically unlimited because solar panels can be receiving light all the time. The problem, according to Huang, is dissipating heat. On Earth, data centers use air or water for cooling, but in the vacuum of space there is no air. The only way to dissipate heat in space is by conduction to radiators which, in the CEO’s words, must be “quite large.” NVIDIA knows this well because already has a satellite with H100 GPUs in space. Why it is important. Huang’s intervention is relevant because NVIDIA is the main provider of the infrastructure that xAI, Amazon, Google and other technology companies need for their space plans. If the biggest beneficiary of selling chips for these projects warns about their viability, the market listens. Even so, his words have not been a complete refusal, but rather a “not yet.” Analysts agree. In a Gartner report to which he has had access The Registerclaim that companies are wasting money pursuing the dream of space data centers. Their argument is that orbital facilities are not profitable, but they also claim that they could not satisfy the necessary computing demand. In addition, it also highlights the technical challenge that cooling these structures in the vacuum of space would entail and another problem: the extreme temperature fluctuations that can go “from 100 degrees kelvin to 400 degrees kelvin” (between 126ºC and -173ºC). This would require the use of special materials and components, much more expensive than their terrestrial equivalents. Musk vs Altman. There is little that the CEOs of xAI and OpenAI agree on and data centers in space were not going to be any different. Elon Musk announced a megaproject with SpaceX and xAI to launch a constellation of one million satellites. At an event a few days ago, Altman called the idea ridiculous.although he also admitted that “it will make sense one day (…) we are not there yet.” In Xataka | Aragón is becoming a Spanish data center giant thanks to Amazon. There is still a big unknown Image | İsmail Enes Ayhan and NASA