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Comment by 9dev | Hacker News Reader

And why not build data centers where the energy is?

Parent comment didn’t say anything about data centers.

Getting power from the areas with high renewable energy density over to the population centers is a good goal to have.

So, you move into a new flat. In the living room, there's five sockets on the west side, but only one on the east side, and that's planned for a lamp already.

Does it make more sense to

  a) put up your TV and gaming console on the east side, and have an electrician run another power line across the room (they can install five plugs there too so you can keep the lamp and even charge your phone, which is nice), or
  b) simply put up your TV and console on the west side?

I know parent didn't say anything about DCs, but this is a thread about power lines to data centres. Before you go out of your way to span expensive power lines all across the country to get the power where the consumers are, it's a lot smarter to move consumers where the power already is.

I like your analogy so I will use it in my counter argument. I even have a personal example!

In my last place, there were no ethernet ports, and there was no shot that my landlord would install any. Coaxial wasn’t correctly wired up either. So my two options were to either move my setup into the kitchen, or to run an Ethernet cord up into my room.

I chose the second option to not monopolize the dining room table. It wasn’t pretty but my roommates were happier with some painters tape on the walls than my computer being in the kitchen.

I think a similar thing can be said for people who live in remote areas, it is about compromise. In this example it’s low internet speeds, traveling to get groceries if you live in a food desert, or paying more for utilities.

People prefer what they prefer. And if their preferences are worth their cost of the compromises, then they are going to go with their preferences.

It’s unreasonable to expect someone to move / abandon their preferences because they may not make sense to others on paper.

What an absolutely unnecessary analogy. The question is obviously more asking what is preferable about putting data centres in places where there is high competition with the population for power.

> It wasn’t pretty but my roommates were happier with some painters tape on the walls than my computer being in the kitchen.

I’d be willing to bet your roommates would have been even happier if you used wifi.

Sure, we'll just pack up our glass and steel foundries and oil refineries and move them across the country. Should be cheap and easy.

The world is a lot more complicated than "datacenter bad". I don't think datacenters are a good justification for HVDC transmission. HVDC transmission justifies itself because even if you could magically transport the biggest consumers to where the power is generated, we still need to transport power all the way across the country. HVDC is the most efficient way to do that bar none.

The reality of the situation is that our power grid is a century out of date and needs an overhaul for the realities of renewable energy. Not installing HVDC transmission lines is simply not an option if we want the whole country to stop using local coal and gas plants.

Latency.

Does it matter for training?

I'd assume that site selection managers understand how recommending "only useful for training" locations might impact their careers.

Doesn’t matter for training or most AI use cases. We are talking tens of ms latency here.

I’m gonna guess availability of employees may matter more.

Once built, the DC has like, ten employees. Nine security guards and a part-time on-site technician.

Not all loads require low latency to end users.

Latency for interaction with AI? For something the user use browsers and electron apps. A ping goes around the whole world before your pressed key is visible on the screen.

> Latency for interaction with AI?

It's not just AI. Video streaming or game streaming both depend on close proximity to the end user, alone because the data volume would completely overwhelm backhaul links... that's why Youtube, Netflix and a lot of CDNs all have colo facilities close to major population centers and their regionally dominant ISPs.

It can be significantly cheaper to pay colo fees at an ISP' s data center than to pay interconnection fees for bulk transfers.

> Video streaming or game streaming both depend on close proximity to the end user

That's a straw man for this discussion. Yes, there will be a need to place some DCs close to users, but most of them could be located closer to energy production, attached to a backbone network, and the vast majority of customers would not suffer any degradation of service from it.

Dafuck? No way lol

Playing from eu on us servers is not playable

>A ping goes around the whole world before your pressed key is visible on the screen.

I don't think that gaming is the focus of the DC discussed in this article. I don't think gaming will ever require a massive buildup as AI nowadays.

Are they more playable if the server is in the nearest coast compared to the middle of the US? If you're in the US, for something like AI inference, then RTT within the continental US is probably reasonable. Similar is likely true through most of Europe.

Increasing latency can also reduce TCP throughput ceiling, increase in-flight concurrency, and increase server memory consumption.

> A ping goes around the whole world before your pressed key is visible on the screen.

I don't disagree with your sentiment, but as someone who manages infrastructure which is literally on the opposite side of the planet (from me) RTT is long enough to be objectively horrible for anything interactive like typing over SSH. At least 250ms capital to capital for Europe to Oceania + last mile latency makes 300ms a more realistic minimum + actual processing time + client side rendering and it really starts to feel like a half second from the full human perspective... Under ideal conditions.

Whats the relevance of fibre optic latency to electric lines?

Either the data center is in the wind belt and you run fiber to the people, or the data center is near the people and you run power to the source. Either way you have to do some kind of cable run, and that means land.

fiber is a lot easier to run under houses than hvdc.

There was a massive dark fiber buildout in 2000. The hyperscalers already have long haul fiber optic infrastructure everywhere in US.

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