I actually think this is a much better solution than the current strategy of bulldozing – literally and metaphorically – everything and everyone to build giant, power hungry datacenters that are an enormous waste of money and resources.
Old telco facilities are prime locations for datacenters. They already exist, along with adequate on site power and communications infrastructure, and therefore dont require destroying thousands of acres of land or alienating all the local residents.
You’d get really good ping times
Telco switch buildings are already set up with the power AND the cooling. Old copper phone/DSL switch gear used to be power hungry as fuck.
Maybe. The building exists, yes, but a lot of those buildings were built in the 1940s or so. The HVAC is retrofit, and there might be power, but probably not as much as they’d want and probably not the right Internet connection.
A lot of them are in cities, too, since they needed to be near the people with telephones. That means they’ll be generating a lot of noise right where people are living.
Not to mention, the telcos probably don’t want to give them up. They do use some of them (the one nearest me is a training site) but the land and building are also fairly valuable. Utilities don’t like to give up stuff like that.
The plus is not destroying more viable land. Whether or not the power and communications infrastructure can handle what even a small data center requires isn’t a given. There will be a drain on resources, nothing is for free. And when they’re backing in the jet engine power additions with full approval from the bought city officials…
I’ve been wondering, why not old failing malls?
If I had to guess, teleco buildings already have strong internet connectivity and backup power or secondary power utilities which malls don’t have because they don’t have the same needs.
Because Amazon is already using them.
Apparently the solution to people not wanting a giant data center next door is to put 130 smaller ones next door to 130 different people. Reusing old buildings is sensible, but if the selling point is dodging local opposition, that tells you rather a lot about how the industry views the locals.
The industry doesn’t view the locals.
Graphics cards are little AI data centers
…so maybe NVIDIA could just sell graphics cards to the public? Imagine that.
Sam Altman - Nope!
All your little data centers are belong to Us!
I would say it’s not for AI but they are taking another shot at remote gaming and will challenge Sony. Those 130 facilities will allow them to have very small latency.
