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1. jedber+md[view] [source] 2025-05-13 21:37:18
>>wiley1+(OP)
I've been saying for a long time that we should consider remote areas for building datacenters for batch processing.

At first I thought the poles (of the planet) might be good. The cooling is basically free. But the energy and internet connectivity would be a problem. At the poles you can really only get solar about three months a year, and even then you need a lot of panels. Most of Antarctica is powered diesel because of this.

So the next thought was space. At the time, launching to space was way too costly for it to ever make sense. But now, with much cheaper launches, space is accessible.

Power seems easily solved. You can get lots of free energy from the sun with some modest panels. But to do that requires an odd orbit where you wouldn't be over the same spot on earth, which could make internet access difficult. Or you can go geostationary over a powerful ground station, but then you'd need some really big batteries for all the time you aren't in the sun.

But cooling is a huge problem. Space is cold, but there is no medium to transfer the heat away from the hot objects. I think this will be the biggest sticking point, unless they came up with an innovative solution.

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2. dijit+Uf[view] [source] 2025-05-13 21:52:19
>>jedber+md
> I've been saying for a long time that we should consider remote areas for building datacenters for batch processing.

FWIW there's a reason that Sweden has a bunch of datacenters in the north that are peanuts compared to hosting in Virginia.

They're "poorly" connected (by virtue of being a bit out of the way), but the free cooling and power from renewables make them extremely attractive. There was a time where they were the favourite of crypto-miners for the same reason as they would be attractive to AI training farms.

Fortlax has some I believe; https://www.fortlax.se

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As for the meat of the paper. Anyone with a passing understanding of space will be quick to point out that:

A) Heat is a problem in space, it's either way-way-way to hot (IE; you're in the path of the Sun) or it's way-way-way too cold (IE; you're out of the sun) and the shift between the two means you need to build for both. You also can't dissipate heat as there's no air to take the heat away.

B) Power is not so abundant and solar panels degrade; a huge amount of satellite building is essentially managing a decline in the capability of hardware. That's part of why there are so many up there.

C) Getting reasonably sized hardware up there is beyond improbable, though I'll grant you that most of the weight in a computer is the cooling components and chassis.

D) Cosmic Rays. No electromagnetic barrier from earth and extremely tight lithographies. I mean... there's a reason NASA is still using CPU's measured in the megahertz range.

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