Sure, it occurs, but what does the Stefan–Boltzmann law tell us about GPU clusters in space?
I provided the calculation for the pyramidal shape: if the base of a pyramid were a square solar panel with side length L, then for a target temperature of 300K (a typical back of envelope substitute for "room temperature") the height of the pyramid would have to be about 3 times the side length of the square base. Quite reasonable.
> Sure, it occurs, but what does the Stefan–Boltzmann law tell us about GPU clusters in space?
The Stefan-Boltzmann law tells us that whatever prevents us from putting GPU clusters in space, it's not the difficulty in shedding heat by thermal radiation that is supposedly stopping us.
If the base were a solar panel aimed perpendicular to sun, then the tip is facing away and all side triangles faces of the pyramid are in the shade.
I voluntarily give up heat dissipation area on 2 of the 4 triangular sides (just to make calculations easier, if we make them thermally reflective -emissivity 0-, we can't shed heat, but also don't absorb heat coming from lukewarm Earth).
The remaining 2 triangular sides will be large enough that the temperature of the triangular panels is kept below 300 K.
The panels also serve as the cold heat baths, i.e. the thermal sinks for the compute on board.
Not sure what you mean with wings, I intentionally chose a convex shape like a pyramid so that no part of the surface of the pyramid can see another part of the surface, so no self-obstruction for shedding heat etc...
If this doesn't answer your question, feel free to ask a new question so I understand what your actual question is.
The electrical power available for compute will be approximately 20% (efficiency of solar panels) times the area of the square base L ^ 2 times 1360 W / m ^ 2 .
The electrical power thus scales quadratically with the chosen side length, and thus linearly with the area of the square base.
You can prove that the lower efficiency can be managed, and they will still say the only thing they know: "Thermal radiation is not efficient".
as an example my points almost instantly fell down 15 points, but over the last 11 hours it has recuperated back to just a 1 point drop.
it's not because they don't like to write an apology (which I don't ask for) that they aren't secretly happy they learnt something new in physics, and in the end thats what matters to me :)
Yeah doesn't sound particularly feasible, sorry. Glad you know all the math though!
For a 230 kW cluster: 16 x DGX (8x)B200; we arrived at a 30m x 30m solar PV area, and a 90 meter distance from the center of the solar array to the tip of the pyramid.
1 GW = 4348 x 230 kW
sqrt(4348)= ~66
so launch 4348 of the systems described in the calculation I linked, or if you insist on housing them next to each other:
the base length becomes 30 m x 66 = 1980 m = ~ 2 km. the distance from center of square solar array to the tip of the pyramid became 6 km...
any of these systems would need to be shipped and collected in orbit and then assembled together.
a very megalomaniac endeavor indeed.
To run just one cluster (which would be generally a useless endeavor given it is just a few dozen GPUs) would be equivalent to the best we've ever done, and you wonder why you're being downvoted? Your calculations, which are correct from a scientific (but not engineering) standpoint, don't support the argument that it is possible, but rather show how hard it is. I can put the same cluster in my living room and dissipate the heat just fine, but you require a billion dollar system to do it in space.