However I'm curious how many solar panels you would need to power a typical data center. Are we talking something like a large satellite, or rather a huge satellite with ISS-size solar arrays bolted on? Getting rid of the copious amounts of heat that data centers generate might also be a challenge (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacecraft_thermal_control)...
It’s just as real as the 25k Model 3.
For inferencing it can work well. One satellite could contain a handful of CPUs and do batch inferencing of even very large models, perhaps in the beginning at low speeds. Currently most AI workloads are interactive but I can't see that staying true for long, as things improve and they can be trusted to work independently for longer it makes more sense to just queue stuff up and not worry about exactly how high your TTFT is.
For training I don't see it today. In future maybe. But then, most AI workloads in future should be inferencing not training anyway.
at 70 Celsius - normal for GPU - 1.5m2 radiates something like 1KWt (which requires 4m2 of panels to collect), so doesn't look to a be an issue. (some look to ISS which is a bad example - the ISS needs 20 Celsius, and black body radiation is T^4)
It stops making sense the second you ask how you’d dissipate the heat any GPU would create. Sure, you could have vapour chambers. To where? Would this need square kilometers of radiators on top of square kilometers of solar panels? All this just to have Grok in space?
The power radiated is T^4, but 70c is only about 17.1% warmer than 20c because you need to compare in kelvin.
The answer, as you surmised, is indeed radiators.
17% in T^4 is almost 2x - plugging 293 (in Kelvin of course) in the calculator i get 417 W/m2 vs. 784W/m2 that i got earlier for the 343 (Kelvin for the 70 Celsius).
The ISS targets rejecting 70KW and has something like 140m2 of radiators. These radiators are attached to the ISS and use a lot of plumbing to carry the cooling liquid.
Where is GPUs and everything can be attached directly to the radiators and solar panels. So 70KW - 70 GPUs - can be placed right onto the 10m by 10m radiator panel. In front of those GPUs sitting on that radiator - a 15m by 20m solar panels assembly. Whole thing is less than 1 ton. Between $10K and $100K on Starship.