[ExI] Even the Sky May Not Be the Limit for A.I. Data Centers

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of John Clark via extropy-chat
Subject: [ExI] Even the Sky May Not Be the Limit for A.I. Data Centers

…

>…Even the Sky May Not Be the Limit for A.I. Data Centers

>…Some tech leaders are concerned that the artificial intelligence race will exhaust available land and energy. The solution might lie in orbit.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/01/technology/space-data-centers-ai.html?unlocked_article_code=1.BFA.JNGs.VWdnG5_iJuZ_ <https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/01/technology/space-data-centers-ai.html?unlocked_article_code=1.BFA.JNGs.VWdnG5_iJuZ_&smid=em-share> &smid=em-share

 

 

 

We tend to imagine away heat control and radiation effects as something that is a low level engineering problem, but we have had microprocessors in space for a long time and neither of these problems have been solved for what we think of as modern processors.  If we imagine a high end modern GPU we can estimate a power consumption of about a kW.  That’s nearly a square meter of solar cells to power it and we still haven’t gotten to how to extract the heat from that processor.  The radiation is a big deal too: It causes SEUs or Single Event Upsets from cosmic rays hitting individual components.  This usually necessitates larger components, limiting compute power in space.

 

None of that is to say we can’t have data centers in space.  But they will likely be far more limited than we currently imagine.

 

spike

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