Tag Archives: DCD

Something no woman has ever sad to me, but that is for another day. You see, the story (at https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/saudi-arabias-ai-co-humain-looking-for-us-data-center-equity-partner-targets-66gw-by-2034-with-subsidized-electricity/) In this DCD ( Data Center Dynamics) gives us ‘Saudi Arabia’s AI co. Humain looking for US data center equity partner, targets 6.6GW by 2034 with subsidized electricity’ and they throw numbers at us. First there is the money “Plans $10bn venture fund to invest in AI companies”, which seems fair enough. But after that we get “The company said that it would buy 18,000 Nvidia GB300 chips with “several hundred thousand” more on the way, that it was partnering with AWS for a $5bn ‘AI Zone,’ signed a deal with AMD for 500MW of compute, and deployed Groq chips for inference.” I reckon that will split and split again, the shares of Nvidia. Then we get the $5 billion AI zone and then the AMD deal for 500MW of compute and deployed Groq chips for a conclusion reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning. Yes, that is quite the mouthful. After that we get a pause for the “How much of Humain’s data center focus will be on Saudi-based facilities is unclear – its AMD deal mentions sites in the US.” As such, we need to see what this is all about and I am hesitant to mention conclusions for a field that I am not aware of. Yet, the nagging feeling is in the back of my mind and it is jostling in an annoying way. You see, lets employ somewhat incorrect math (I know it is not a correct way). Consider 18,000 computers draining the energy net of 500 watt per system per second. That amounts to 9,000 GW energy (speculatively), and that is just the starting 18,000. As such the setting will be several times the amount needed for fueling these AI centers. Now, I know my calculations are widely of and we are given “At first, it plans to build a 50MW data center with 18,000 Nvidia GPUs for next year, increasing to 500MW in phases. It also has 2.3 square miles of land in the Eastern Province, which could host ten 200MW data centers.” I am not attacking this, but when we take into consideration that amount of energy requirements for processors, storage, cooling and maintaining the workflow my head comes up short (it usually does) and the immediate thought is where is this power coming from? As I see it, you will need a decently build Nuclear reactor and that reactor needs to be started in about 8 hours for that timeline to be met. Feel free to doubt me, I already am. Yet the needed energy to fuel a 66GW Data centre of any kind needs massive power support. And the need for Huawei to spice up the data cables somewhat. As I roughly see it, a center like that needs to plough through all the spam internet it gets on a near 10 seconds setting. That is all the spam it can muster in a year per minute (totally inaccurate, but you get the point). The setting that the world isn’t ready for this and it is given to us all in a mere paragraph. 

Now, I do not doubt the intent of the setting and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is really sincere to get to the ‘AI field’ as it is set, but at present the western setting is like what builder thought it would be and overreached (as I see it) and fraudulently set the stations of what they believed AI was and blew away a billion dollars in no time at all (and dragged Microsoft along with it) as they backed this venture. This gives me donut (which I already had) on the AI field as the AI field is more robust as I saw it (leaning on the learnings of Alan Turing) and it is a lot more robust then DML (Deeper Machine Learning) and LLM (Large Language Models), it really is. And for that I fear for the salespeople who tried to sell this concept, because when they say “Alas, it didn’t work. We tried, but we aren’t ready yet”, will be met with some swift justice in the halls of Saudi Arabia. Heads will roll intuit instance and they had that coming as I foresaw this a while before 2034. (It is 2025 now, and I am already on that page). 

Merely two years ago MIT Management gave us ‘Why neural net pioneer Geoffrey Hinton is sounding the alarm on AI’ and there we get the thing I have warned about for years “In a widely discussed interview with The New York Times, Hinton said generative intelligence could spread misinformation and, eventually, threaten humanity.” I saw this coming a mile away (in 2020, I think) You see, these salespeople are so driven to their revenue slot that they forget about Data verification and data centers require and ACTUAL AI to drag trough the data verifying it all. This isn’t some ‘futuristic’ setting of what might be, it is a certainty that non-verified data breeds inaccuracies and we will get inaccuracy on inaccuracy making things go from bad to worse. So what does that look on a 66GW system? Well, for that we merely need to look back to the 80’s when the term GIGO was invented. It is a mere setting of ‘Garbage In, Garbage Out’ no hidden snags, no hidden loopholes. A simple setting that selling garbage as data leaves is with garbage, nothing more. As such as I saw it, I looked at the article and the throwing of large numbers and people thought “Oh yes, there is a job in there for me too” and I merely thought, what will fuel this? And band that, who can manage the see-through of the data and the verification process, because with those systems in place a simple act of sabotage by adding a random data set to the chain will have irreparable consequences in that data result. 

So, as the DCD set that, they pretty much end the setting with “By 2030, the company hopes to process seven percent of the globe’s training and inference workloads. For the facilities deployed in the kingdom, Riyadh will subsidize electricity prices.” And in this my thoughts are Where is that energy coming from?” A simple setting which comes with (a largely speculative setting) that such a reactor needs to be a Generation IV reactor, which doesn’t exist yet. And in this the World Nuclear Association in 2015 suggested that some might enter commercial operation before 2030 (exact date unknown), yet some years ago we were given that the active member era were “Australia, Canada, China, the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom), France, Japan, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States” there is no mention of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and I reckon they would be presenting all kinds of voices against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (as well as the UAE) being the first to have one of those. It is my merely speculative nature to voice this. I am not saying that the Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR) is a passively safe generation III+ reactor could not do this, but the largest one is being build by Hitachi (a mere 4500MW) and it is not build yet. The NRC granted design approval in September 2014, and it is currently not build yet. That path started in 2011. It is 2025 now, so how long until the KSA gets its reactor? And perhaps that is not needed for my thoughts, but we see a lot of throwing of numbers, yet the DCD kept us completely in the dark on the power requirements. And as I see it the line “Riyadh will subsidize electricity prices” does not hold water as the required energy settings are not given to us (perhaps not so sexy and it does make for a lousy telethon) 

So I am personally left with questions. How about you? Have a great day and drink some irradiated tea. Makes you glow in the dark, which is good for visibility on the road and sequential traffic safety.