alt Hacker News> 1. Many places in the world don't ever need cooling
And data centers also exist in cold places. But if you put 8kw of extra heat in someone's home that previously didn't need cooling, it might need it now.
> 2. If servers are distributed then downtime is distributed, you can virtually guarantee that some of the servers over the world will be online so you can get effectively 100% uptime,
You can! But running more servers with worse uptime is less efficient and requires more capital expense than running fewer servers with better uptime.
> something that is not possible in a data center
This is not only possible, this is how the large clouds are architected. This is what availability zones are for.
> 3. To serve tokens you need very little bandwidth, it's just text in and out
bandwidth is only one of the many connectivity advantages that datacenters provide... and LLMs are a bad choice to run residentially for other reasons, particularly power density
> 4. All of this is down to the HW and the SW itself, not the building.
Absolutely not -- basically all industry data protection standards have physical security standards. At least, any of the ones that matter.
> 5. Just switch to a different server until the problem is resolved, in this model there is no urgency.
That is true, there are data centers without 24/7 access. They tend to struggle to compete, though.
> You just need redundancy which you can afford with how much cheaper this would be.
Is it? Residential power and cooling costs more -- and that's the majority of the cost to colocate servers
> 1. And data centers also exist in cold places. But if you put 8kw of extra heat in someone's home that previously didn't need cooling, it might need it now.
That's the entire point of being in a cold place that you don't need active cooling. Just open the window.
> 2. But running more servers with worse uptime is less efficient and requires more capital expense than running fewer servers with better uptime.
Even if the cooling is free? Not even free, the cost is negative since it saves heating cost.
> 3. and LLMs are a bad choice to run residentially for other reasons, particularly power density
Can you explain the connection of LLMs to power density? This point makes no sense.
> 4. Absolutely not -- basically all industry data protection standards have physical security standards. At least, any of the ones that matter.
You can lock a box physically
> 5. That is true, there are data centers without 24/7 access. They tend to struggle to compete, though.
Why though if redundancy exists, like you said? Would they still struggle to compete if the cooling cost was effectively negative?
> 6. Is it? Residential power and cooling costs more -- and that's the majority of the cost to colocate servers
You can make cooling cost negative, if that's the majority of the cost, then that's great! And you can also place your servers in residential areas with the cheapest power.