Part of the problem with current data centers is the density. To make the economics work, you need excessive density, which comes with power, noise, and water requirements.

Smaller servers distributed more widely don’t come with the same requirements. They can’t handle all use cases, but something like a Tinybox can run consumer LLM tasks just fine, a SAN with a small server can provide backup storage or storage for CDNs, etc. No need to turn the house into a full data center.

The key would be to build highly efficient small servers that can work as an appliance. It would need to be very easy to swap them out when one fails.

Again, I’m not sure this has much of a benefit except for providing geographical dispersion. Data centers would still be more cost effective. Maybe it would be helpful for providing local services in small remote areas like islands.