Patel claims China could build a gigawatt data center in six months near Three Gorges Dam due to power infrastructure.
“China could just build it in six months, I think, around the 3 Gorges Dam or many other places. Right? Because they have they have the ability to do the substations.”
Patel claims China could build a gigawatt data center in six months near the Three Gorges Dam but hasn't.
“China could just build it in six months, I think, around the 3 Gorges Dam or many other places. Right?”
Patel describes Microsoft's shift from 48-megawatt buildings to 300-megawatt AI-specific data centers for increased power density.
“Here you can see that same data center, that same type of data center vertically. And that's 48 megawatts, or 57, And then this data center center is like 300 megawatts.”
“Well, one, there's a gigawatt natural gas plant Yeah. That helps. Right next door. Right? Two, there's a natural gas line, a main that they tapped, and they set up their own generation capacity on-site.”
Patel forecasts data center power will grow from 150 megawatts today to gigawatt-scale clusters by 2026.
“We're seeing, like, you know, 400, 500 megawatts cluster sort of being built out now. Right? Like you know? And and then, you know, in 2026, I'd imagine it'll be, like, gigawatt scale clusters.”
“Or or that's what it looks like based on or, you know, one gigawatt in twenty twenty six ish. And Meta's Meta's, like, trying to do, like, two gigawatts by early to mid twenty seven.”
Patel identifies a 40 gigawatt power shortfall for US data centers even with all planned capacity additions.
“There is an over 40 gigawatt hole in power for The US. Even if we don't turn off any more coal, in fact we restart some, we take all the natural gas dual combined cycle reactor deliveries that we're going to have, and you add in renewables, you have a 40 gigawatt hole of power production in The US.”
Patel says TSMC approaches 20% of Taiwan's power consumption, projecting 30-40% within five years.
“And if they were to continue to build out what we expect them to build out in the next four or five years, it's going get to 30%, 40%.”
Patel identifies a 40 gigawatt power deficit in US even with all planned gas and restarted coal.
“Even if we don't turn off any more coal, in fact we restart some, we take all the natural gas dual combined cycle reactor deliveries that we're going to have,”
Patel says certain states will see over half their power consumed by AI within a few years.
“When we look at power consumption by state, something pretty simple, there are certain states where more than half their power is going be consumed by AI just in the next few years.”
Patel contrasts GB200 rack consuming 140 kilowatts with H100 servers at 10 kilowatts each.
“It's liquid cooled. It's an entire rack that consumes 140 kilowatts, whereas H100 servers consumed 10 kilowatts. And you might put two, you might put four in a rack, right? And it was air cooled.”
Patel questions Supermicro's conviction engineering high-density GPU systems when early volume was minimal despite reaching 4,000-5,000 watts per 1U.
“watts in 1U. You look at GV200, I think it's like 4,000 or 5,000 watts in 1U, right? Yes. Very, very funny.”
Patel reveals OpenAI runs GPUs at lower power in Arizona training cluster to fit 10% more GPUs despite worse TCO.
“They run the NVIDIA GPUs at lower power. Even though it's terrible on a TCO basis, they were able to get, you know, 10% more GPUs in, and it's great.”
Patel says data center power capacity will nearly double from 15-18 gigawatts this year to 30 gigawatts next year.
“next year, 30 gigawatts are being added and we think the power is there for it. Wow.”
Patel says data centers will reach 10% of US power by 2027-28 but under 1% of water consumption.
“US Grid will get to like 10% of power by like '28, 27 is data centers. For water consumption, it's not even gonna crack 1%. Yeah. By the end of the decade.”
Patel says power generation is solvable but requires many people and reciprocating engines
“@quantzoid @neelsomani Its solvable, just requires tons of people to work on its and shitloads of recips. Which is hard but solvable.”