[xt00]

So using Stefan-Boltzmann equation if you have a 1m^2 surface at 100C you can radiate about 1kW from that surface -- assuming both sides radiate that, then lets assume it is double. Assume each blackwell chip + support electronics etc needs about 2kW of power to run. So each 1sq meter of say a copper plate is needed to cool 1 blackwell chip. So if you have some way to make some massive radiators that are basically giant plates spanning thousands of square meters, then you should be good. the Stefan-Boltzmann equation is proportional to the 4th power of T (in kelvin), so if you can somehow manage to use a heat pump for the heat from the GPU's into your heat sink such that you could run your radiators at a much hotter temperature, then the blackbody radiation that they put out dramatically goes up. So cooling is quite challenging but not impossible. (I also neglected importantly that you would need to use the giant solar panels as a sun shade for these radiators otherwise they would be pulling in heat from the sun)

For power, you need to somehow manage to generate all of the power that you would need to cool. So the most logical would be some huge solar panels -- assuming you could use similar tech to the space station, you can get aroudnd 100kW from those solar panels -- assume you can do say 10X better somehow, then now you have 1MW of power.

Unclear what the goal here is -- if the idea was doing this for cost, it sounds super unlikely to pan out -- if they want to put a datacenter in space such that nobody can tell somebody what to do, it would seem just as easy to go hide a datacenter in some random far flung corner of the world in a bunker. Seems just like a great way to light some money on fire.

[m4rtink]

Note all of this is mass that currently needs to be launched from Earth at significant cost - it is indeed nice this cost if finally going down thanks to partial launcher reusability (and hopefully full reusability soon as well) but I really don't see this making any economical sense unless a lot of this mass eventually comes from in situ resources you don't need to lift to orbit.

[m4rtink]

Also about the radiators - ideally they should radiate into empty space. If there is something in the way, like parts of your station or other radiators, then it will heat up - reducing effectiveness (you will have to remove this heat again) or even making stuff overheat.

[hulitu]

> If there is something in the way, like parts of your station or other radiators,

or, the sun ...

[oakwhiz]

probably something like a stirling engine + working fluid going down tubes in the plate, it becomes worth it to develop silicon-on-insulator GPUs and other weird technologies that run at higher temps

[xt00]

Yea I’m super curious if you could build a heat pump to move the heat from the 100C GPUs to concentrate all of the heat into a blazingly hot radiator — and how well that would actually work.

[Lapsa]

there is no far flung corners of the world left for same reasons tanks are obsolete in modern warfare

[yencabulator]

> Seems just like a great way to light some money on fire.

The key point is burning someone else's money, while pocketing a fraction of it. AI hype has made VCs stupid.