Major Homebuilder To Test Placing Mini Data Centers in Suburban Backyards (realtor.com) 42
NewtonsLaw writes: According to Realtor.com, a California startup called Span plans to partner with Nvidia, PulteGroup, and other homebuilders to equip new homes with mini-data centers, so as to relieve the need to build and power much larger traditional centers. The article states the company "can install 8,000 XFRA units about six times faster and at five times lower cost than the construction of a typical centralized 100 megawatt data center of the same size." Could this be the solution to at least some of the problems hindering the rollout of greater data-center capacity for AI systems? "One big reason the XFRA model works is that the average American home only uses about 40 percent of its electrical capacity," Span said. "As big data center developers struggle to find power sources and distribution capacity, XFRA uses capacity that's already available."
The startup says they will launch a 100-home proof of concept within the year to see if the idea is viable.
The startup says they will launch a 100-home proof of concept within the year to see if the idea is viable.
Do the home owners (Score:2)
get free WiFi ?
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Presumably the homeowner is required to provide an internet connection. The servers will have a consumer grade connection, hopefully with unlimited bandwidth but possibly in violation of commercial use rules that many ISPs have. They may not appreciate latency spikes when the homeowner does some heavy downloading.
There was a similar scheme in the UK a few years back, where they wanted to use the waste heat from the server to supply hot water. Most people have a central heating system that heats and circulat
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Using the waste heat makes much more sense in a new development, as the properties would be designed to make use of the waste heat rather than having to retrofit it later alongside a conventional heating system.
You would assume that the server farm would have its own connectivity, and having installed it they could use the same physical lines to provide service to the residents, so long as it's optional and you're not forced to use this specific provider (their service could be terrible).
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That consumer connection is going to be a problem.
The whole point of AI datacenters is because you have these massive racks of AI servers and they need the ability to talk to one another really quickly. It's not just a server you can have in a homelab, it's 42U of GPUs as part of Nvidia's next-generation compute rack. And they need to talk to other such units quickly because you're going to be using dozens of racks in the training process.
And home consumer power is there because while the home will rarely u
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Per the article, the homeowner has to pay to have this unit at their house, but the cost of the monthly fee goes to also cover ISP.
So you don't get free anything, but they claim that, in theory, you would get lower monthly bill than ISP + Utility.
Re: Do the home owners (Score:2)
FTA âoeThe exact arrangement will vary from one neighborhood or region to the next, but itâ(TM)s likely that Span will take on paying the hostâ(TM)s electricity and internet bills directly, and charge a flat fee every month thatâ(TM)s much lower than what the host would otherwise pay to their electric utility and internet service provider,"
Personally, I wouldnâ(TM)t accept this without a payout plus coverage of all my electric bill plus an upgraded internet tube (free) plus access t
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You get free noise pollution, free heat and free view of the unit in question.
Also, lol... Welcome to the AI boom, where everyone is out to
deliver gigawatts of new compute capacity
like it is 1998.
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or 2077.
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It is probably not a scam but there isn't any demand for this type of thing. ... I don't know but not much
Examples:
storj - 28000 provider/users trying to serve a few 10s of PB
salad - paying a couple of cents per hour for rtx 4060 GPU
filecoin - exabytes of storage serving
Businesses don't want their data on a server in someone's backyard, they want it in a SOC 2 data centre
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Get free heat as well. Be a target for theft and also back of the line when it comes to power consumption. Sorry, you can't use your own electricity today, it's cloudy and someone needs to run this query. Might even require a backup gas powered generator. Those things are so freaking loud.
Plus it will probably raise your insurance rates and when it becomes outdated, and it will you will be stuck with it.
Good idea, probably too premature to execute.
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Picturing Hero Protaganist crashing his pizza delivery car into some backyard rack storage.
I'm in. (Score:2)
I expect a lot of us nerds already have a "mini datacenter" homelab from parts we've scavenged over the years. If someone wants to pay me to upgrade my home infrastructure I'm more than willing to talk about it.
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More like the opposite.
They would want to divert resources away from your usage and into a locked enclosure that you would not have access to.
It would not upgrade your home infrastructure one bit. You even still have to pay them for the privilege, though they argue it will be less than you would have otherwise paid to an ISP and utility company.
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YUP. You've got it.
Spreading out data center demands does not reduce them just spreads them out. Maybe they have some creative accounting that makes initial construction cheaper; long term is what matters, and these large data centers get lobbying power which they abuse.
It is not cheaper centralized management or placed closer to resources. Latency doesn't matter for most needs; we're talking speed of light so distances are not a real problem or cost. Even gaming, the other players also need to be local wh
Stadia (Score:2)
This is mind boggling stupid.... (Score:2)
- The last mile power and comms is questionable (the grid may have 40% capacity)
- The availability will suck
- The latency will suck
- The downtime until a operator can get out to fix it will really suck
- Homeowners will kick them out after the first 3:00am service call
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Then there is the noise factor and the fact that the homeowner may need more electricity (electric car, pool, hot tub, etc).
I built my house. My builder pushed back on me when I asked for a 400A service. He said I'd never need it since I didn't have plans for a pool. Gave me a 200A service.
Now with 2 electric cars, a finished basement, and patio lighting I have two subpanels in addition to the main panel.
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There's something fundamentally wrong with the idea that a suburban house requires a 44kW supply even with 2 electric cars and a pool. My parents have a pool too, and a 3 story house, they are getting on fine with their 32A service fuse.
What are you doing? Running a commercial EV charging enterprise from your house? A secret bitcoin mine in your basement? Lighting your patio with growing lamps for weed? Using your pool pump to create a wave pool?
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"My parents have a pool too, and a 3 story house, they are getting on fine with their 32A service fuse."
People got along fine before electricity too. Meanwhile, electricians know how to calculate loads and modern 3 story home with a pool would not get a 32A service, if such a thing even existed. 32A wouldn't be sized properly for air alone.
"What are you doing? Running a commercial EV charging enterprise from your house?"
I built a lake house back around 2000, it had a 400A service. There are reasons to do
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Server rack submerged in the deep end of the pool.
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I like how you create your arguments assuming the premise is valid. Your points are good, but the fact is that this is just a ploy to pocket first round funding from VC. They're all laughing about how stupid it is, as well.
Nothing like piggybacking on unused 220V capacity for cost savings by deploying dedicated fiber networking to a million locations that you have to pay to construct. I think even Marc Andreessen can see through this.
Silicon Valley in a nutshell (Score:2)
"Could this be the solution to at least some of the problems hindering the rollout of greater data-center capacity for AI systems?"
No.
"One big reason the XFRA model works is that the average American home only uses about 40 percent of its electrical capacity,"
But what is remains is a pittance compares to what is needed for data centers. Worse, it's not consumption capacity that matters, it's generation capacity.
"As big data center developers struggle to find power sources and distribution capacity, XFRA us
Wait, THAT industry?!? (Score:2)
After watching quite a few videos of CyFy the Home Inspector enlighten America as to how the stench of home building quality hasn’t changed much since Chinese drywall was wafting over it, I have NO idea why anyone would consider them as qualified to build a data center.
They can barely remember to get sober enough to wire the stove up right.
Good luck with that, homebuyers.
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"the stench of home building quality hasn’t changed much since Chinese drywall was wafting over it..."
No discussion can't be improved without adding some right-wing bigotry, eh?
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Recently found out our built in 2008 house, it's stove is only wired for 110v. And stove outlet is on an inner wall.
Still, might take out a half wall creating a passthrough from kitchen to dining area join the space into an eat in kitchen. Can then put stove on outside wall and run 220v server easy enough.
Just... no. (Score:3)
The local domestic electricity supply infrastructure is built out knowing that each household won't use 100% of their individual supply capacity, in the same way that ISPs have always oversold a neighbourhood's actual backhaul capacity. See also airlines, etc.
As soon as they add this always-on load to the local infrastructure, service is going to degrade.
In addition, it doesn't matter if the load is dispersed like this or all in one place in a DC - you still need to have the generation and transmission capacity to support the load.
Oh, and what about cooling?
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Correct, it's a "solution" that solves nothing and creates enormous additional cost, maintenance and complexity. But maybe it can score a few million in funding.
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Then, as you noted, there's the cooling problem, which also doesn't scale. Neither does the noise problem: people live in quiet places because, well, quiet. A thousand little data centers running 24 hours a day isn't going to mesh well with that.
This entire concept is insanely stupid -- but no doubt some VCs will throw money at thes
Problem being.. (Score:2)
"One big reason the XFRA model works is that the average American home only uses about 40 percent of its electrical capacity,"
Yes, sure, on the individual level, a house may average 40 percent and the 200A is just peak demand and/or anomalous residences, but I guarantee that the grid is *not* sized for everyone to continuously pull down 200A all the time.
When power demand gets pressure due to prolonged weather events, you get rolling blackouts precisely because the grid is not sized to handle the load, even
From a... (Score:2)
From a "Chicken in every pot" and "a car in every garage" to now a "data center in every yard" or "a data center in every family plot" but at one point in the 1950s the dream was every home to have its own nuclear reactor for its own power. The circle of progress...
JoshK.
Incredibly dumb (Score:2)
The homeowner may only use 40% of their typical capacity, but that capacity is assumed internationally in grid design. The local grids are not remotely sized for all homes to use their rated service capacity. You can see this already in places where electric vehicles are prevalent, the local grids completely struggle to keep up with the assigned load when suddenly everyone is actually using it. The capacity factor isn't there.
That said this may work if only a few houses in any given area run a small datacen
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I think the idea is that your electric will be temporarily disconnected when Elon Musk wants to run an inference. Too bad if there's life support equipment that fails, that's a "you" problem. Make sure you pay your mortgage along with your spouse's funeral, otherwise Musk will foreclose.
But yeah, those "killowatts" of AI compute are really gonna add up! A few houses at a time.
Extra Cost Being Built Right Into a New Home (Score:2)
Nothing like making home ownership even more expensive, and it's built right in. Extra power consumption and cooling requirements all from the original plan. Might be better in a colder climate, where the heat generated could offset the cost of heating the home itself, but this is just another environmental disaster in the making. Exactly what benefit is this to the home owner? Are they getting compensated for the presence of such a power-hungry monstrosity living like a troll in their basement/attic/gara
Another batch of parasites (Score:1)
So, yet another case of attempting to externalize the costs and internalize the profits? I see no benefit at all for the home owners, and the implementation will cause a surge in new legislation from those states that do not want disruptive data centers.
I'ma Save You a Fortune And A lot Of Time (Score:2)
No need to wait a year for the proof of concept or it's later results. I can tell you right this very moment that this is not even remotely viable as a data center alternative. I can also tell you that this would not even be a good setup for personal data centers or computing home labs.
The only thing that this is good for -- the only thing -- is grifting investors. Your investment opportunity window opens today and likely closes next week. Get out by tomorrow or get fucked.
This will not solve anything (Score:2)
indirect benefit for AI (Score:2)
AI training need HUUUUGE datacenters. But AI inference may benefit from these smaller datacenters.
Ditto if you can move classic cloud workloads and associated gear (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS) to these smaller datacenters, freeing up your biggest datacenters for AI training.
I proposed to do something similar to that a while ago, using container data centers. But this may work even better.
Who would want this? (Score:2)
This will last about two weeks before (Score:2)
some HOA demigod decides its their job to restrict query contents.