All of these ARM server chips are going to be very low on the pecking order for TSMC fab time, so they won't have the edge that Apple had by buying up the first slot on the latest manufacturing node. Even being a process node ahead, M1 only just squeaks by with comparable single threaded performance to Zen 3 cores, so ARM still has some catching up to do in the performance realm.
I don't think this is true. It is not only power consumption but also power backup. If you can use smaller diesel engines and smaller battery packs this will lower the cost.
And why do you think datacenters have been raising temperatures? It saves a ton of money: https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/10/14/goog... HP estimated they saved 8 million. That is not a rounding error.
A server that uses less power will also generate less heat.
I have to admit it is years ago I worked for a company owning datacenters but at that time the highest costs were always: power and connectivity.
100,000 sq. ft. is roughly enough space for about 250,000 1U servers. Say conservatively the servers are in the ballpark of $2,000 each. That's $500 million just in server hardware costs. If the total electric cost is around 3*$8 = ~$24 million over their lifetime, then we're talking about <5% of just the server expenses. Never mind the facility and staff costs (and, as you've said, connectivity).
So maybe not a rounding error, but way down the priorities list.
Problem is, that sounds high... the coefficient of performance for chillers is around 4 to 7 [1]. That puts ~15-30% of the total energy demand from chillers, though often datacenters do budget a factor up to about 60% of equipment power demand for cooling power demand. Sum energy related expenses for datacenters tends to be around 10-15% of the total costs [2]. So it would be odd to have such high cooling costs. A TCO over 4 years seems more in line with typical figures.
1: https://www.energy.gov.au/sites/default/files/hvac-factsheet-chiller-efficiency.pdf
2: https://www.missioncriticalmagazine.com/ext/resources/MC/Home/Files/PDFs/(TUI3011B)SimpleModelDetermingTrueTCO.pdfThere's a caveat to that in the planning phase of a data center: A lot of the site infrastructure costs are a function of the total power requirement. So if - when building out a data center - you can get more power efficiency, then that does translate to a significant cost savings.
Cooling tends to be somewhere between a 20 and 60% add on to the direct power consumption of a server.
1: https://www.missioncriticalmagazine.com/ext/resources/MC/Home/Files/PDFs/(TUI3011B)SimpleModelDetermingTrueTCO.pdfhttps://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/data-centres-could-...
Norway seems poised to build out significantly. They're actively inviting datacenters [1]. They also seem to have lower electric costs for large businesses [2] vs Ireland [3]. FAANG are already populating the Nordics too [4].
1: https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/norway-wants-data-centers-to-locate-there-and-be-more-sustainable-too/
2: https://www.statista.com/statistics/595859/electricity-industry-price-norway/
3: https://www.statista.com/statistics/595806/electricity-industry-price-ireland/
4: https://www.zdnet.com/pictures/the-nordic-datacenter-boom/The same climate benefits apply to northern England and Scotland, but Great Britain's grid's capacity has around 10 times the capacity.
(Ireland's grid's peak demand was 6.8GW, Great Britain's 63GW.)
Although the same argument then applies for siting the datacentres in continental Europe, where the grid is around 667GW. Perhaps this is part of Facebook's reasoning for a second datacentre in Denmark.
(Most of Denmark, including Facebook's existing datacentre, is connected to the continental European grid. The eastern islands are part of the Scandinavian grid.)
[1] https://www.thelocal.dk/20211013/facebook-eyes-second-danish...
units '500W * 1 year * 0.20 €/kWh' '€'
€ 876
Not as large as some may expect once you factor in power delivery guarantee and redundancy. But basically yes. Every single HyperScaler has been pointing out electricity as one of their largest item on their TCO, 2nd only to hardware cost.