ASIC Clouds - academic perspective

[aa7356]

Dear fellows,

I would like to learn more about design datacenter tailored for ASIC energy efficiency.

My start point is: Extreme Datacenter Specialization for Planet-Scale Computing: ASIC Clouds.

I would greatly appreciate kindly a feedback on my research.

ps, forgot to mention the paper's Abstract...

Planet-scale applications are driving the exponential growth of the cloud, and datacenter specialization is the key enabler of this trend, providing order of magnitudes improvements in cost-effectiveness and energy-efficiency. While exascale computing remains a goal for supercomputing, specialized datacenters have emerged and have demonstrated beyond-exascale performance and efficiency in specific domains. This paper generalizes the applications, design methodology, and deployment challenges of the most extreme form of specialized datacenter: ASIC Clouds. It analyzes two game-changing, real-world ASIC Clouds–Bitcoin Cryptocurrency Clouds and Tensor Processing Clouds–discuss their incentives, the empowering technologies and how they benefit from the specialized ASICs. Their business models, architectures and deployment methods are useful for envisioning future potential ASIC Clouds and forecasting how they will transform computing, the economy and society.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

That is a bunch of malarkey and marketing doublespeak. Aside from sheer power density of the equipment in the racks there is no difference between a 'normal' data center and ones built for dedicated purposes such as mining or protein folding.

All the same design rules apply to both of them: The need for power and network stability/backup, good efficient cooling and comprehensive operations monitoring is the same. Again, the only thing different is that the increased power density translates into much higher power & cooling requirements.

[philipma1957]

Yeah lots of air flow and good filters.
Good reliable internet.
Power must stay stable.

The ability to monitor gear.
And the ability to access gear to change settings.

All of the above are good for both asics and pc’s.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Ja. Really, the one major difference between mines and general-purpose DC's is the business model behind them. A data center takes all comers and know that anyone who needs servers can use their services. Even more to the point is that typical DC customers are not concerned about day-to-day fiat exchange rates.

Mines of any sort have just 1 type of customer and that means it is more risky because those customers are at the mercy of crypto-to-fiat exchange rates. When exchange margins get tighter many miner customers start scaling back and even drop out of the game.

[mikeywith]

That's true, while the risk is far greater, the profit margin in mining centers is much higher than those in normal datacenters, this allows the former to charge more and thus profit more.

The main technical difference is that mining centers have much more power than what datacenters need, which means they are creating unrealistic supply which can't operate under normal conditions when mining isn't profitable, before I set up my own farm I visited one of the largest data centers in my city since power here is almost free, their rate was pretty cheap, it was cheaper for me to have them host my miners than me building my own place, the problem was that my required power was way too much for them, although I only asked for 0.5MW worth of electricity.

The sales manager was quite surprised and he didn't even try to negotiate with me, he smiled and said "this is way too much for us to accept, I am afraid we are not able to work with you", It felt like my requirements alone are higher than what they have in total, and since these guys were pretty large compared to others, I figured out that I shouldn't waste time trying to find another datacenter and that I should just build my own farm.