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Stephen Shankland
@stshank@mstdn.social  ·  activity timestamp 2 months ago

People today worry about data center power use, so here's a little history from one of the earliest computers: "With minimal cooling technology – two 20-horsepower blowers – ENIAC raised the room temperature to 50ºC when in operation and its 160kW energy consumption caused blackouts in the city of Philadelphia."

https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/analysis/eniac-at-75-a-pioneer-of-computing/

#Computing#Power #History

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Penguin
@PenguinToot@twit.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 months ago
@stshank Thank you, great article & fascinating history. I wrote programs for an IBM 360 on punch cards in the 1960’s, and my father wrote an article in the 1950’s for a trade magazine about how to use a computer (he had just bought one for his office) to calculate mortgage payments for 1000’s of houses.
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Eric Mitch
@eric@mammut.ericmitch.com replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 months ago
@stshank the ENIAC burned 160kW in 1800 sq/ft. The new Nvidia rack design burns 80kw in a 2sq/ft and 7ft tall. AWS Google and Meta want to pack thousands of racks in a data center. You need to start taking gigawatts not kilowatts
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