AI boom could leave an e-waste trail that wraps 6 times around Earth
Report says estimates focused on GPUs miss the mountains of power, cooling, and networking gear destined for scrap..
Report says estimates focused on GPUs miss the mountains of power, cooling, and networking gear destined for scrap.
The short version
- Previous estimates have focused chiefly on servers and accelerators such as GPUs, which account for just 13 percent of a datacenter's equipment by weight, the report says.
- Once power, networking, cooling, and other infrastructure are included, the total could be 40 to 60 times higher than the most widely cited academic projections.
- The report identifies five equipment categories comprising networking, power distribution, backup power systems, servers plus accelerators, and cooling.
What happened
Together, these add up to about 7,000 metric tons for a reference 100 MW AI bit barn, much of which will have to be replaced when the facility is upgraded, it argues. BAN's model starts with what the industry says it intends to build and calculates the potential waste implied by that expansion.
Why it matters
It estimates that AI infrastructure will generate between 395 million and 617 million tonnes of e-waste from 2025 to 2050.
Summary by Nerd News Network. Read the full article at The Register — Networks via the links above and below.