
DeepMind AI Reduces Google Data Centre Cooling Bill by 40% - ernesto95
https://deepmind.com/blog?t=1
======
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12126298](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12126298)

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ankurdhama
Replace the word "AI" with "optimisation algorithm" and you are safe from AI
hype.

~~~
erelde
What _is_ an "AI" ?

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ankurdhama
AI is a field of research with the goal of creating a computational model of
human cognition, that's the scientific part. The engineering part is then to
build a system based on the computational model such that this single system
can be used as a general purpose problem solver.

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empath75
This is pretty stunning and should make a lot of knowledge workers terrified.
I'm sure Google has a bunch of really smart guys working on figuring out how
to reduce energy costs. To have a computer come in and get those kinds of
results on the first attempt is pretty mindblowing.

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jboggan
We have some really smart gals too!

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jsmthrowaway
This is why I prefer the nonspecific "meat sack," though I'll admit mine is
often more cumbersome in general usage. (Seriously: "folks" is what I tend to
use to avoid this situation. Any time you find yourself saying "guys," folks
will work.)

~~~
jordanthoms
With the caveat that you end up sounding like a politician

~~~
jsmthrowaway
If you s/guys/folks/ in that comment and think it sounds like a politician,
I'm quite intrigued by who your politicians are. Kill this thread and don't
reply to me, though, we are super off topic.

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refulgentis
[http://www.buzzfeed.com/johntemplon/confirmed-obama-says-
the...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/johntemplon/confirmed-obama-says-the-word-
folks-a-lot) [https://www.quora.com/Why-does-President-Obama-like-and-
use-...](https://www.quora.com/Why-does-President-Obama-like-and-use-the-word-
folks-so-much)

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argonaut
Always fascinating how it turns out many ideas in research were already tested
in the past (of course DeepMind is most likely aware of and has improved on
prior work).

From NIPS in 2008: "Managing Power Consumption and Performance of Computing
Systems Using Reinforcement Learning"
([http://papers.nips.cc/paper/3251-managing-power-
consumption-...](http://papers.nips.cc/paper/3251-managing-power-consumption-
and-performance-of-computing-systems-using-reinforcement-learning.pdf))

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pm90
> _Our machine learning system was able to consistently achieve a 40 percent
> reduction in the amount of energy used for cooling, which equates to a 15
> percent reduction in overall PUE after accounting for electrical losses and
> other non-cooling inefficiencies_

So the actual savings were 15%? Which is still significant for sure. I'm
guessing their next step will be to reduce those non-cooling inefficiencies.

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kevindong
I'm very interested in exactly what actions the machine learning algorithms
recommended Google take.

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MichaelApproved
This wasn't clear to me either. The best I could understand was from this
statement

" _The purpose of these predictions is to simulate the recommended actions
from the PUE model, to ensure that we do not go beyond any operating
constraints._ "

Seems that the action was to deliver the _perfect_ amount of cooling needed
for the current/predicted load. I'm guessing the old model was sloppy with the
cooling and used more power to keep the servers cooler than they needed to be.

~~~
theDoug
Yep, all systems until literally ideal will have efficiencies to iron out.
Unless your data center is identical to Google's, taking any specifics to play
would likely be ineffective advice!

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vessenes
This makes me wonder what a next-gen datacenter would look like; far more
control points, far more data gathering, probably some combination of high-
and low-inertia cooling with different characteristics -- essentially you are
going to want to start giving your NN more knobs to tweak.

That seems very singularity/jackpot-ish to me. Cool, but will have some
interesting unexpected consequences, I bet.

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zer0gravity
At some point in the near future the AI itself will be posting blog posts
about its achievements.

Very soon after that, the AI will be revisiting the stored history of the
internet, will be reading this post, and laugh its ass bits off...

HELLO FROM THE PAST! WE WERE HUMANS!

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cranesan
"We are planning to roll out this system more broadly and will share how we
did it in an upcoming publication, so that other data centre and industrial
system operators -- and ultimately the environment -- can benefit from this
major step forward."

Please do, I am hungry for details here. The one chart they put in has no
scale on it's axis, and as another comment pointed out, they didn't give any
details about what recommendations were followed to achieve the improvements.

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hyh1048576
Very cool. I wonder how many more sensors do they installed to collect
necessary data.

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amasad
I'd be interested in learning how much saving this is in dollars -- anyone
here knowledgeable enough in data centre cooling to estimate this?

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tener
I wonder if anyone has done the math on total cost savings for Google and how
it will impact their earnings/stock price.

