太空数据中心：一场即将到来的革命
演讲者即将迎来一个历史性的时刻——他的团队将把首个AI数据中心发射到太空。这一壮举不仅标志着人类探索太空的新篇章，更预示着一种颠覆性的技术愿景：将数据中心建在地球之外。尽管发射现场与演讲台截然不同，但演讲者幽默地表示，他依然会像现在一样，怀揣着不“坠毁”的希望，甚至会穿上他那条“幸运内裤”，以示对这项前所未有挑战的重视。这次发射之所以特殊，在于它将是首次尝试将AI数据中心送入太空，并搭载Nvidia H100芯片，这是一种比以往任何进入太空的计算设备强大约100倍的GPU（图形处理器，用于并行计算的专用处理器，尤其适用于AI和图形渲染）或AI算力（指人工智能模型训练和推理所需的计算能力）。这仅仅是更大愿景的第一步——在太空中建造几乎所有的数据中心。演讲者将论证，太空充沛的能源和极低的温度，将使在太空中建造数据中心比在地球上更具优势。
Original English
This time next week, I will be at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Base, nervously awaiting the launch of our first spacecraft. Much about that setting will be different from this one, but there are a few things that will remain the same. For example, like now, in a week's time, I will also be hoping not to crash and burn. (Laughter) And like now, in a week's time, I will again be wearing my same lucky underpants. That's not a joke. (Laughter) So what about the spacecraft next week makes it so special that it warrants a rare second weekly appearance of said undergarment? (Laughs) It's because it will be the first time that anybody has tried to launch an AI data center to space. More specifically, we will be the first to launch the Nvidia H100 chip to space, which is about 100 times more powerful GPU, or AI compute, than has ever been in space before. In fact, this spacecraft is the first step in a much larger vision to build almost all data centers in space. And today I will make the case for this idea. The idea that the abundant energy and cold temperatures in space will soon mean that it makes much more sense to build data centers in space than it does to build them on Earth.AI算力需求激增与地球资源的瓶颈
为何我们需要更多的数据中心？这背后既有诱人的“胡萝卜”，也有令人警惕的“大棒”。“胡萝卜”是AI带来的巨大潜力，例如新癌症疗法、自动驾驶汽车以及人人都能拥有的超级智能伴侣。要实现这些承诺，我们需要大量新建数据中心和能源项目来为其供能。然而，“大棒”则是不容忽视的现实风险——被竞争国家甩在后面，这对于美国而言，具有极其严峻的国家安全隐患。
那么，为何不能继续在地球上建造数据中心来满足需求？一些预测显示，仅在未来三年内，美国就需要额外50至100吉瓦（Gigawatt: 十亿瓦，衡量电力容量的单位）的电力，相当于新建50至100座核电站，才能满足AI带来的爆炸性增长。然而，审批和建设的限制使得这一目标几乎不可能实现，并已导致能源价格飙升。更严峻的是，数据中心巨大的散热需求正在消耗地球上的河流和水库资源。演讲者以亚利桑那州图森市为例，该市社区领导者因担忧能源和水资源消耗，一致投票否决了一个大型数据中心项目。这种对能源和水资源的压力，正在全球范围内困扰着城镇的发展。
Original English
But first, why do we need more data centers? Well, there's both a carrot and a stick. As many of the speakers have mentioned, the carrot is the promise of AI. So that's things like new treatments for cancer, self-driving cars, a superintelligent companion in everybody's pocket. In order to realize the promise of AI, we will need many more new data centers and many more new energy projects to power them. So that's the carrot. But there is also a stick, which people don't like to talk about as frequently. And that is the very real risk in being left behind by competitor nations. This comes with very, very real national security implications for the US. So we know we need more data centers, but why not just carry on building them on Earth as we have been? Well, some forecasts suggest that over the next just three years alone, we will need an additional 50 to 100 gigawatts or 50 to 100 new nuclear power stations, in just the US alone to meet the coming demand for AI. Permitting and other constraints mean that this is not possible. And this is basically leading to a dramatic rise in energy prices. And we also are sucking up rivers and reservoirs to keep these data centers cool. A few weeks ago, I was invited down to Tucson, Arizona, to meet with community leaders there. Tucson recently became the first city in the US to unanimously vote to reject a new data center proposal, to a gigawatt scale-data center proposal, in their community, primarily due to concerns about energy and water usage. I spoke with many members of the community. They had been shocked to find out that this new data center proposal would have put a strain on energy and water in the community that would have been a detriment for generations to come. And it's not just Tucson, this is happening in towns and cities across the US and across the world.颠覆性构想的诞生与质疑
想象一下，一个巨大的五吉瓦（Gigawatt）数据中心在太空中运行会是怎样一番景象？演讲者展示了一个15秒的视频片段，描绘了一个Starship（一种由SpaceX开发的巨型火箭系统）大小的航天器，搭载着100吨芯片模块，连接着一个五吉瓦的计算集群，配备四公里长的太阳能电池板和一公里长的散热器。尽管这一设想听起来有些“疯狂”，并且在最初发布时受到了广泛嘲讽，但演讲者强调，革命性的想法往往在初期被视为荒谬。他引用了网友的评论，如“这简直是我见过最愚蠢的鬼话”或“你们这些书呆子不是应该擅长科学吗？”，并坦诚地说，要确定一个想法是否属于“革命性”而非“糟糕的”，往往需要承担风险。
正是出于这种探索精神，为了验证在太空中运行H100芯片的可行性，团队决定采取最直接的方式——建造并发射航天器。这一大胆的构想并非凭空而来。几年前，演讲者在一次周末旅行中参观了SpaceX位于德克萨斯州的Starbase基地，被那里正在建造的、堪比特斯拉生产线的Starship巨型工厂所震撼。他意识到，随着可重复使用火箭（能够多次发射和回收的火箭系统）的发展，如Starship的出现，发射成本（将载荷送入太空所需的费用）可能降低50至100倍，而发射能力（每年能将多少吨物资送入太空）则可能提升1000倍以上。这种指数级的增长，以及来自Blue Origin、Stoke Space等公司的竞争，预示着太空运输能力即将迎来“游戏规则改变者”。这让他联想到科幻小说中的设想，例如艾萨克·阿西莫夫在20世纪40年代提出的太空太阳能概念——在太空中收集太阳能并将其传输回地球。然而，传统的太空太阳能面临能量传输损耗巨大的问题。但低成本的太空发射能力，使得将数据中心直接部署在太空，靠近能源源头，然后仅将处理结果传回地球成为可能，从而避免了能量损耗。
Original English
Now, if you've ever seen a data center, you will know that they are massive. So it can be pretty difficult to imagine what this kind of data center could look like in space. And so I would like to show you a short 15-second clip of what a huge five-gigawatt data center in space might look like. So here you see a Starship-sized spacecraft, and I'll talk about this later, with a 100-ton module of chips connecting to a five-gigawatt cluster with a four-kilometer solar panel with a one-kilometer radiator. And don't worry, this won't block out the sun or anything. (Laughter) So I do know this looks a little bit wacky, by the way. When we first released this video a year and a half ago, as part of our Y-Combinator launch, we got roundly pilloried from all corners. I thought I would share with you a few of the more polite X comments that we got a year and a half ago. "This gotta be the dumbest shit ..." (Laughter) "This gotta be the dumbest shit I ever seen or heard." Fair enough, fair enough. Each has their own opinion. "I thought you nerds were supposed to be good at science." (Laughter) And just to be clear, I literally first got this message when I was inside a particle accelerator testing chips. "Good luck trying to run an h100 in space." To be honest, this is actually very generous. I really appreciate the good wishes. (Laughter) And my personal favorite, "This will never get off the ground, in a very literal sense." (Laughter) It's true that revolutionary ideas often sound stupid at first, but sadly it also happens to be true that most terrible ideas also often sound stupid at first. So how can you be certain of which camp you're in and be sure that you're not in the second camp? Well, it's important to reason from first principles, but I mean, to be very honest, in order to know which camp you're in, most oftentimes it is going to involve taking some risk. If you don't take some risk, you're likely not doing anything consequential. So for us, to know definitively if we can run an h100 in space, the best way to do that is to build a spacecraft and launch it to space. And that's exactly what we're doing with our first spacecraft launching next week. So given how controversial and audacious this idea seems to be, I thought I would share a little bit of context about how this idea came about, and then share some of the pros and some of the cons. A few years ago, I quite randomly on a weekend, decided to take a trip down to Starbase, Texas, where SpaceX is building their new Starship rocket. This wasn't a work trip or anything, I'm just a huge space nerd and this is my idea of a fun weekend. The first stop on the trip is to what they call the Rocket Garden, and it was the first time I had seen the massive new Starship launch vehicle that SpaceX is building. This was impressive, but to be honest, what really impressed me — besides the Texas barbecue, which is amazing — what really impressed me was that across the road from where I'm standing, behind the camera in this image, they are building, or they were building then, by far the largest factory I have ever seen. They're building these two Starship gigafactories that are essentially pretty similar to Tesla production lines, in that they're designed such that within two years they will be rolling one Starship per day off that production line. This is interesting because while the launch cost with reusability might come down by 50 to 100 times, the launch capacity, i.e. how many tons per year you can get to space, might go up by 1,000 times or more. And how is that possible? It's because Starship is the first-ever fully reusable rocket. So, for example, with the current launch vehicle, Falcon 9, if you build a new one every day for a year, at the end of the year, you still only have one Falcon 9 upper stage because it's dispensable. Whereas with Starship, if you build a new one every day for a year, at the end of the year you have 365 starships because they're reusable. And it's not just SpaceX. There's new rockets coming from Blue Origin, Stoke Space, Relativity Space and Rocket Lab. Even if you have a pretty healthy dose of skepticism on their forecasts, the coming capacity is just mind-blowing and will be the real game changer. So this coming capacity reminded me, or got me thinking about the concepts from sci-fi that I remember reading about as a kid or as a teenager under the torch light at night. In the 1940s, Isaac Asimov first wrote about the idea of space-based solar, which is where you have a huge solar panel in space, and then you somehow beam that power down. The problem with space-based solar, though, has always been that you lose most of the energy in transmission from space to Earth. But with low-cost launch, we now have the ability to move things like data centers to space close to the energy source, to consume the energy there and just beam down the results so we don't lose the energy in transmission.太空数据中心的经济可行性与成本比较
演讲者与联合创始人Ezra Feilden和Adi Oltean进行了测算，得出结论：如果发射成本（将载荷送入太空所需的费用）降至每公斤约500美元，而这在Starship的定价范围内，那么太空数据中心将具备经济可行性。那么，这个500美元/公斤的数字从何而来？为何太空数据中心的能源成本会低于地球？
为了回答这个问题，演讲者将太空太阳能项目与地球上的太阳能项目进行比较，因为地球上的太阳能目前是最便宜的能源形式。地球上的太阳能项目有三大主要成本：
- 许可用地成本（Permitted Land: 获得政府批准用于建设的土地）：这通常是最大的一笔开销，尤其是在北美，且与能源价格挂钩。
- 电池储能成本（Battery Storage: 储存电能以备不时之需的系统）：需要白天充电，以便夜间供电。
- 太阳能电池板成本：即光伏板本身的费用。
相比之下，太空太阳能项目具有显著优势：
- 无需许可用地。
- 无需电池储能，因为在太空中可以24/7接收阳光。
- 仅需六分之一的太阳能电池板，因为一平方米的太空太阳能电池板产生的能量是地球上同等面积的六倍。
然而，太空项目也存在额外成本，最主要的就是发射成本——将芯片、太阳能电池板和散热器送入太空的费用。但通过计算可以清晰地看到，当发射成本低于许可用地、电池储能以及六倍太阳能电池板的总成本时，就达到了盈亏平衡点。而这个临界点，正是演讲者提出的每公斤500美元的发射成本。
Original English
I ran the numbers with my cofounders, Ezra Feilden and Adi Oltean, and we came to the conclusion that if the launch cost gets to around 500 dollars a kilo, which is well within Starship launch prices, then the data centers in space will be economically viable. So that's how the idea came about. But where does this 500 dollars a kilo number come from? And how is it that energy for data centers in space will be cheaper than on Earth? Well, let's run a comparison with a data center on Earth, with a solar project on Earth to power a data center, because solar on Earth is the cheapest form of energy we have right now. So you have three big costs with a solar project on Earth. Number one is the cost of permitted land. This is actually the biggest cost or can be the biggest cost, particularly in North America, where it's linked to the energy price. Number two, you have the cost of battery storage because you need to charge the batteries during the day so that you have power at night. And number three, you have the cost of the solar cells themselves. So how does that compare with a solar project in space? Well, number one, on the plus side, we don't need permitted land. We don't need battery storage because we're 24/7 in the sun, and we need six times less solar cells. Since one square meter of solar panel in space produces six times the energy of one square meter of solar panel on Earth. But there's a few additional costs in space. So I mentioned we're going to need six times less solar. But there's one big cost, which is we need the launch cost. The launches to get the chips, solar panels and radiators to space. But now you can see very clearly that there is clearly a breakeven point where the launch cost is below the cost of permitted land, batteries and six times the solar. And we see that launch cost to be around 500 dollars a kilo, as I mentioned, which is well within range of the Starship launch price.资源竞争与人类的未来：从联合国到戴森球
演讲最后，演讲者将目光投向了更宏大的视角。他回顾了国际间在AI领域的竞争，以及近年来欧洲爆发的数代人以来首场大规模战争，指出大规模战争的根源在于对资源的争夺。他预测，在未来一个世纪里，国家间最大的竞争将围绕数据中心的能源和水资源展开。
演讲者引用了1945年在同一房间签署的《联合国宪章》，强调了联合国在维护二战后和平方面的重要作用。他引用宪章中的话：“我们联合国人民，决心不让后代重受战祸……”，并表示，为了拯救我们的子孙后代免受战争之苦，最有效的方式将是停止争夺地球上有限的资源，转而利用我们太阳系乃至银河系近乎无限的能源。
他展望未来：一周后，首个AI数据中心将发射升空；十年内，大部分新建数据中心将因能源需求而建在太空；而五十年后，如果他坚持穿戴幸运内裤，或许人类已经开始着手建造戴森球（Dyson Sphere: 一种假设的巨型结构，用于捕获恒星的全部能量），以全面利用太阳的能量。这不仅是对技术潜力的描绘，更是对人类文明发展方向的深刻思考和呼吁。
Original English
I'll finish with this. Earlier, I mentioned the competition between nations for AI, and over the last few years, we've seen rising tensions with the first hot war in Europe in generations. At its root, the biggest driver of large-scale war is competition for resources. And over the coming century, the biggest competition between nations will be for energy and water for data centers. Some of you might know that in 1945, the United Nations Charter was first signed in this very room, on this very stage where I'm standing right now. Look at the curtains in this image and the chandeliers, they are the same curtains that you will see. It happened in this room. We might take it for granted right now, but the United Nations has helped keep us safe since the second World War until now. And as the grandchild of two British World War II veterans, the words of the charter, the promise of their generation to ours, still move me every time I think of them: "We, the people of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind." The most effective way that we can save our own children and grandchildren from the scourge of war will be to stop competing over the fundamentally finite resources of Earth, and to start utilizing the near limitless energy of our solar system and eventually of our galaxy. In a week's time, I'll be watching the first AI data center launch to space. In ten years' time, most new data centers will be being built in space for the energy. And who knows, maybe in 50 years' time, if I keep wearing my lucky underpants -- (Laughter) We may have started work on a Dyson sphere to help harness the full power of our sun. Thank you. (Applause)📌 文中提及的人物和组织
产品/模型: Nvidia H100, Starship