Andrew Stephen Werner
He/Him · Dual citizen of 🇺🇸 USA & Croatia 🇭🇷
A man · Independent voter
Cutting expenses · For equitable management
+1 (615) 768-9920
andrew@andrewwerner.com

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Infrastructure & Automation

3D integrated circuits and neuromorphic processing that avoids systolic arrays (this video explains it well), are the future, and AI is needed to design them. Proprietary software is too expensive for me. The closest open source equivalents require development to catch up. ASML lithography machines are still the best, and there’s only a couple fabs in the world that can afford them. The licenses for proprietary instruction set architectures (ISA) are also too expensive for me. I love RISC-V’s free and open source nature. It’s backed by the Linux Foundation. It now has mainline GPU support, but it’s still not as featureful as x86-64/ARM. I wish for Sylkan to remove the Rusticl-on-Zink translation and go straight to Vulkan.

Concerning the environmental footprint of AI, I like this article funded by the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism. Most data centers are inefficient. They consume massive amounts of energy and water, straining our resources. I’ve found some developing solutions we may see soon:

As a preface, energy powers data centers, generating that energy often consumes water, and water is also used to cool the data center and dissipate the heat created in the process of computation.

Compute & Storage: Use efficient processors and storage. Similarly, hard drives for SSDs—especially EDSFF form factors, which offer higher storage density in a smaller footprint, cutting energy use and cooling needs.

Cooling: Build data centers in colder climates, and adopt efficient cooling technologies. Two-phase immersion cooling fascinates me. It’s wild to see expensive computers submerged in what looks like water, but it’s actually a non-conductive (dielectric) refrigerant. Submerged in a reservoir, the computers heat up, the refrigerant boils and evaporates, the gas cools on a condenser back into a liquid, then returns to the reservoir. Some older refrigerants were per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) which are terrible for the environment, but regulations spurred safer and more sustainable alternatives like hydrofluoroolefins (HFOs). These still contain fluorine, but fluorine is found in most modern refrigerants due to having chemical properties that are generally well suited for transferring heat. The European Union’s push (Regulation (EU) 2024/573) to phase out hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) by 2050 worried me. Though, HFOs are not included in the EU’s phase-out initiative, nor the EU PFAS Restriction Proposal (REACH). Instead, controls are introduced based on global warming potential (GWP) thresholds, and thankfully HFOs have a low GWP.

Energy: Hot take: some molten salt reactors (MSRs) don’t need water for cooling and can deliver the energy exascale data centers demand. It’s nuclear, but when done right, it is safe and pretty clean. If you’re anti-uranium, thorium is an excellent alternative that thrives in MSRs. Either way, the fuel can be recycled to reduce nuclear waste buildup: about 96% of uranium fuel is recyclable, and thorium fuel offers even greater recyclability, with nearly all of it being reusable.

Beyond this, software should be efficient, and waste heat from data centers should be repurposed. While heat pipes efficiently transfer heat over short to moderate distances, they are not ideal for long-range transfer. Given this, a viable option for repurposing waste heat is to supply warmth to nearby buildings including ancillary facilities on the data center campus and local communities. Other options exist, but using heat for warmth makes sense to me.