Meta Engineer Claims Only Two Additional Nuclear Power Plants Needed to Meet Global AI Inference Energy Demand


With the popularity of AI applications for farming prawns, the demand for terminal computing power has surged. Apple's Mac mini has become popular due to its high energy efficiency, leading to a temporary shortage and price premium in the market. Taobao's 100 Billion Subsidy has launched a special session to stabilize prices through official subsidies. Among them, the Mac mini equipped with M4 chip is now available at 3999 Yuan, offering significant discounts.
Google's latest report reveals AI energy consumption, highlighting Gemini model's data for the first time. It emphasizes sustainability in AI, noting rapid growth but significant environmental impact.....
Recently, a new study from the University of Michigan found that an energy-efficient method for training large language models can achieve similar results in the same amount of time while reducing energy consumption by 30%. This method can save enough energy to power 1.1 million American households by 2026. The researchers developed a software tool named Perseus that identifies the critical path, which is a series of subtasks requiring the longest time to complete. Then, Perseus reduces the processor speed on non-critical paths so that all tasks can finish simultaneously.
Cerebras Systems has launched Cerebras Inference, claiming it to be the fastest AI inference service in the world, achieving performance that surpasses traditional GPU-based systems by 20 times with significantly improved cost-effectiveness, particularly suitable for processing large language models (LLMs). Its 8B version processes 1800 tokens per second, while the 70B version processes 450 tokens, with speed and cost-performance far exceeding NVIDIA GPU solutions.
Using AI to generate images, write emails, or ask chatbots contributes a certain burden to the planet. The energy consumed to generate an image using AI is equivalent to charging a mobile phone fully. The energy consumption for generating text is lower, as generating text 1000 times only consumes 16% of a mobile phone's charging capacity. The use of large generative AI models is more energy-intensive than smaller models.