Las Vegas' dystopia-sphere, powered by 150 Nvidia GPUs and drawing up to 28,000,000 watts, is both a testament to the hubris of humanity and an admittedly impressive technical feat | PC Gamer

28,000,000 watts

That's usually written as 28MW. I know some Americans don't like metric much, but one of the points of metric is that you don't ever need to write that many zeroes - you just need to use the right prefix (kilo, mega, giga, tera, etc) on the unit.

Ok, so it's "capable of drawing" enough power for 20,000 homes in the area. How much does it actually use day to day? Does it dim at night and brighten in the daytime to keep those ads rolling in the sunshine?

Currently, an agreement is under review to ensure that 70% of the Sphere's power needs will come from solar sources, with the other 30% from non-renewable energy that will be offset by renewable energy credits.

Nevada has pledged to achieve net zero emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050, and the solar project under construction to help offset its energy debt is estimated to complete in 2027.

How stupid is it that somebody can claim “Net Zero” greenhouse gas emissions when 30% of their power is greenhouse gas.

Just gonna throw this out there. Fuck credits, charge a carbon tax.

The power of 21000 homes for advertising.

What's most impressive is that it is even legal.

Currently, an agreement is under review to ensure that 70% of the Sphere's power needs will come from solar sources, with the other 30% from non-renewable energy that will be offset by renewable energy credits.

Ahh yes, energy credits. AKA bullshit.

I mean it is cool. But really a testament to why we deserve extinction at this point...

Las Vegas in general is a testament to the hubris of humanity and an admittedly impressive technical feat. Does it even exist without the Hoover Dam?

"Capable of drawing 28,000,000 watts of power" doesn't tell us anything. As was noted, it should've been given in megawatts (28 mW) or kilowatts (28,000 kW). Clickbait aside, how many kilowatt-hours (kWh) does it actually use?

28 mW isn't that much energy, relatively speaking. As of 2015, Forbes estimated LV uses 8000 mW on an average summer day.

The potential is impressive. I doubt it pulls anywhere near that. Unless I did my math wrong, this seems sensationalist.

It's funny, I think Vegas is perfectly fine as the city of sin so things like this really don't phase me. It was built on the idea of crime and excess.

What does seem weird to me is how in a desert, why isn't everything solar? The sun is their only natural resource besides sand. Every rooftop and parking lot and flat surface possible seems like it should be a panel.

I don't know what they need so many GPUs for. There's 16 displays inside, and the sphere itself has fewer pixels than even 1 of the internal displays. You could probably run the sphere off a laptop if you aren't trying to do anything fancy.

Maybe they plan on doing crazy live simulations on it or something. I can't imagine what kind of displayed image would actually use all 150 of them. Nvidia A6000 cards are damn powerful.

Wouldn't just one GPU be enough to run the Sphere, or a I getting something wrong?

I remember hearing about that it's not exactly high resolution, each "pixel" being a bunch of pretty large lamps.

And a waste of electricity?

Wait, why do they need 150 GPUs for a 1.2 megapixel display?

That's less than 1080p!

Who engineered this monstrosity?

Might as well just give up on the earth right now I guess

That article gets stuck so much and makes my (relatively high end) laptop's fan scream so hard you'd think the website was designed for that kind of hardware.

Is the 'dystopia-sphere' trying to compete with the torment nexus or something?

It would be impressive it could be done without destroying our planet. This should impress no one.

I hope the name “dystopia sphere” catches on.

Add a solar array and battery bank, a you might even have electricity left over. It’s in the desert after all.

If they reversed it (displays inside), it would be the best immersive gaming setup ever.

Edit: looks like they are inside.

Using the max power use of a video card to math this is ridiculous. It's not at full TDP pushing this content. They aren't playing max FPS 3D raytraced gaming, they're playing videos.

That pretty much describes all of Vegas.

A bomb that could destroy Earth's core would be an admittedly impressive technical feat!

And unless it displays a picture of Mr. House it's all for naught

In 2030 this will just be the standard system requirements for AAA games because optimization is hard.

So how is the total power over 500x that of the GPU power? If it's all LEDs, that thing must get brighter than the damn sun.

I guess they dont need to pay for heating when you have a bunch of high power computers pumping out a crap ton of heat

At every stage of it’s life cycle; the Sphere has been the dumbest thing imaginable

And because some rich people got scammed into buying in now everyone has to advertise it

Useless

We need more nuclear power ASAP

They tried to build this abomination in London and it got shot down.

Normally I'd be suspicious of these kinds of megastructure projects but Vegas is the city that figured out how to get damn close to net zero water use from the Colorado so I'm willing to start off with the benefit of the doubt for the city leaders that ok'd this.

Look upon my works ye mighty and despair.

someone pay to put the Lemmy logo on it, i heard there was a way to pay for an image to show up

Kinda feels like humanity is in the process of jumping the shark on this one

Big doesn't equate to impressive, it doesn't seem highly technical... More inevitable, and kinda sad.

The non-stop anti-humanity propaganda is exhausting.

Shame

You all go ooo and aaaa then yell at oil companies for climate change.

God you guys cant have any fun. Yeah it uses power but cant we have cool things once and awhile?

The whole uses lots of energy therefore bad argument is complete bullshit. Energy usage is directly proportional to technological development and technology is effectively human evolution.