Power grid is overbuilt for rare peak days. 99% of the time it has massive excess capacity sitting idle. We should design data centers to flex: throttle down or shift load when the grid needs it most. Use the idle power instead of forcing endless new buildouts.
Why isn’t this happening?
Here's my conversation with Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, the most valuable & one of the most influential companies in the history of human civilization. It is the engine powering the AI revolution.
This was a fascinating & inspiring conversation, in parts super-technical on engineering of every part of the AI stack, memory, power, supply chain (TSMC, ASML, etc), in parts about leadership & psychology, and in parts personal & philosophical about life, consciousness, mortality, and human nature.
It's here on X in full and is up everywhere else (see comment).
Timestamps:
0:00 - Introduction
0:33 - Extreme co-design and rack-scale engineering
3:18 - How Jensen runs NVIDIA
22:40 - AI scaling laws
37:40 - Biggest blockers to AI scaling laws
39:23 - Supply chain
41:18 - Memory
47:24 - Power
52:43 - Elon and Colossus
56:11 - Jensen's approach to engineering and leadership
1:01:37 - China
1:09:50 - TSMC and Taiwan
1:15:04 - NVIDIA's moat
1:20:41 - AI data centers in space
1:24:30 - Will NVIDIA be worth $10 trillion?
1:34:39 - Leadership under pressure
1:48:25 - Video games
1:55:16 - AGI timeline
1:57:29 - Future of programming
2:11:01 - Consciousness
2:17:22 - Mortality