75% of UK Film/TV workers considering leaving the industry!

[junkmale]

But none of that considers the environmental impacts. Benn Jordan is doing some good work on that in the US at the moment.

I'd be interested to know how much of that is AI and how much is just the Cloud in general. With Microsoft pushing their 365 services, Google pushing their online Docs and various similar services, we would have been needing a certain amount of data centre capacity even if there was no AI.

Plus, data centres may well mean that less computing power is needed in offices and homes. 15 years ago we may have had multiple computers in a home which would have been taking a few hundred watts each (particularly with CRT monitors). Modern computers take just a few tens of watts.

the difference in resources used by traditional data centres and the ones built/being built for EhAye is eye-wateringly different.

currently, there are proposals lodged with UK power generators for projects (not necessarily all EhAye related, but largely) that have a total requirement of 50GW.
to put that into context, UK power consumption this winter peaked at 45GW.

there are reasons why Microsoft have signed a contract with Westinghouse to get Three Mile Island restarted, and all other big players are looking at local nuclear reactors too.
trouble with that is it takes a lot longer to get an NR online than it does to build a DC, so in the meantime it's back to fossil fuel power generation.
you should see what's happened to the market for second-hand jet engines from decommisioned airliners!

[OneWorld]

Motor Racing? nope
Football/Rugby? nope
Boxing? nope

It's ........Golf!

probably because there's exponentially more golfists than the others you mention!

Except that it isn't

[Arpangel]

I’m not surprised by this.

An angle that also worries me is that I don’t want to see films and TV generated by AI, but I’m not going to have much choice about it.

fortunately, there is a an enormous 'back-catalog' of film & telly shot on 16 & 35mm film, by actual cameramen, of actual actors, orchestrated by actual directors - more great visual works than there's time to watch them

And a lot of the good ones are British, done by people who were "just doing their job" public information films, documentaries and of course, those wonderful BBC Trade Test Colour films.

[junkmale]

.....If we were a virus, we'd be Ebola, killing our hosts before they can get to any airport.

I think that's exactly what we are - Planet Earth is our host, our life support system giving us air to breathe, water to drink and food to eat.
And we're rapidly destroying the very thing that gives us life

In one of his stories, Stanislaw Lem suggests that what we think is cosmic background radiation is in fact an alien jamming/cloaking signal, with all the rest of the intelligent life in the universe praying "Please $deity don't let the earthlings find our planet, have you seen what they're doing to theirs?"

[amanise]

.....If we were a virus, we'd be Ebola, killing our hosts before they can get to any airport.

I think that's exactly what we are - Planet Earth is our host, our life support system giving us air to breathe, water to drink and food to eat.
And we're rapidly destroying the very thing that gives us life

In one of his stories, Stanislaw Lem suggests that what we think is cosmic background radiation is in fact an alien jamming/cloaking signal, with all the rest of the intelligent life in the universe praying "Please $deity don't let the earthlings find our planet, have you seen what they're doing to theirs?"

Tin foil hat punches through it though !

[junkmale]

Motor Racing? nope
Football/Rugby? nope
Boxing? nope

It's ........Golf!

probably because there's exponentially more golfists than the others you mention!

Except that it isn't

well, a quick look around shows 22.4million people engaged with golf
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/golf/66772678
versus 70,000 motor racing licence holders https://www.motorsportuk.org/record-br ... otorsport/
and 27,000 registered boxers
https://www.englandboxing.org/wp-conten ... Report.pdf

that's quite a difference!

[junkmale]

... Modern computers take just a few tens of watts....

hmm, not sure about that James - possibly some low-end laptops might only be drawing that, but I'm pretty sure most desktops are still drawing hundreds of watts, I know mine are.

indeed the Dell Precision chassis I set up for our gaming rig has an 850W psu, which it needs to run the graphics card rated at 450W!!

[BigRedX]

hmm, not sure about that James - possibly some low-end laptops might only be drawing that, but I'm pretty sure most desktops are still drawing hundreds of watts, I know mine are.

indeed the Dell Precision chassis I set up for our gaming rig has an 850W psu, which it needs to run the graphics card rated at 450W!!

Depends on the computer you have.

I just looked up the power consumption specs for my current Mac Studio M2Max which is 9W at idle and a maximum of 145W at full load. Compare that with my previous MacPro 5,1 which was a minimum of 115W at idle and up to 350W at full load with a high quality graphics card (which mine had). That's significant power saving and it is noticeable in the temperature in my home office where I now have to have the radiator on during the winter, whereas before the Mac was kicking sufficient excess heat to keep me warm.

[R_A]

Makes sense to me at least and I wonder why there is the alarm about AI. Yes it will mean jobs are displaced, so what's new?

Two things:
1) the speed of the change - adaptation takes time and requires systems to change as well as individuals.
2) the horrendous environmental damage that is being wrought by this technology. I know that's not new, but again, it's about the speed of the impact (and how companies are trampling over or ignoring existing legislation).

Drew, I agreed on points

Though it's worth factoring in that speed of the change is slowing down a lot now. The upgrades between the early AI models were leaps, they are now moving in slow steps.

Cal Newport is a reliable source on this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ijt8lV6b7QY

I'd encourage anyone in audio post or TV to take a breath and see how they feel in 18 months time.

[MOF]

That's significant power saving and it is noticeable in the temperature in my home office where I now have to have the radiator on during the winter, whereas before the Mac was kicking sufficient excess heat to keep me warm.

My Mac Book Pro 17” used to keep me lovely and warm, and later on too warm.

[junkmale]

hmm, not sure about that James - possibly some low-end laptops might only be drawing that, but I'm pretty sure most desktops are still drawing hundreds of watts, I know mine are.

indeed the Dell Precision chassis I set up for our gaming rig has an 850W psu, which it needs to run the graphics card rated at 450W!!

Depends on the computer you have.

I just looked up the power consumption specs for my current Mac Studio M2Max which is 9W at idle and a maximum of 145W at full load. Compare that with my previous MacPro 5,1 which was a minimum of 115W at idle and up to 350W at full load with a high quality graphics card (which mine had). That's significant power saving and it is noticeable in the temperature in my home office where I now have to have the radiator on during the winter, whereas before the Mac was kicking sufficient excess heat to keep me warm.

very nice!
that's definitely a lot more compact form factor than a trad desktop/tower chassis
and ditto keeping warm in the home studio - by leaving the heating off in the rest of the house it encourages me to lurk at my desk!!

[junkmale]

That's significant power saving and it is noticeable in the temperature in my home office where I now have to have the radiator on during the winter, whereas before the Mac was kicking sufficient excess heat to keep me warm.

My Mac Book Pro 17” used to keep me lovely and warm, and later on too warm.

I believe some of the early release iPhones kept their owners back pockets a bit too warm as well!!

[Arpangel]

I’ve got no objection to machines doing all the work, but human beings (myself excluded) always seem to want to do stuff, loads of it, I just don’t understand that, I’m happy just doing nothing, sitting watching the seagulls on the chimneys.

[BigRedX]

very nice!
that's definitely a lot more compact form factor than a trad desktop/tower chassis

The downside is that all my data drives now have to be housed in a separate enclosure. However the energy savings are still significant even when working hard the Mac and drive enclosure only rise slightly above the ambient temperature of my office rather than making a significant contribution to the heating.

[James Perrett]

... Modern computers take just a few tens of watts....

hmm, not sure about that James - possibly some low-end laptops might only be drawing that, but I'm pretty sure most desktops are still drawing hundreds of watts, I know mine are.

How many people are still using desktops? Serious gamers perhaps, and others with specialist interests maybe, but you no longer see a desktop computer in every house like you would have 20 years ago.

[OneWorld]

... Modern computers take just a few tens of watts....

hmm, not sure about that James - possibly some low-end laptops might only be drawing that, but I'm pretty sure most desktops are still drawing hundreds of watts, I know mine are.

How many people are still using desktops? Serious gamers perhaps, and others with specialist interests maybe, but you no longer see a desktop computer in every house like you would have 20 years ago.

I never expected the difference to be as much, but I went from a tower desktop one of those mini pcs for my 'dogs body' pc. The savings on the cost of electric were quite noticeable.

As an experiment I bought another mini pc, to become my music pc, it's an AMD Ryzen 7 32 gig of ram, 1 TB NVMe which I partitioned to c: d: and added an SSD spare drive and it perfects perfectly well for me - Cubase 15, Halion 7 and some other VSTi it boots in a few seconds.

Where there is a deficiency is in my dogsbody pc, as mentioned in another thread, I need an nVidia GPU to do masking in videos, now that I starting to play about with doing videos using AI. I have looked about and mini pcs with nVidia GPU are few and far between.

Each of my monster desktops had 600watt power supplies.

With the mini pcs I would say I am saving about £1.50-2.00 a day electric (I usually have 2 computers running all day)

Now £2 a day doesn't sound much, but over a month, up £60 savings? that's considerable

[SafeandSound Mastering]

I did this little experiment, an i9 16 core workstation here uses 82W under some load (serial process test). That could rise significantly for heavy duty parallel processing.

https://www.soundonsound.com/forum/view ... hp?t=92266

There is no way I would use a laptop for pro audio work, personally. I like the massive performance of a high spec PC too much, I can choose the PSU spec and so on. All the right cooling in place, all correctly and professionally specced for the job at hand.

I thought it would take me an age to hit close to max ASIO with the i9, I can get that up to 75pct with one single track job if I use some of the heaviest CPU using plug ins I use.

I know a few people still running dektop PCs. This office PC is desktop I am typing on (low spec i3 just for email/internet), for a pro you just have more options when they go wrong, and they do eventually.

[MOF]

I believe some of the early release iPhones kept their owners back pockets a bit too warm as well!! :D

Yes they were warmer, particularly after I'd had a composing session using Garage Band while having a coffee on my regular Saturday out in town.
I see that the new iPhone 17 has a vapour chamber to dissipate the heat, I don't understand why these AI servers need so much water, we've had fan cooled, closed loop, radiator systems similar to that in cars for years.

[Sam Spoons]

The cooling system in a car only needs the fan at low speeds or when stationary, once speeds rise the airflow through the radiator is generated by the car's motion. And at low speeds power output is also low so not so much heat is generated. The server farms have computers running flat out* but without the benefit of motion generated airflow so they need an alternative means of cooling, just drawing cold water from the sea is much cheaper than recycling the water by passing it through a radiator**.

* A bit like a car on a rolling road where they'll usually have much larger external fans forcing air through the radiator.

** And either way the net result is still that the environment around the server farm has to absorb that extra heat energy.

[MOF]

Thanks Sam, but is this true of the latest chips such as Apple Silicon?

[OneWorld]

Thanks Sam, but is this true of the latest chips such as Apple Silicon?

As far as I know, yes just as true, but less so. Any process that includes the physical moving of things produces heat as a side effect. In the case of a cpu, the billions of transistors having an even greater number of electrons whizzing about at the speed of light. As designs become more efficient, the heat produced is less. The Holy Grail of course is a cpu that will run at top speed and not produce heat s a side effect. That heat is energy wasted.

I heard a news bulletin a few years ago that claimed some masters student in a university somewhere had 'stumbled' across the concept of an 'organic' cpu, if memory serves me right, it mimmicked how a flower grows, during growth there is energy transfer, but no heat. I have looked from time to time on the internet to try and track down the progress of the students' but cannot find any trace of even the original story. I am sure it was on the BBC.

I also read somewhere that in China they are working on a cpu that uses optical construction, as opposed to wired connections within the cpu. How on earth that can be done is anyone's guess, but yes if possible, heat dissipation would be much reduced.

I also read that China were on the way to locating data farms offshore on the sea bed, where cooling would be less of an issue. I am sure that too would have considerable challenges to overcome.

I guess it is safe to say that computer might be on the cusp of a great leap forward, spurred on by the voracious demands of AI, and today's cpus are the equivalent of a steam engine. Will we see a cpu of massive power so small it would fit through the eye of a needle?

[James Perrett]

Thanks Sam, but is this true of the latest chips such as Apple Silicon?

As far as I know, yes just as true, but less so. Any process that includes the physical moving of things produces heat as a side effect. In the case of a cpu, the billions of transistors having an even greater number of electrons whizzing about at the speed of light. As designs become more efficient, the heat produced is less. The Holy Grail of course is a cpu that will run at top speed and not produce heat s a side effect. That heat is energy wasted.

In a digital computer that's not how it works. In a modern digital circuit heat is produced each time a transistor switches state.

In an ideal world a transistor would be fully switched on or fully switched off and would change instantly between those two states. When an ideal transistor is fully switched on, the channel resistance (Rds) is zero so no power has to be dissipated by the transistor. When the ideal transistor is fully switched off the channel resistance is infinite so, again, no power is dissipated by the transistor.

In the real world these channel resistances are very close to the ideal so transistors in a static state dissipate very little heat. Most of the heat is produced while the transistor is in the process of switching state. A transistor cannot switch state instantaneously - there will always be a very small amount of time when it is partially on. If you do the calculations you'll find that it dissipates much more heat while it is partially switched on. So the IC designers have to make the transistors switch state as fast as possible.

There are also other mechanisms that slow down the process like the transistor's gate capacitance.

The IC designer can also reduce heat by reducing the number of transistors that need to switch state at any moment.

IC designers are always trying to cram more onto a single chip and reduce the heat that is generated so it is likely that AI chips will become more optimised and less power hungry.

[OneWorld]

Same sort of thing though isn't it, the switching causes resistance, and hence heat. So, has the cpu reached or coming close to reaching its zenith? OK we are getting 15, 7, 5, 3nm chips, could there be 0.5, 0.25, 0.125nm chips?

Or is it a case where to make a quantum leap there has to be a radical design change.........

https://interestingengineering.com/inno ... data-lanes.

I'm making a crude analogy in comparing the steam engine(external combustion), gave way to internal combustion, now being usurped by electric motors and the change from ICE to EV is quite radical, will the same 'internal combustion' electronic cpus become 'optronic' eg using light

If there is that quantum leap, then computing will take a major leap and current cpus will seem quite crude? Of course I hypothesize, but one feels it in their water, as far as computing science is concerned, we ain't seen nothing yet. That said I have always had an interest in technology and the possibilities its can/might deliver. And more philosphically, will we use that technology in peaceful ways, the prognosis for that isn't looking good, but of course that's another issue, unless those in creative industries being displaced by AI be inspired to sort our heads out and become absorbed by the quest to make life more fulfilling and meaningful for all.

[James Perrett]

Same sort of thing though isn't it, the switching causes resistance, and hence heat.

I was responding to the point where you said that it is the moving electrons that produce heat. If the electrons are flowing through a transistor that is switched on then they produce very little heat. Heat is only produced when the transistor is changing state. That's why running a fast chip at a slow speed gives you a big reduction in heat produced.

The element size in a chip is ultimately limited by the number of atoms required to give the desired effect. I'm not sure how close we are to that limit yet.

[S.Crow]

Heat is only produced when the transistor is changing state. 
That's why running a fast chip at a slow speed gives you a big reduction in heat produced.

I think that active power usage is related to the frequency of the chip and the square of the voltage. 
When you halve the frequency, you can reduce the voltage at the same time, so the combined impact of those two factors leads to a large reduction in power consumption. 

In the case of some fairly recent Intel desktop chips, they left the factory in such a highly tuned state, that they were very inefficient. 
You could describe that as being akin to an overclocked chip from ten years ago. 
There's an efficency curve and beyond a certain point, you get very little extra performance for the increased voltage. 
You might see a ten percent clock speed gain for a fifty percent increase in power consumption. 
This because power usage scales with the square of the voltage. 

The element size in a chip is ultimately limited by the number of atoms required to give the desired effect. I'm not sure how close we are to that limit yet.

The risk is quantum tunnelling I believe, if there aren't enough atoms in the circuit walls to keep the signal on track, so to speak. 

I haven't seen any data from the three major fabrication companies in terms of when they expect to hit a wall. 
They are refining their manufacturing processes and designs beyond just shrinking the circuits. 
It appears to be diminishing returns in terms of improved performance, increased density and cost. 
The gains were so much bigger and cheaper twenty years ago.