文章导读:
英伟达芯片销量强劲推动AI发展，但其高能耗对美国电力供应构成巨大挑战。预计未来几年，AI芯片将大幅增加电力需求，可能导致供电短缺，限制芯片使用和销售增长。尽管电力公司投资有所增加，但建设速度和设备供应仍难满足需求，若电力行业无法跟进，英伟达及相关科技巨头的增长或将受阻。
重点单词:
- unrivalled
- prowess
- stall
- immovable
/ɪˈmuːvəbl/ (adj.) 不可移动的，坚定的
- constraint
- efficiency
- predecessor
/ˈpriːdəsesər/ (n.) 前任，前辈
- overheating
- staggering
/ˈstæɡərɪŋ/ (adj.) 惊人的，令人震惊的
- capacity
- transmission
- shortfall
- idle
- lofty
电力短缺如何可能使英伟达的崛起断电
How a power shortage could short-circuit Nvidia’s rise
Too many chips, too little juice
ON AUGUST 27TH Nvidia performed what has become a quarterly ritual beating of expectations. Analysts forecast that the chipmaker would sell $46bn-worth of semiconductors in the three months to July. It made closer to $47bn. Its latest Blackwell graphics-processing units (GPUs), whose unrivalled number-crunching prowess has won over artificial-intelligence modellers, are flying off the shelves. So are its GB-series AI superchips, which combine two Blackwells with a general-purpose processor. Nvidia probably sold over 600,000 Blackwells and nearly as many GBs, nearly 20% more than last quarter, accounting for almost 60% of total revenue. It is on track to sell 2.7m and 2.4m, respectively, this year.
Nvidia bulls on Wall Street now reckon that America’s chip champion could be worth $5trn before long, having become the world’s first $4trn company only in July. It looks, in the words of many a breathless commentator, unstoppable. And yet fittingly for an unstoppable force, Nvidia is about to come up against an immovable object. Or at least an object that has not moved much in decades—America’s power grid.
Energy has not historically been a constraint on computing. Even as rocketing internet traffic increased the workloads of the world’s data centres nine-fold between 2010 and 2020, their overall power use stayed completely flat. Every generation of chips was more efficient than the last. AI has turned this trend on its head. A non-AI data-centre computing unit, or rack, needs around 12 kilo-watts (kW) of power to run. An equivalent AI module requires 80kW when training large language models like the one behind ChatGPT, then 40kW when responding to users’ prompts. Zippier semiconductors can consume a good deal more than that.
Nvidia’s are, naturally, the zippiest of all. A single Blackwell chip needs 1kW, three times more than its Hopper predecessor. Racks contain dozens of them. Nvidia sells modules packed with 36 GB superchips, which is to say 72 Blackwells and three dozen general-purpose chips, designed to operate at 132kW. A secondary cooling system to stop the semiconductors overheating from all that thinking can add 160kW per rack.
Tot it all up and the extra power requirements are staggering. Analysts predict that between February 2024 and February 2026 Nvidia will have sold some 6m Blackwells and 5.5m GBs. Assume that half of these end up in America, in line with its home market’s historical revenue share. If installed and operated at capacity, those chips would raise American power demand by 25 gigawatts (GW). That is almost twice as much as all of America’s utility-scale producers added in 2022 and not far off the 27GW they managed in 2023. And that is not counting next-generation Rubin chips Nvidia plans to launch next year, or AI racks sold by rivals such as AMD, not to mention other power sinks such as electric cars.
A recent global survey of data-centre managers by Schneider Electric, a French maker of energy-management kit, found that available power and transmission capacity was a near-universal concern. It occupied the minds of executives more than anything else, including access to those hot-ticket GPUs. Bernstein, a broker, estimates a potential power shortfall in America of 17GW by 2030 if the chips get more energy efficient, and 62GW if they don’t. Morgan Stanley, a bank, puts the gap at 45GW by 2028.
If American power companies do not pick up the pace, in other words, chip sales could stall or sold chips could lie idle. The latter would weigh on the profits of AI powerhouses such as Alphabet and Microsoft that are splurging billions on GPUs. The former would drag down Nvidia. Neither eventuality appears to be factored into the tech giants’ lofty valuations. The implicit assumption seems to be that American electricity providers will step up.
The power sector is starting to stir from a prolonged motionlessness in which capacity edged up by low single digits annually. Between 2022, when ChatGPT ignited the AI boom, and the 12 months to June this year, the combined capital spending of America’s 50 biggest listed electricity providers rose by 30%, to $188bn—a compound annual increase of 7%, adjusting for inflation. According to S&P Global, a data provider, they are planning to add new plants with a collective capacity of 123GW, on top of the 565GW currently in operation. Suppliers of power equipment such as Schneider Electric are seeing American sales accelerate.
Yet reasons for caution abound. Industry bosses are unaccustomed to running a growth business and could stumble. Ambitious plans aside, their firms’ new capacity actually under construction amounts to just 21GW between them. Even if they do try to build more plants, they may struggle to fit them out. Manufacturers are in no rush to expand production. The world’s 100 biggest makers of electrical equipment have cut their capital spending by 3% a year since 2022 in inflation-adjusted terms. That could spell pricier equipment, made dearer still by tariffs.
Analysts expect listed power companies’ sales to grow at an annual rate of 6% between 2025 and 2028 in nominal terms, up from 4% nominal growth since 2022 but no bonanza. As the canonical dividend stocks, they have paid $87bn to shareholders since the start of 2023, leaving less cash for investments. Many are regulated monopolies, and legally obliged to reflect more capital spending in higher bills. This would irk inflation-wary Americans and, worse, the business-browbeater-in-chief in the White House.
Some data-centre operators are taking things into their own hands. Alphabet is putting solar panels and battery storage in some data centres. Meta’s project in Louisiana will run in part on natural gas tapped on site. Still, it is power companies that generate virtually all American electricity. Without their help, Nvidia’s epic surge will sooner or later power down. ■
