Conversation
@Twitch @nova I happen to be working for a company that operates a medium sized GPU HPC cluster in Iceland. There are a few things to keep in mind with Iceland: Lava and shipment. We now had 2 vulcanite fissures since I joined where there was lava on a path that crosses the main fiber runs stretching from the south end of the island where atNorth and Verne are located towards Reykjavik - not fun. Same goes for shipping: Getting stuff there is just annoying, especially servers, with their pesky RTC backup batteries. The rest is amazing though. We btw rarely go there and have the amazing people from Verne handle all on-site ops for us. Of course that’s mostly a company thing, 100+ $/h is still cheap compared to flying employees out from Europe.
2
2
12
@nova We work with Verne, they subcontract parts of our infra to atNorth. We are talking Megawatt-scale though, I fear they only bother from a few racks up. Floki.net looked good, only saw half of your last stream though, I guess it's a problem of traffic?
1
0
1
@nova I feel those requirements and Iceland don't mix suuuuper well sadly, I could also only find Floki who don't seem to even publish pricing for additional traffic.

I'd personally have a look around northern Europe. Not quite as independent, but there are some bigger players in the size range you are looking for. Iceland is sadly very full of bitcoin farms and big players like us buying in bulk, that seems to make it really unattractive to host individuals for a reasonable price.
1
0
1
@cablespaghetti @nova Fun fact: We stayed online, the operator of the cable systems even did a test-burial right where the lava would go (it flowed super slow, luckily) to see if the cables can survive it. IIRC they didnt't, but there always was a second link through a different valley or sth. Very weird to watch though, when you regularly get mails updating you of volcanic activity and where the lava goes :D
1
0
2
@nova I would tend to go with @sindarina argument here. 1.4 metric tons for the round trip New York / Keflavik (didn’t check where you are based, so took sth close) - that’s the rough equivalent of 11MWh in Finnland when compared to Iceland (150g/kWh in .fi, 30g/kWh in .is). From that perspective somewhere managed by remote hands is far more green than Iceland but flying there to do sth with it - even when that location isn’t 100% renewable power.
0
0
0