Elon Musk has unveiled Tesla’s new ‘Cortex’ supercomputer, which may grow to be one of many largest on the earth, but it surely’s not prepared fairly but.
This undertaking has been described as essential to Tesla by CEO Elon Musk, who has shifted the automaker’s focus to synthetic intelligence in the previous few years.
AI wants computing energy.
Earlier this 12 months, we reported that Tesla was having points constructing a brand new enlargement at Gigafactory Texas to accommodate a brand new large supercomputer to coach Tesla’s AI.
On the time, we heard that Tesla was aiming for a 100 MW cluster to be prepared by August to match the later delayed unveiling of its robotaxi. Musk canceled different initiatives at Tesla to focus building assets on the enlargement.
Later, Musk revealed that Tesla plans to finally develop the cluster to over 500 MW and use half NVIDIA processors and half of its personal AI {hardware}. Tesla plans to make use of this computing energy to coach its neural nets to ship its long-promised self-driving functionality.
Now, on the finish of August, Musk has launched a video displaying off the supercomputer cluster, now known as ‘Cortex’ (sound warning: the video is loud):
The video solely reveals a small part of the cluster, which has but to be accomplished and working correctly.
Sources accustomed to the matter instructed Electrek that it’s at the moment working on a short lived cooling system and that it received’t be absolutely operational till the chiller plant is accomplished.
Moreover, Tesla wants extra community feeders. Some believed that the brand new cluster received’t be prepared till October, which is when the brand new unveiling of the Tesla Robotaxi has been pushed.
Electrek’s Take
Delays or no, it’s laborious for me to get too enthusiastic about this new computing energy as a result of Elon stated final 12 months that Tesla is not compute-constrained with regards to coaching neural nets.
We noticed only a few enhancements regardless of that announcement, which is why I’m skeptical in regards to the influence of Tesla including over 100 MW of additional energy to its coaching capability. Positive, it received’t harm, however how a lot nearer is it going to get us to self-driving?
Even with delays apart, this supercomputer cluster shouldn’t be with out controversy.
Tesla shareholders are suing Musk for a number of breaches of fiduciary obligation, together with diverting a cargo of NVIDIA processors meant for Tesla to his personal firm, xAI.
Musk confirmed the cargo was diverted, however he used the excuse that Tesla “didn’t have wherever to place the processors” – that means that this enlargement at Gigafactory Texas and server room for the cluster weren’t prepared.
Nonetheless, as a part of the lawsuit, Musk goes to have to elucidate why Tesla, which ordered the processors, which he himself agreed are costly and laborious to get, was not able to obtain them however his personal startup was.
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