Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has announced that his AI startup xAI will be working on building a supercomputer powered by NVIDIA semiconductor chips. This supercomputer will be used to run the next version of the Grok AI chatbot and will require 100,000 semiconductor chips for training and operation. Musk aims to have this supercomputer operational by the fall of 2025 and is considering a partnership with Oracle for its development. xAI already uses more than 15,000 NVIDIA AI chips and has been in talks with Oracle about renting cloud servers for $10 billion. The supercomputer, called the “computing gigafactory” by Musk, will connect 100,000 chips to create a massive computer that is four times larger than current GPU clusters.
Supercomputers are crucial for advancing science and can be used for various applications such as creating AI models, genomic sequencing, space exploration, weather forecasting, and more. Musk founded xAI in July 2023 to compete with companies like Microsoft-backed OpenAI and Alphabet’s Google. Recently, xAI secured $6 billion in Series B funding, reaching a post-money valuation of $24 billion. The funding will be used to bring xAI’s products to market, develop infrastructure, and accelerate research and development of future technologies. xAI is focused on building advanced AI technologies and plans to announce more developments in the near future.
NVIDIA’s H100 GPUs are in high demand for data center chips used in AI and are difficult to obtain. Companies like Microsoft and Meta are already waiting to use NVIDIA’s new Blackwell chip. Yotta, a data center startup based in Mumbai, has ordered 16,000 H100 chips, including the Blackwell AI training GPU. When connected via the InfiniBand network, Yotta’s supercomputer will be among the largest in the world. India is working to expand its supercomputing capacity, with the government allocating $1.2 billion for IT infrastructure development.
The use of supercomputers like those powered by NVIDIA chips is essential for advancing technology and research in various fields. Musk’s xAI startup is at the forefront of developing advanced AI technologies and is planning to revolutionize computing with its supercomputer project. As the demand for high-performance computing continues to grow, partnerships like the one between xAI and NVIDIA are crucial for pushing the boundaries of what is possible in the world of artificial intelligence and technology.
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https://www.forbesindia.com/article/news/elon-musk-plans-to-build-a-supercomputer-using-nvidias-semiconductor-chips/93212/1