Elon Musk has unveiled Tesla’s new ‘Cortex’ supercomputer, which may turn into one of many greatest on this planet, but it surely’s not prepared fairly but.
This challenge has been described as crucial 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 yr, we reported that Tesla was having points constructing a brand new growth 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 development sources on the growth.
Later, Musk revealed that Tesla plans to ultimately 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 exhibiting 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 advised Electrek that it’s presently working on a short lived cooling system and that it gained’t be absolutely operational till the chiller plant is accomplished.
Moreover, Tesla wants extra community feeders. Some believed that the brand new cluster gained’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 yr that Tesla is now not compute-constrained in the case of coaching neural nets.
We noticed only a few enhancements regardless of that announcement, which is why I’m skeptical in regards to the affect of Tesla including over 100 MW of additional energy to its coaching capability. Positive, it gained’t harm, however how a lot nearer is it going to get us to self-driving?
Even with delays apart, this supercomputer cluster isn’t with out controversy.
Tesla shareholders are suing Musk for a number of breaches of fiduciary responsibility, together with diverting a cargo of NVIDIA processors meant for Tesla to his non-public firm, xAI.
Musk confirmed the cargo was diverted, however he used the excuse that Tesla “didn’t have anyplace to place the processors” – that means that this growth at Gigafactory Texas and server room for the cluster weren’t prepared.
Nevertheless, as a part of the lawsuit, Musk goes to have to clarify why Tesla, which ordered the processors, which he himself agreed are costly and laborious to get, was not able to obtain them however his non-public startup was.