HardwareElon Musk’s monster wakes up as xAI turns on ‘Colossus’, the Nvidia-powered AI-training supercomputer claiming to be the most powerful in the worldWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
HardwareElon Musk’s monster wakes up as xAI turns on ‘Colossus’, the Nvidia-powered AI-training supercomputer claiming to be the most powerful in the worldWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Rome wasn’t built in a day, they say. Okay, but it still only took Elon Musk just 122 of ‘em to tool up what is claimed to be the most powerful AI training system on the planet. Everyone’s favourite billionaire misanthrope doesn’t hang about, then.
If that’s not enough for you, in an X postMusk says Colossus will double in power “in a few months"thanks to the addition of another 50,000 H200 Nvidia chips, which each pack roughly twice the AI acceleration performance of an H100 GPU.
It’s not clear how much this is all costing Musk and xAI. Estimates of pricing for Nvidia’s H100 GPUs vary from $20,000 to as much at $90,000 a pop. Presumably, Musk managed to get a comparatively decent deal buying 100,000 of the things in one go.
But even at the lower estimate, you’re looking at $2 billion for the Nvidia chips for phase one, let alone building the datacenter, all the relevant infrastructure, staffing up, and doing all the work involved in setting up training for an advanced LLM. Oh, and whatever those other 50,000 H200 are costing on top as a little light frosting.
This weekend, the @xAI team brought our Colossus 100k H100 training cluster online. From start to finish, it was done in 122 days. Colossus is the most powerful AI training system in the world. Moreover, it will double in size to 200k (50k H200s) in a few months. Excellent…September 2, 2024
This weekend, the @xAI team brought our Colossus 100k H100 training cluster online. From start to finish, it was done in 122 days. Colossus is the most powerful AI training system in the world. Moreover, it will double in size to 200k (50k H200s) in a few months. Excellent…September 2, 2024
So, even the first phase will be six to seven times more powerful than GROK-2, only to supposedly double in power a few months later. Clearly, Musk has his sights set on building the most powerful LLM out there.
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(Image credit: Future)Best CPU for gaming: The top chips from Intel and AMD.Best gaming motherboard: The right boards.Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits.Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game ahead of the rest.
(Image credit: Future)
Best CPU for gaming: The top chips from Intel and AMD.Best gaming motherboard: The right boards.Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits.Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game ahead of the rest.
Incidentally, such a machine doesn’t come without collateral consequences. The new cluster, located in Memphis, Tennessee, will chew through150 megawatts of power and has been allocated up to one million gallons of water a dayfor cooling.
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