An anonymous reader shared this report from Reuters:
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI plans to expand its Memphis, Tennessee, supercomputer to house at least one million graphics processing units (GPUs), the Greater Memphis Chamber said on Wednesday, as xAI races to compete against rivals like OpenAI.
The move represents a massive expansion for the supercomputer called Colossus, which currently has 100,000 GPUs to train xAI’s chatbot called Grok. As part of the expansion, Nvidia, which supplies the GPUs, and Dell and Super Micro, which have assembled the server racks for the computer, will establish operations in Memphis, the chamber said in a statement.
The Greater Memphis chamber (an economic development organization) called it “the largest capital investment in the region’s history,” even saying that xAI “is setting the stage for Memphis to become the global epicenter of artificial intelligence.” (“To facilitate this massive undertaking, the Greater Memphis Chamber established an xAI Special Operations Team… This team provides round-the-clock concierge service to the company.”)
Reuters calls the supercomputer “a critical component of advancing Musk’s AI efforts, as the billionaire has deepened his rivalry against OpenAI…” And the Greater Memphis chamber describes the expansion by Nvidia/Dell/Super Micro as “further solidifying the city’s position as the ‘Digital Delta’… Memphis has provided the power and velocity necessary for not just xAI to grow and thrive, but making way for other companies as well.”
