The AI and Energy Race: A Look Into the Future of Abundance and Shortages

Sunday - January 14 2024, 05:06 UTC - 10 months ago

On a X-Space discussion, Elon Musk predicts that AI compute will increase by 10X every six months and that there will be gigawatt power for clusters by 2025. Tesla aims to reach 10 Zettaflops with a 100X increase from their 2024 target. Energy and chip shortages may arise as demand for AI compute grows. Tesla, China, and other countries will need to improve their infrastructure in order to keep pace in the AI and energy race.

On a X-Space discussion Elon Musk had with Peter Diamandis, Elon revealed that AI compute is increasing by 10X every six months and that there will be gigawatt power for clusters in 2025. The planned Kuwait cluster will use 700,000 Nvidia B-100. Each Nvidia B-100 will be about 60-100 times the power of an A-100.

The planned Kuwait cluster could be in the 1-10 Zettaflop range. There is purchaser of AI Startup Tachyum compute chips looking for 10 Zettaflops in 2025. Tesla will definitely want to at least keep pace with a 100X from the October 2024 Dojo target of 100 Exaflops to reach 10 Zettaflops.

IF AI compute is increasing by 10X every six months, then the Dojo and Tesla training compute cluster ramp needs to be sped up.

The Nvidia H100 is already 11 times the power of an A-100.

The Nvidia H200 is about 18 times the power of an A-100.

The Nvidia B100 will be about 60-100 times the power of an A-100.IF AI, Tesla FSD and Teslabot improvement is only limited by compute, energy and data then the 100 Exaflop Dojo target for October 2024 is too low and the growth will be too slow.

The green color in the table below is when Tesla Dojo compute starts growing at 10X every 6 months.

IF Tesla gets onto the 10X every 6 month pace then Tesla Dojo needs to be at 300 Exaflops in October 2024.Tesla will need to produce and install gigawatts of solar power starting in 2024, combined with thousands of megapacks to run multi-Zettaflop AI compute clusters 7X24.

It will take all of Tesla’s manufacturing and energy technology to expand the Dojo and AI compute capabilities.Systems in 2026 will need 100 Gigawatts and in 2027 will need 1000 Gigawatts.

The massive energy scaling will test China and Tesla scaling of energy and infrastructure.

Other countries might be able to keep pace into 2024 but 2025 will see many AI scaling projects fall behind.

There will be huge demand for Nvidia and Tachyum and other companies to get AI chips that are more energy efficient.

Elon gave everyone a hint about the race for more AI and energy compute infrastructure in the one hour talk.

The future of Abundance also comes with shortages and competition. There is the shortage of chips and the shortage of energy.

Tesla and others will have to find a way to remove bottlenecks to scaling AI compute.

The modules for Megapacks and solar at the gigawatt scale need to have much faster deployment.