According to reports, OpenAI and Microsoft are reportedly planning a $100B supercomputer. Imagine how much energy that’s going to need!

As reported by Big Think, (OpenAI and Microsoft are reportedly planning a $100B supercomputer, written by Kristin Houser and available here), it’s actually a $100 billion data center and supercomputer that could lead to the creation of AIs far more capable than anything possible today.

Soon after investing its first $1 billion into OpenAI in 2019, Microsoft set out to solve one of the biggest challenges facing the AI firm: the need for a lot of processing power to train and run its generative AIs.

That led to the creation of a custom supercomputer at Microsoft data centers in Iowa.

“These supercomputing systems are really the lifeblood of our research,” Katie Mayer, who manages the Microsoft partnership for OpenAI, said in September 2023. “To do the work that we’re doing at this scale and to develop really novel AI capabilities, you need these systems. They’ve really accelerated the rate of progress that we are all benefiting from now.”

The Information, citing three anonymous sources, stated that OpenAI and Microsoft are reportedly planning to spend up to $100 billion on a new data center project containing a supercomputer with “millions of specialized server chips.”

According to The Information’s sources, the supercomputer is being called “Stargate,” and it could launch as soon as 2028. It might then be expanded over the course of two years, with the final version requiring as much as 5 gigawatts of power. (To put that in context, the largest nuclear power station in the U.S. — Palo Verde in Arizona — has a total capacity of just 3.9 gigawatts.)

5 gigawatts! Great Scott! 😉

Seemingly little about the project has been decided, according to The Information — Microsoft and OpenAI are still contemplating where Stargate should be located, which computer chips and cables to use, and how to power the whole operation, with nuclear energy being one possibility. Oh boy. They’re going to need a lot of data for that thing.

So, what do you think? Does a $100B supercomputer powered by nuclear energy seem like a good idea? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Image created using Bing Image Creator Powered by DALL-E, using the term “tiny robot standing in front of a giant computer”.

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