[overgard]

AFAIK the Colossus data center was more or less "brute force" when it comes to building a datacenter fast -- ie it was very expensive and they cut some pretty ugly corners (their generators are "temporary" to get around regulations, but I don't see how they can possibly be "temporary" and they create a massive amount of pollution compared to other power sources). The reason I point that out is the article mentions that SpaceX is "better" at building huge datacenters. I think this might be an overstatement -- they're just more willing to throw massive amounts of money and bend as many rules as possible.

[ReptileMan]

>but I don't see how they can possibly be "temporary"

Fairly simple. You put 16 turbines that don't require permit for a year. After a year has passed you put another 16 pulled from another site and move the initial 16 to the former empty one.

Then you lobby hard to make sure that the authorities read temporary per turbine serial number and not total installed capacity.

[frankacter]

Cheap. Fast. Good. Pick two.

Colossus is the world's largest single, unified GPU cluster, all GPUs acting as one coherent supercomputer rather than fragmented pools or multi-site setups. They spun it up in a fraction of the time by all estimates. It's not something you can just throw money at and reproduce the results.

Per Jensen Huang:

"As far as I know, there's only one person in the world who could do that; Elon is singular in his understanding of engineering and construction and large systems and marshaling resources; it's just unbelievable. A supercomputer that you would build would take normally three years to plan and then they deliver the equipment and it takes one year to get it all working."

..."it took 19 days to get Colossus from hardware installation to beginning training, the fastest by far anyone's been able to do that."

https://www.businessinsider.com/jensen-huang-elon-musk-super...

Regarding on site generators. Meta, OpenAI (Microsoft/Oracle) and others are also using on-site gas turbines, generators, and "behind-the-meter" power plants to keep up with the power demand. This has become an industry-wide strategy driven by grid constraints, with natural gas as a fast-deploy option.

It would be great if the grids could keep up with demand, if other options would be considered capable of producing the ongoing demands (ie. more renewable, nuclear, etc) but they're not, and companies are not going to just wait because then they're as good as done.

[pants2]

Colossus took an old manufacturing plant where they made rangetops and stoves and turned it into a functioning 100,000-GPU datacenter in 122 days. That's a truly insane turnaround time!

[redox99]

Colossus 1 has a mix of Hopper and Blackwell GPUs that cause nasty bottlenecks. Colossus 2 is fully blackwell though.

[alsetmusic]

> Elon is singular in his understanding of engineering and construction and large systems and marshaling resources

Why would I believe a rich guy hyping his company's temporarily magical product when he hypes another guy who is a proven liar and flagrant fraudster? The cool thing is how the Twitter purchase was "on hold" due to bots and now it's mostly bots. But if you own the company making the software that powers the bots, I guess that's ok.

Jensen is smart enough to know he's glossing over the many shortcomings of an ultra-rich loser because it benefits him in the markets. I have no respect for that.

[foltik]

> Elon is singular in his understanding of engineering and construction and large systems and marshaling resources;

Ahahaha. Just like when he marshaled resources to buy Twitter?

More like he just cracked the whip, and the actual smart people worked day and night to figure it out, or else they’re fired.

[mcurist]

I'd go through and find specific examples of his personal involvement picking 0 on the cheap/fast/good axis.

The submarine option in the caves? Expensive, not there on time, didn't work. His push for the screens

Hyperloop was apparently his baby. Fails on all 3 counts.

Tesla self driving. Ineffective, overdue and I can imagine the lawsuits aren't cheap.

It looks like we have an idiot in charge where his only advantage is in pressuring his underlings into reckless behaviour and offloading the responsibility and the negative externalities

[duped]

You can also pick "none of the above." These things don't need to exist. Not all market demand needs to be met.

[JumpCrisscross]

Yeah, maybe the thing xAI gets is perfect is the enemy of good (enough).

[datsci_est_2015]

Especially when the line separating “perfect” from “good” is “negative externalities impacting non-shareholder populace”.