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OpenAI and Microsoft are reportedly planning a $100B supercomputer
Freethink ^ | 11 April 2024 | Kristin Houser

Posted on 04/19/2024 6:21:43 AM PDT by ShadowAce

Microsoft and OpenAI are reportedly planning to build a $100 billion data center and supercomputer that could lead to the creation of AIs far more capable than anything possible today.

Power hungry: 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.”

Interior of a modern data center with rows of servers and yellow columns under bright lighting.

John Brecher / Microsoft

OpenAI’s custom supercomputing system in Iowa

The report: On March 29, the Information reported that OpenAI and Microsoft are planning to spend up to $100 billion on a new data center project containing a supercomputer with “millions of specialized server chips.”

The Information cited three anonymous sources it says have been involved in conversations about the project, including one who has spoken directly to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman about it and one who has seen Microsoft’s eye-popping cost estimates.

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 US — Palo Verde in Arizona — has a total capacity of just 3.9 gigawatts.)

Microsoft is also considering building a different, smaller supercomputer for OpenAI in Wisconsin. It could launch as soon as 2026 and cost up to $10 billion.

OpenAI declined to comment on the report, while a Microsoft spokesperson issued a general statement that the company is “always planning for the next generation of infrastructure innovations needed to continue pushing the frontier of AI capability.”

Looking ahead: 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.

Regardless of how the details shake out, if the project does come to fruition, the processing power it would provide OpenAI could lead to the development of AIs with capabilities we can only dream about today — and maybe even the first artificial general intelligence.


TOPICS: Computers/Internet
KEYWORDS: supercomputer
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Thanks to Red Badger for the link!
1 posted on 04/19/2024 6:21:43 AM PDT by ShadowAce
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To: rdb3; JosephW; martin_fierro; Still Thinking; zeugma; Vinnie; ironman; Egon; raybbr; AFreeBird; ...

2 posted on 04/19/2024 6:21:55 AM PDT by ShadowAce (Linux - The Ultimate Windows Service Pack )
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To: ShadowAce

High-tech Tower of Babel


3 posted on 04/19/2024 6:23:32 AM PDT by Eccl 10:2 (Prov 3:5 --- "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding")
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To: ShadowAce

I bet you get some sweet frame rates on Call of Duty.


4 posted on 04/19/2024 6:24:09 AM PDT by BBQToadRibs2
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To: ShadowAce

Never want either...


5 posted on 04/19/2024 6:26:31 AM PDT by Openurmind (The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world it leaves to its children. ~ D. Bonhoeffer)
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To: ShadowAce

concentrations of capital.


6 posted on 04/19/2024 6:28:40 AM PDT by xoxox
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To: xoxox

I heard Jamie Dimon speaking the other day and he was saying how AI is going to fully integrated into every aspect of Chase’s business and currently AI was handling a large part of their equity trading.

If I were in a Wall Street research, trading or strategy business I would have an exit plan because in 3-5 years places like Wall Street will be getting rid of a bunch of highly paid people who can easily be replaced by AI.


7 posted on 04/19/2024 6:36:45 AM PDT by srmanuel ( )
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To: ShadowAce
Stargate? More like Sinistar!

"Beware, I live!"


8 posted on 04/19/2024 6:38:00 AM PDT by Dr. Sivana
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To: ShadowAce

If you have not seen it, check out the AI videos at the link below from Microsoft.

They use a single still image from a real person to make a realistic animation.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/vasa-1/

99% of people would ever guess these videos are AI. And this technology will be used for evil purposes.


9 posted on 04/19/2024 6:38:37 AM PDT by UnwashedPeasant (The pandemic we suffer from is not COVID. It is Marxist Democrat Leftism.)
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To: ShadowAce

They will name it Colossus and Forbes will report on it.


10 posted on 04/19/2024 6:39:16 AM PDT by Judge Bean
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To: ShadowAce

Friends at Microsoft got no pay raise this year (a functional pay cut, under Bidenflation) to fund this AI supercomputer.

They’re pissed.


11 posted on 04/19/2024 6:40:42 AM PDT by Uncle Miltie (DEI = Didn't Earn It!)
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To: ShadowAce

Tear down a dam.

Plug in a Supercomputer.

What could possibly go wrong?


12 posted on 04/19/2024 6:43:53 AM PDT by Uncle Miltie (DEI = Didn't Earn It!)
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To: srmanuel

And then there are the considerations about robots trading against robots and the volatility that is likely to introduce.


13 posted on 04/19/2024 6:44:38 AM PDT by xoxox
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To: ShadowAce

We build multiple hay barns so that if one goes all the supply doesn’t go at once. It is a very old idea but probably still a good one. But what do us old guys know?


14 posted on 04/19/2024 6:45:11 AM PDT by Sequoyah101 (Procrastination is just a form of defiance)
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To: xoxox
And then there are the considerations about robots trading against robots and the volatility that is likely to introduce.

Volatility? More like collusion.

15 posted on 04/19/2024 6:48:36 AM PDT by ShadowAce (Linux - The Ultimate Windows Service Pack )
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To: xoxox

That’s probably very true, where this leads not even the AI experts know that.

In some respects these High Speed Computerized trading companies are already competing in the robots trading robots game, that’s one of the reasons why over the years the volume on Wall Street has exploded, without the automation humans simply could not keep up.

Even the CME in Chicago is subject to the same things, instead of the people going crazy on the floor of the CME a lot of the commodity trades are automated.


16 posted on 04/19/2024 6:50:00 AM PDT by srmanuel ( )
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To: srmanuel

That is correct.

Soon, maybe less than a decade, there won’t be any jobs that AI can’t handle. Massive unemployment on a scale unheard of including the Great Depression......................


17 posted on 04/19/2024 7:01:47 AM PDT by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegals are put up in 5 Star hotels....................)
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To: Red Badger

AI is going to fix my leaky faucet?

Cool!


18 posted on 04/19/2024 7:03:35 AM PDT by jdsteel (PA voters elected a stroke victim and a dead guy. Not a joke. )
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To: Eccl 10:2

Just a bit more insight into the changing voter characteristics in Iowa.


19 posted on 04/19/2024 7:04:47 AM PDT by ptsal (Vote R.E.D. >>>Remove Every Democrat ***)
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To: Judge Bean

The Forbes reporters hiked in through the portal in Laredo.


20 posted on 04/19/2024 7:06:46 AM PDT by ptsal (Vote R.E.D. >>>Remove Every Democrat ***)
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