X.ai: Inside the Largest AI Training Cluster in the World

October 29th, 2024

Off topic, but this might be of interest if you want to see what the business end of Grok AI looks like.

Also, that cable management… Woh.

Via: ServeTheHome:

Posted in Infrastructure, Off Topic, Rise of the Machines, Technology | Top Of Page

2 Responses to “X.ai: Inside the Largest AI Training Cluster in the World”

  1. Snowman says:
    October 29, 2024 at 10:21 am

    Looks familiar.

    https://www.hpcwire.com/2021/02/15/eniac-at-75-celebrating-the-worlds-first-supercomputer/

  2. Kevin says:
    October 29, 2024 at 11:01 am

    I asked Perplexity to compare the two. It thinks the x.ai system is about 8.7 quadrillion times more powerful than the ENIAC.

    I have no idea if that’s right or not, but it’s weird to see it working through the prompt:

    Approximately how much more powerful is the recently built x.ai AI training cluster, with 100,000 h100 gpus, than the ENIAC?

    To compare the recently built x.ai AI training cluster to ENIAC, we need to consider the vast technological advancements that have occurred in computing over the past decades. Let’s break down the comparison:

    ## x.ai AI Training Cluster

    The x.ai cluster, also known as “Colossus,” consists of 100,000 NVIDIA H100 GPUs[1]. This system has the following capabilities:

    – 197.9 exaflops at FP8 precision
    – 98.95 exaflops at FP16 precision
    – 3.35 exaflops at FP64 precision on tensor cores[1]

    ## ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer)

    ENIAC, built in the 1940s, was one of the first general-purpose electronic computers. Its performance capabilities were:

    – Approximately 385 flops (floating-point operations per second)

    ## Comparison

    To put the difference in perspective:

    1. Using FP64 precision (as it’s the most conservative estimate for the x.ai cluster):

    x.ai cluster performance / ENIAC performance
    = 3.35 exaflops / 385 flops
    = 3,350,000,000,000,000,000 / 385
    ? 8.7 x 10^15

    2. This means the x.ai cluster is approximately 8,700,000,000,000,000 (8.7 quadrillion) times more powerful than ENIAC in terms of raw computing power.

    ## Additional Context

    It’s important to note that this comparison only considers raw computational power. The x.ai cluster also benefits from:

    – Massive parallelism
    – Advanced AI-specific optimizations
    – Significantly larger memory capacity
    – Much higher energy efficiency per computation

    Furthermore, the x.ai cluster is designed specifically for AI workloads, while ENIAC was a general-purpose computer. This specialization allows the x.ai cluster to perform AI tasks even more efficiently than the raw numbers suggest.

    In conclusion, the x.ai AI training cluster represents an astronomical leap in computing power compared to ENIAC, showcasing the incredible progress made in computer technology over the past 80 years.

    Citations:
    [1] https://www.nextplatform.com/2024/09/11/green-acres-is-the-place-for-larry/
    [2] https://www.nextplatform.com/2023/08/29/the-next-100x-for-ai-hardware-performance-will-be-harder/
    [3] https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1f92ad8/openai_and_other_competitors_are_reportedly/
    [4] https://www.wwt.com/article/high-performance-computing-hpc-helped-build-ai-capabilities-of-today
    [5] https://www.hpcwire.com/2021/02/15/eniac-at-75-celebrating-the-worlds-first-supercomputer/
    [6] https://www.hpe.com/emea_middle_east/en/what-is/supercomputing.html
    [7] https://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/us-army-researchers-dedicate-new-supercomputers-in-tribute-to-eniacs-original-programmers/
    [8] https://www.pacw.org/ai-in-electric-power-systems-protection-and-control

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