Elon Musk confirms he killed Dojo, Tesla’s supercomputer mission, however the motive he claims led to the killing of the mission does increase some eyebrows.
Final week, a brand new report from Bloomberg claimed that Tesla shut down its Dojo supercomputer program after 20 members give up to affix a brand new startup, DensityAI.
The information got here only a month after CEO Elon Musk mentioned: “Dojo 2 is sweet, however Dojo 3 will likely be nice.”
For years, the CEO has been claiming that Tesla has the “greatest chip design group on the earth” and that Dojo’s supercomputer platform might surpass the merchandise made by its present essential coaching compute provider, NVIDIA.
Whereas Musk didn’t deny the Bloomberg report, he has now commented in a manner that means a distinct story:
As soon as it grew to become clear that each one paths converged to AI6, I needed to shut down Dojo and make some robust personnel decisions, as Dojo 2 was now an evolutionary useless finish. Dojo 3 arguably lives on within the type of numerous AI6 SoCs on a single board.
If you’re to consider this narrative, Musk noticed that Tesla’s new AI6 chip, which has been developed for inference pc energy onboard its automobiles, was so good that he determined to close down Tesla’s chip program for coaching compute, Dojo, and fired the group.
Does this narrative maintain as much as scrutiny?
Electrek’s Take
This doesn’t add up. At greatest, it’s partly true. Let’s say that it’s true that Musk noticed the AI6 chip and was so impressed that he believes it might even substitute Dojo chips. Then, why did Peter Bannon go to?
Bannon was the chip architect answerable for all customized silicon at Tesla, coaching compute (Dojo) and inference compute (AI6). In keeping with the Bloomberg report, he additionally left Tesla amid the expertise exodus to DensityAI.
Nevertheless, at this level, it’s not clear whether or not he left on his personal or if he was a part of Musk’s claimed “robust personnel decisions.”
If it’s the latter, it wouldn’t make sense since Musk has been so impressed with AI6. Why would he hearth Bannon after he delivered the brand new chip?
This level helps the Bloomberg narrative that important Dojo group members left, which harm this system to the extent that it made sense for Musk to close it down, particularly inside the context of getting difficulties competing towards NVIDIA and others.
After which it’s a must to query the logic of utilizing the identical chips for coaching and inference computing. It’s actually not inconceivable, nevertheless it doesn’t sound like an optimum answer.
They typically make the most of totally different information sorts and have various throughput necessities. Coaching is geared towards excessive numerical precision whereas inference wants low latency and excessive throughput per watt.
To be truthful, power effectivity can be important for coaching computer systems, however it’s much less so than for an inference pc operating in an electrical automobile with restricted power capability.
You gotta give credit score the place credit score is due: Musk is aware of learn how to spin a narrative.
There’s principally a mutiny in Tesla’s Dojo group, and Musk spins it into Tesla developed such inference chip that it fired its coaching compute chip group.
It’s clearly a pretend narrative pushed by Musk to justify his very current pro-Dojo feedback.
