When Mark Zuckerberg introduced on July 14 that his firm Meta was embarking on a undertaking to construct massively power-hungry knowledge facilities to help its ambitions for advancing synthetic intelligence, the imagery that accompanied his posts on Fb and Threads was stark. The info facilities he was saying would have energy necessities upwards of 5 gigawatts and, to indicate simply how huge that may be, Zuckerberg’s submit included a visible of a huge rectilinear block protecting a large portion of Manhattan. It was as if the town had been all of a sudden snuffed out by tens of millions of sq. toes of synthetic intelligence infrastructure.
A element that was not included in Zuckerberg’s preliminary announcement was the curious method these large knowledge facilities are presently being constructed. In an interview with the Data, Zuckerberg briefly defined that a part of the best way Meta is constructing out its multi-gigawatt knowledge facilities is by utilizing rapidly constructed hurricane-proof tents.
“We’ve a really robust infrastructure staff that’s doing novel work to construct up knowledge facilities,” Zuckerberg mentioned. “I needed them to not simply take 4 years to construct these concrete buildings, so we pioneered this new methodology the place we’re mainly constructing these weatherproof tents and build up the networks and the GPU clusters inside them in an effort to construct them sooner.”
A Meta spokesperson confirmed to Quick Firm that tents are presently being arrange as a part of at the least one of many multi-gigawatt knowledge facilities the corporate is constructing, situated in New Albany, Ohio. Dubbed “speedy deployment buildings,” the tents are lengthy rectangular buildings product of puncture- and water-proof material supported by an aluminum substructure with a mushroom-esque pitched roof.
The Ohio knowledge middle, which Meta has named Prometheus, is an already present advanced that’s having extra computing capability added via these server tents. Meta expects the ability to be large enough to attract a couple of gigawatt of energy by 2026. It is likely one of the world’s largest AI coaching clusters, in response to the AI and semiconductor analysis firm SemiAnalysis. The quickly constructed tent buildings there are a part of the best way Meta goals to fulfill its gigawatt purpose subsequent yr.
Tents could also be a part of one other multi-gigawatt knowledge middle Meta is constructing in Richland Parish, Louisiana. Named Hyperion, it’s anticipated to tug two gigawatts of energy by 2030, with the potential to develop to 5 gigawatts. Meta’s spokesperson says development has been underway in Louisiana for months. The info middle being constructed there’ll embody 11 buildings including as much as greater than 4 million sq. toes. The positioning covers roughly three sq. miles, so there’s loads of area to increase. However even at capability, it’s far lower than the 22 sq. miles of land that makes up Manhattan.
How a lot of this area might be initially made up of tents stays to be seen. However because the arms race and expertise competitors warmth up between AI-focused corporations like Meta, OpenAI, Alphabet, and Microsoft, the scale of those tents could also be much less essential than how rapidly they are often constructed.
“I’m very enthusiastic about constructing them in an modern method,” Zuckerberg mentioned.
