August 16, 2023
Tesla is building new data centers, according to a job posting. The company is seeking a “Sr. Engineering Program Manager, Data Centers” to lead the end-to-end design and engineering of the new facilities.
The job posting does not specify why Tesla is building its own data centers, but the company is known to be working on a supercomputer to help develop its autonomous driving software. Tesla also operates a 5,760-GPU machine for the same task.
In addition, Tesla’s vehicles are chock full of computers that upload telemetry data that needs to be processed. The automaker also offers online services. It is also possible that Tesla’s humanoid robot, which is still in development, will require a lot of processing power.
Tesla has reportedly occupied data centers that were previously owned by Twitter, suggesting that it is hungry for data center space. The heavy use of GPUs in Tesla’s vehicles also suggests that the company’s data centers will need to be designed differently than traditional data centers. GPUs run hot and consume a lot of power, so Tesla will need to find a way to cool its data centers efficiently.
Tesla’s data centers in China have also made news recently. The company has promised to store all data collected by its Sentry Mode feature in China, in compliance with data sovereignty laws.
The sources for this piece include an article in TheRegister.
