Meta Platform Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg revealed today that his company plans to purchase approximately 350,000 high-end H100 graphics processing units from Nvidia Corp. to provide computing power to pursue its goals in a new area of ​​artificial intelligence. Making plans.

The company is striving to become a leader in the field of artificial general intelligence, or AGI, which is a potentially advanced AI that can match the intelligence of humans and perform a variety of tasks.

Zuckerberg (pictured) said in an Instagram Reels video posted today that AGI could eventually be able to power a wide range of cutting-edge services and devices, including more advanced digital assistants, augmented reality glasses and more . The company aims to create “the best AI assistants, AI for creators, AI for businesses and much more,” he said, adding that doing so will require advancements in every area of ​​AI.

To get there, Meta will need to make a significant investment in its AI computing infrastructure, so it plans to acquire mountains of powerful H100 GPUs from Nvidia. The H100 chip is Nvidia’s most advanced chip to date, and is said to be particularly adept at training the large language models that power generative AI like ChatGPT.

“We’re building an absolutely massive amount of infrastructure to support this,” Zuckerberg said. “By the end of the year, we’ll have about 350,000 Nvidia H100, or about 600,000 H100 equivalent compute if you include other GPUs.”

This is a staggering number, not least because of the huge expense required to buy all that silicon. Although the CEO didn’t reveal how much the company intends to spend on its GPUs, it’s likely to be a staggering number. Furthermore, the meta is unlikely to have collected so many items by now, as the H100 only went on sale in late 2022, and has been in limited supply.

Analysts at Raymond James estimate that Nvidia is selling the H100 for between $25,000 and $30,000, while on eBay they can fetch more than $40,000. While the meta will certainly get some credit for the bulk purchases, it is still likely to spend more than $9 billion on GPUs.

Zuckerberg said the 350,000 H100 GPUs will be added to an infrastructure that also has about 600,000 H100 counterparts, which could mean the company is also buying rival chips like Advanced Micro Devices Inc.’s new Instinct M1300X AI accelerator in bulk.

The comments provide some insight into how much money big technology companies are spending to stay at the forefront of AI development. Omdia’s research said other major players, such as Microsoft Corp., Google LLC and Amazon.com Inc., are believed to have purchased between 50,000 and 150,000 H100 GPUs last year, and likely their There will be a similar plan to add computing. heap.

During an interview last month, chief AI scientist Yann LeCun stressed the importance of GPUs to Meta’s ambitions. “If you think AGI is in, you have to buy that many more GPUs,” he said.

All told, Meta’s total spending for 2024 is likely to be in the region of $94 billion to $99 billion, the company said in its most recent quarterly financial report. One of the biggest expenses is expected to be computing expansion. “In terms of investment priorities, AI will be our biggest investment area in 2024, both in engineering and computer resources,” Zuckerberg said on a conference call with analysts.

In his Instagram post today, Zuckerberg revealed that Meta’s GPUs are already being used to good effect in training Llama 3, an open-source alternative to OpenAI’s ChatGPT model. However, the company is taking a different approach to its rival, and plans to open-source the Llama 3 model, as it did with its predecessor, the Llama 2.

Zuckerberg stressed, “This technology is so important and the opportunities are so great that we must open source and make it as widely available as possible.”

Photo: Anthony Quintano/Flickr

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Source: siliconangle.com