Elon Musk's new Memphis Supercluster uses gigantic portable power generators, grid isn't enough

Elon Musk recently flicked the 'power on' switch to his new Memphis Supercluster, which is the world's fastest AI data center, with 100,000 liquid-cooled NVIDIA H100 AI GPUs, but just how much power does this AI data center need? Lots, lots and lots of power.

In a new X post by AI and semiconductor analyst who runs SemiAnalysis, Dylan Patel, ruminated on X that it would be impossible for Elon Musk to run his Memphis Supercluster because he doesn't have enough power. He said that only 7MW is being drawn from the grid, which is enough power to run just 4000 of the H100 AI GPUs.

Patel is aware that the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) will deliver an additional 50MW to the Memphis Supercluster if xAI signs a pending deal, but that would be by August 1 at the very earliest. Patel also noted that the 150MW substation on the xAI site is still under construction and won't be complete by Q4 2024.

Patel went into greater amounts of detail, taking a look at satellite imagery and with another post on X, realized how Elon was powering his Memphis Supercluster: by using 14 x VoltaGrid mobile generators that are connected to what appears to be 4 mobile substations.

• Read more: Elon Musk turns on xAI's new AI supercomputer: 100K liquid-cooled H100 AI GPUs at 4:20am
• Read more: Elon Musk says training next-gen Grok 3 will require 100,000 NVIDIA H100 AI GPUs

Each of the semi-trailer-sized generators is capable of generating 2.5MW of power, so with 14 of these on-site, there's 35MW of power generated from portable generators. The Memphis Supercluster receives up to 8MW of power from the grid, so in total, there's 43MW of power.

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43MW of power is enough to run the 32,000 x NVIDIA H100 AI GPUs -- with some power limits put in place -- because other components require power, too: massive amounts of cooling, CPUs, motherboards, networking, infrastructure, etc.

Musk says he wants 50MW of power in August, which is something that the Tennessee Valley Authority has yet to approve, the Memphis Supercluster would have enough power to run 64,000 x NVIDIA H100 AI GPUs. Patel continued, saying that in order to run 100,000 x NVIDIA H100 AI GPUs, Elon is going to need 155MW of power, which is magnitudes more than the crazy amount he has on his hands right now.