Compute & chips
Why it matters
Training a frontier model means keeping a very large number of chips busy for weeks, so AI data centers are built around three things: chips, electricity and the cooling to carry the heat away.
Power is now often the limit, which is why data-center news talks about grid connections, turbines and gigawatts as much as chips. The Compute section of Pad Zero SI tracks Colossus and the chips inside it, each figure with its date and source.
Related terms
- GPU
- A GPU (graphics processing unit) is a chip first built to speed up graphics. Its strength at parallel math also makes it the main chip for training and running AI models, which is why AI clusters are counted in GPUs.
- Gigawatt (GW)
- A billion watts. The size of an AI data center is now often quoted in power, not chip count.
- Orbital compute
- Running AI computers on satellites instead of on the ground, powered by sunlight. Musk's memo at the February 2, 2026 xAI acquisition described it as a main aim of the merger.