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Tesla details its self-driving Supercomputer that will bring in the Dojo era

(Credit: Tesla)

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Tesla’s Senior Director of Artificial Intelligence, Andrej Karpathy, detailed the automaker’s self-driving Supercomputer that will era in Dojo. Dojo is Tesla’s 4-dimensional Autopilot training program and was first discussed in 2020 by CEO Elon Musk. Karpathy gave a 40-minute presentation regarding Autonomous Vehicles at the 2021 Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR 2021).

Tesla has been working on its self-driving program for several years, and through that time, it has trained its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving suite by using a Neural Network to make it more accurate and robust in its movement. As a result, Tesla has established itself as one of the companies with the most robust semi-autonomous driving programs globally.

Despite this, Tesla continues to make strides to improve it even further. This started back in August 2020, when CEO Elon Musk detailed Dojo, a 4-dimensional training program that will process monumental volumes of video data. This aligns with Tesla’s recent decision to adopt a Vision-only approach in its vehicles, ditching radar in the Model 3 and Model Y.

Musk said:

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“Tesla is developing a NN training computer called Dojo to process truly vast amounts of video data. It’s a beast! Please consider joining our AI or computer/chip teams if this sounds interesting.”

For a long time, Tesla has worked with what Musk called “just been like 2D.” He said that the 4D system would work tremendously better since it’s basically video.

During the Q2 2020 Earnings Call, Musk said:

“So what we’ve been doing, thus far, has really just been like 2D — mostly 2D, and like I said, well correlated in time. So just hard to convey just how much better a fully 4D system would work — does work. It’s capable of things that if you just look — looking at things as individual pictures as opposed to video — basically, like you could go from like individual pictures to surround video, so it’s fundamental. So the car will seem to have just like a giant improvement.”

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Now that Tesla is moving closer to the completion of Dojo, Karpathy talked about the Neural Network, Supercomputers, and the excellent work of Tesla’s Supercomputing team.

In Karpathy’s presentation, the AI head stated that there are three main factors to get a Neural Network signal to work: Large amounts of video, clean data, and diverse scenarios to make the suite as well-rounded as possible. It is evident that through Tesla’s decision to make its two mass-market vehicles vision-based, that large amounts of data is one of the biggest factors. The Model 3 and Model Y have dominated Tesla’s sales numbers globally for some time, meaning they contribute more data to the Neural Network than the other two vehicles in Tesla’s fleet.

Now that Dojo has been in development for some time, Karpathy unveiled some details about the Supercomputer that Tesla uses for data consumption and storage. A slide in the presentation details the specifications:

  • 720 nodes of 8x A100 80 GB (5760 GPUs total)
  • 1.8 EFLOPS (720 nodes * 312 TFLOPS-FP16-A100 * 8 GPU/nodes)
  • 10 PB of “hot tier” NVME storage @ 1.6 TBps
  • 640 Tbps of total switching capacity

Credit: Yarrow B. | YouTube

Karpathy said that these specs make it “roughly the number five Supercomputer in the world” during his presentation.

Now, Dojo is still not released, and Karpathy was unwilling to comment further on the progress or any of the finer points of what will likely bring Tesla close to Level 5 autonomy. Still, there should be more details in the coming months. Tesla has stuck by the 2021 time frame for Dojo since first talking about it, so hopefully, the company will shed more detail on it during the Q2 or Q3 2021 Earnings Call.

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Karpathy’s full presentation is available below.

Joey has been a journalist covering electric mobility at TESLARATI since August 2019. In his spare time, Joey is playing golf, watching MMA, or cheering on any of his favorite sports teams, including the Baltimore Ravens and Orioles, Miami Heat, Washington Capitals, and Penn State Nittany Lions. You can get in touch with joey at joey@teslarati.com. He is also on X @KlenderJoey. If you're looking for great Tesla accessories, check out shop.teslarati.com

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Elon Musk

Tesla Giga Berlin growth could stall if not “free from external influences”: Elon Musk

The comments were delivered in a pre-recorded video discussion.

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Credit: Andre Thierig/X

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has reportedly warned that future expansion of Gigafactory Berlin could be jeopardized if the site does not remain “free from external influences.”

Musk’s comments were delivered in a pre-recorded video discussion with employees and came at a sensitive moment for the facility, where union representation has been a recurring issue.

According to reports from Handelsblatt and Der Spiegel, citing participants at the event, Musk suggested that if Giga Berlin is no longer “free from external influences,” further expansion would become unlikely. He did not, however, hint that the plant would shut down.

While Musk did not name IG Metall directly, his remarks were widely interpreted as referencing the union, which is currently the largest faction on the works council but does not hold a majority, as noted in an electrive report. 

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The video conversation was conducted between Musk in Austin and Grünheide plant manager André Thierig, then played back to the workforce in Germany. Works council elections are scheduled for early March, heightening the tension between management and organized labor.

The CEO has previously voiced concerns that stronger union influence could limit Tesla’s operational flexibility and long-term strategy in Germany.

Despite the warning on expansion, Musk praised the Giga Berlin site during the same address, describing it as one of the most advanced factories worldwide and highlighting its cleanliness and team culture.

The discussion also reportedly touched on battery cell production. According to attendees cited in German media, Musk indicated that Tesla has begun ramping cell production at the site. That would mark a notable shift from earlier expectations that large-scale cell manufacturing in Brandenburg would not begin until 2027.

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Tesla Full Self-Driving’s newest behavior is the perfect answer to aggressive cars

According to a recent video, it now appears the suite will automatically pull over if there is a tailgater on your bumper, the most ideal solution for when a driver is riding your bumper.

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla Full Self-Driving appears to have a new behavior that is the perfect answer to aggressive drivers.

According to a recent video, it now appears the suite will automatically pull over if there is a tailgater on your bumper, the most ideal solution for when a driver is riding your bumper.

With FSD’s constantly-changing Speed Profiles, it seems as if this solution could help eliminate the need to tinker with driving modes from the person in the driver’s seat. This tends to be one of my biggest complaints from FSD at times.

A video posted on X shows a Tesla on Full Self-Driving pulling over to the shoulder on windy, wet roads after another car seemed to be following it quite aggressively. The car looks to have automatically sensed that the vehicle behind it was in a bit of a hurry, so FSD determined that pulling over and letting it by was the best idea:

We can see from the clip that there was no human intervention to pull over to the side, as the driver’s hands are stationary and never interfere with the turn signal stalk.

This can be used to override some of the decisions FSD makes, and is a great way to get things back on track if the semi-autonomous functionality tries to do something that is either unneeded or not included in the routing on the in-car Nav.

FSD tends to move over for faster traffic on the interstate when there are multiple lanes. On two-lane highways, it will pass slower cars using the left lane. When faster traffic is behind a Tesla on FSD, the vehicle will move back over to the right lane, the correct behavior in a scenario like this.

Perhaps one of my biggest complaints at times with Full Self-Driving, especially from version to version, is how much tinkering Tesla does with Speed Profiles. One minute, they’re suitable for driving on local roads, the next, they’re either too fast or too slow.

When they are too slow, most of us just shift up into a faster setting, but at times, even that’s not enough, see below:

There are times when it feels like it would be suitable for the car to just pull over and let the vehicle that is traveling behind pass. This, at least up until this point, it appears, was something that required human intervention.

Now, it looks like Tesla is trying to get FSD to a point where it just knows that it should probably get out of the way.

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Tesla Megapack powers $1.1B AI data center project in Brazil

By integrating Tesla’s Megapack systems, the facility will function not only as a major power consumer but also as a grid-supporting asset.

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla’s Megapack battery systems will be deployed as part of a 400MW AI data center campus in Uberlândia, Brazil. The initiative is described as one of Latin America’s largest AI infrastructure projects.

The project is being led by RT-One, which confirmed that the facility will integrate Tesla Megapack battery energy storage systems (BESS) as part of a broader industrial alliance that includes Hitachi Energy, Siemens, ABB, HIMOINSA, and Schneider Electric. The project is backed by more than R$6 billion (approximately $1.1 billion) in private capital.

According to RT-One, the data center is designed to operate on 100% renewable energy while also reinforcing regional grid stability.

“Brazil generates abundant energy, particularly from renewable sources such as solar and wind. However, high renewable penetration can create grid stability challenges,” RT-One President Fernando Palamone noted in a post on LinkedIn. “Managing this imbalance is one of the country’s growing infrastructure priorities.”

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By integrating Tesla’s Megapack systems, the facility will function not only as a major power consumer but also as a grid-supporting asset.

“The facility will be capable of absorbing excess electricity when supply is high and providing stabilization services when the grid requires additional support. This approach enhances resilience, improves reliability, and contributes to a more efficient use of renewable generation,” Palamone added.

The model mirrors approaches used in energy-intensive regions such as California and Texas, where large battery systems help manage fluctuations tied to renewable energy generation.

The RT-One President recently visited Tesla’s Megafactory in Lathrop, California, where Megapacks are produced, as part of establishing the partnership. He thanked the Tesla team, including Marcel Dall Pai, Nicholas Reale, and Sean Jones, for supporting the collaboration in his LinkedIn post.

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