Amazon revealed new details of its plan to build a constellation of massive data centers and connect them into an “ultracluster.” Customer Number One: Anthropic.
What’s new: Dubbed Project Rainier, the plan calls for Amazon to build seven next-generation data centers — with up to 30 on the drawing board — near New Carlisle, Indiana, The New York Times reported. Still other data centers will be located in Mississippi, and possibly in North Carolina and Pennsylvania, contributing to an expected $100 billion in capital expenditures this year alone. These plans complement the company’s previously announced intention to spend $11 billion worth on data centers in the United Kingdom by 2028. (Disclosure: Andrew Ng is a member of Amazon’s board of directors.)
How it works: Announced late last year, Project Rainier calls for connecting hundreds of thousands of high-performance processors for use by Amazon’s AI partner Anthropic. Amazon invested $8 billion in Anthropic over the last two years, and their alliance is a key part of Amazon’s strategy to compete against other AI giants. Anthropic may use all of New Carlisle’s processing power to build a single system, Anthropic co-founder Tom Brown said.
- The data centers will be based on Amazon-designed Trainium 2 and upcoming Trainium 3 processors, which are optimized to process large transformers, rather than processors from industry leader Nvidia or challenger AMD. Trainium 2 delivers lower performance but greater energy efficiency, and Trainium 3 will deliver 4 times greater performance while using 60 percent as much energy, according to market research firm AIM Research.
- Similarly, Amazon plans to connect the Project Rainier facilities using a network interface of its own design, Elastic Fabric Adapter, rather than interconnect technologies typically used by its competitors.
Behind the news: AI leaders are spending tens of billions of dollars on computing infrastructure to serve fast-growing customer bases and, they hope, develop breakthroughs that enable them to leap ahead of competitors. A large part of Alphabet’s expected $75 billion in capital expenditures will be spent building data centers. Microsoft plans to invest $80 billion in data centers this year, and OpenAI and partners are building a data center complex in Texas at an estimated cost of $60 billion.
Why it matters: Amazon’s commitment to Project Rainier signals its belief that Anthropic can give it a crucial edge. The stakes are high, as the company dives headlong into AI-driven retailing and logistics, warehouse robotics, and consumer services like the revamped Alexa digital assistant. However, should Anthropic stall, Amazon can roll its immense computing resources into its enormously successful Amazon Web Services cloud-computing business.
We’re thinking: Amazon’s emphasis on internal hardware development reflects a focus on maintaining control of costs and operations. It has learned the hard lessons of competition in retailing, where margins are thin and expenses are in flux.