Elon Musk acknowledged that each chip he should purchase right now solely covers about 2% of what his corporations really need. Moderately than await the remainder of the world to catch up, he introduced TeraFab on Saturday night time, a chip manufacturing facility in Austin and a three way partnership between Tesla and SpaceX.
The announcement got here through a livestream broadcast from the previous Seaholm Energy Plant in downtown Austin. “We both construct the TeraFab, or we don’t have the chips, and we’d like the chips, so we’re going to construct the TeraFab,” Musk stated. The ability will likely be constructed on the Tesla campus in japanese Travis County.
Why is that this announcement such an enormous deal?
What makes TeraFab completely different from present chip producers is its format. The complete course of, from creating lithography masks and making logic and reminiscence chips to packaging and testing, will all happen underneath a single roof. Musk claims this doesn’t exist anyplace else on the earth proper now.
The benefit is a speedy design loop. “I can’t emphasize sufficient the significance of having the ability to make a chip, take a look at it, after which change the design, do one other one, and have that in a single constructing,” he stated, including that this method may make their chip enchancment cycle “an order of magnitude higher than anything on the earth.”
What chips will the corporate truly make?
TeraFab will produce two forms of chips. The primary is optimized for edge inference, designed for Tesla automobiles and Optimus humanoid robots. On the size of demand for the primary chip alone, Musk was blunt and stated, “I anticipate humanoid robotic manufacturing to be someplace between a billion and 10 billion items a 12 months. In order that’s lots.”
SpaceX
The second is hardened for the house atmosphere, constructed to deal with the radiation and high-energy ions that might destroy typical chips. Musk additionally confirmed that Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI will proceed shopping for chips from TSMC, Samsung, and Micron, and stated he’d like them to develop as quick as they presumably can.
Cool concept, however what’s the timeline??
Actually, what Musk confirmed within the livestream is genuinely thrilling. The thought of pushing the bounds of chip physics, attempting unconventional designs, and iterating on them sooner than anybody else on the earth is the sort of ambition that might change issues.
That stated, no timeline was given for when TeraFab will start producing chips. And provided that Tesla introduced the Roadster over a decade in the past and it nonetheless hasn’t shipped, I’ll reserve my pleasure till the primary chip rolls off the road.
