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Elon Musk says a chip for space should run hot, since raising the...
Fireside Alpha@firesidealpha
11 views
Oct 20, 2026
~1 min read
Elon Musk says a chip for space should run hot, since raising the temperature 20% in Kelvin cuts radiator mass in half, and that a multi-trillion parameter model does not care about a few bit flips
“Well, I guess you want to design it to be more radiation tolerant and run at a higher temperature. So roughly, if you increase the operating temperature by 20% in degrees Kelvin, you can cut your radiator mass in half. So running at a higher temperature is helpful in space."
"There’s various things you can do for shielding the memory, but neural nets are going to be very resilient to bit flips. So most of what happens for radiation is random bit flips."
"But if you’ve got, like, you know, a multi-trillion parameter model and you get a few bit flips, it doesn’t matter. Heuristic programs are going to be much more sensitive to bit flips than some giant parameter file. So I just design it to run hot. And I think you pretty much do it the same way that you do things on Earth, apart from make it run hotter.”
“Well, I guess you want to design it to be more radiation tolerant and run at a higher temperature. So roughly, if you increase the operating temperature by 20% in degrees Kelvin, you can cut your radiator mass in half. So running at a higher temperature is helpful in space."
"There’s various things you can do for shielding the memory, but neural nets are going to be very resilient to bit flips. So most of what happens for radiation is random bit flips."
"But if you’ve got, like, you know, a multi-trillion parameter model and you get a few bit flips, it doesn’t matter. Heuristic programs are going to be much more sensitive to bit flips than some giant parameter file. So I just design it to run hot. And I think you pretty much do it the same way that you do things on Earth, apart from make it run hotter.”
Fireside Alpha@firesidealpha
Jensen Huang says he loves working with Elon Musk, and reveals their engineering teams are designing a new type of server to put data centers in space
“I’m delighted that I love working with Elon. He’s using our technology for his own AI in training models and such, deploying models, of course."
"Grok Bot is super cool. The demand for Grok Bot, the consumption for Grok Bot is really skyrocketing. And then, of course, he rents it."
"And so the combination of these three things, he’s fairly unique in doing that. I guess Google does that. That would be yet another example."
"And so I think he also has the advantage that he loves the intersection between computing and the physical buildouts. He loves that whole area. Nobody knows more about energy than he does."
"One particular new market that we’re going to go explore together is putting data centers out in space. Our two engineering teams are working super closely together to create a new type of server, a new type of architecture that might be super good in space and on Earth.”
“I’m delighted that I love working with Elon. He’s using our technology for his own AI in training models and such, deploying models, of course."
"Grok Bot is super cool. The demand for Grok Bot, the consumption for Grok Bot is really skyrocketing. And then, of course, he rents it."
"And so the combination of these three things, he’s fairly unique in doing that. I guess Google does that. That would be yet another example."
"And so I think he also has the advantage that he loves the intersection between computing and the physical buildouts. He loves that whole area. Nobody knows more about energy than he does."
"One particular new market that we’re going to go explore together is putting data centers out in space. Our two engineering teams are working super closely together to create a new type of server, a new type of architecture that might be super good in space and on Earth.”
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