Tesla has reportedly approached SK hynix, a South Korean memory chip leader, for a long-term supply of enterprise-grade solid-state drives (eSSDs) worth up to 1 trillion Korean won, or approximately C$1.1 billion/US$725 million.
According to a report from the Korea Economic Daily, citing unnamed industry sources, the deal would see Tesla use the eSSDs to improve the efficiency of its Dojo supercomputer, which is designed to train its Full Self-Driving (FSD) neural networks.
As Tesla scales up investments in Dojo, projected to cost around US$10 billion annually, the need for faster, more efficient storage technology has grown significantly. Compared to traditional hard disk drives (HDDs), which rely on magnetic disks for data storage, eSSDs are smaller and deliver superior performance with faster data processing speeds and lower power consumption, ideal for AI’s extensive data handling requirements.
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In AI applications, where vast quantities of data must be processed and stored in real-time, eSSDs provide a substantial advantage over HDDs by providing faster data retrieval.
According to industry estimatess, eSSDs can cut energy costs by up to 80% and reduce total operational expenses by nearly half over five years, compared to HDDs.
