Report says AI chips in data centers could double every nine months

In short: The total number of AI chips running in data centers is projected to double about every nine months, as companies build more computing capacity for AI.

What's going on

A new New York Times interactive report estimates there are about 20 million AI chips in data centers worldwide today. Data centers are large buildings filled with computers that companies use to run online services.

The report says the total number of these AI chips is projected to double about every nine months. If that happens, it would reach roughly 200 million chips by the end of 2028, which is about 10 times more than today.

It is important to understand what “doubling” means here. It does not mean each chip is physically getting bigger or multiplying on its own. It means more chips are being bought and installed, so the world’s total AI computing power grows fast, like adding more engines to a fleet rather than upgrading a single engine.

This projection is tied to analysis from Epoch AI, a research group that tracks how much AI computing is being deployed. Their work also describes the same trend in a slightly different way, global AI computing capacity has been growing so fast that it works out to a doubling roughly every 7 to 9 months.

What to watch

If this pace continues, the biggest limits may be practical ones, like how quickly data centers can be built, how much electricity they can get, and whether chip supply can keep up. Those constraints will help decide whether the projection holds through 2028.

Source: NYTimes