Dell’s AI Factory Assembly Area
At the main assembly area, teams build the Dell IR7000 AI racks from the ground up.
There are multiple racks all being built to specific build sheet specifications for each customer.
Something that was very obvious, is that, aside from wiring, the basic build seems to have gone from the lower-cost components to the higher-value parts. You can see, for example, that the rack rails, liquid cooling, power, NVLink cartridges, management switches, labels and so forth are installed in many of these racks. Those same racks are often missing the GB200 NVL72 compute trays and some of the NVLink switch trays which are not installed yet.
Part of this process is also ensuring that everything is installed properly. Unlike installing 20-40 traditional servers in a rack, achieving higher density means that trays must blind-mate into the rear of the rack and get their power, cooling, and NVLink data connectivity without someone making the physical connection at the rear.
There are a lot of parts that go into these, and every production step needs to be checked off including labeling each part and connection. Dell keeps a record of what is installed in each rack so it can track each part through its supply chain.
Also, if it does not seem overly busy around these racks, we had the assembly teams move for a few minutes while we took photos, B-roll, and I repeatedly messed up takes. One can imagine teams building out each of these racks. That is important since they are costly assets and customers want them quickly.
Next, let us quickly look at the Dell IR7000 solution to get a better idea of what those teams are putting together.
I’m loving your tours. I’m also appreciative that you’re doing the article not just the video
Also really enjoying these tours and the peek behind the curtain. Reminds me of types of journalism that tech sites used to do so well before consolidation hit and they became ad heavy, AI content mills.