Fiber lasts decades, GPUs last three years: why the AI boom isn't the dot-com boom
Fiber lasts decades, GPUs last three years: the AI boom isn't the dot-com boom [video]
The dot-com era laid down fiber that stayed useful for decades; the AI boom is pouring money into GPUs that may be obsolete in three years. Hacker News commenters debate what that means for hyperscalers: if models get cheap to run, the massive data-center buildout may never pay off, and the profits flow instead to Nvidia and other hardware makers.
If the models are cheap to run, while good for customers, isn't that a problem for hyperscalers and all the investment poured into the AI data center build out?
- ndom91
Shameless self promotion: I put together an AI infra built-out financials data-vis project/page recently. It includes graphs and tracks updates to stuff like GPU depreciation schedules like this.
- paxy
- GPUs last a lot longer than 3 years.
- The factories don't stop working after 3 years. They can keep making GPUs.
- The AI boom isn't just about GPUs. There have been massive investments in CPUs, RAM, networking and routing components, physical data centers, power plants, cooling, and even fiber (the thing you yourself claim lasts decades). None of this is going to disappear in a couple years.
- whynotminot
I recommend looking at any data regarding A100 rents (6 year old GPU) and then save 50 minutes of your time.
- cmiles8
There is a use for older GPUs, but the chips do have reliability issues. Turns out running chips hard 24/7 causes them to burn out. So it’s less will they be “useful” a while from now but more will they still work.
Folks are leaning it’s like these LED light bulbs that say they’ll last 15 years but after 2 years they start flaking out at a high rate.
Separately, the broader point is still directionally correct. We’re still using fiber from the .com network infra implosion today and will for a long time. The deprecation cycle is incredibly long. The increasing reports of GPUs sitting on shelves because there aren’t data center to power them is very concerning considering all the high interest debt being used to buy what is ultimately a rapidly depreciating asset. Financially, that’s a disaster waiting to happen.
- deadlast2
If you use opencode for your AI work or becomes affordable. To the point where you would reasonably build applications with intelligence the LLM version. I think in the near future the intelligence will be free and there is no business in free. I know it is a big statement but if you look around there is already a large amount of free models of gradually increasing strength. For most applications you don't need a gpt6