4 ms·

Innovation on GPU fabrication, yeah, mining might have turbocharged it. Innovation on other use cases for GPUs were probably held back by excessive costs.

• chii 4y ago
  now that there's a glut of GPUs from the drop in demand from mining, there's likely to be people looking to use them profitably, and thus new innovation. The dot-com boom bust caused a lot of dark fibre to be built - and i think the internet has been better for it. Without that dark fibre, the expansion of the internet wouldn't have been as easy and mainstream, as fast as it did.
  • addicted 4y ago
    Dark fiber is useful for a lot more than GPUs built solely for a specific type of processing. But more importantly, it’s not even clear that buying a miner’s GPU is a good deal because these GPUs tend to be really worn out with short working lives. Most people will probably be better off simply buying cheaper GPUs new, or buying slightly cheaper used GPUs on eBay that were not popular for mining.
    • chii 4y ago
      i'm not really talking about second hand GPUs, i'm talking about new GPUs that was made on the assumption that the prices would be high, and demand high, due to mining. Of course, a 2nd hand GPU might be a bit useless after the abuse of mining for many years (tho i think with proper cooling, and replacement of the fans, those GPUs should've been able to be kept in good working condition for resale).