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You're namedropping the hot new card, but every card before it was also the hot new card when it was released. It reminds me of the NEVER OBSOLETE sticker e-mac

by pornel 2y ago

You're namedropping the hot new card, but every card before it was also the hot new card when it was released. It reminds me of the NEVER OBSOLETE sticker e-machines put on their unbelievably fast 500Mhz Pentium PCs. These cards will inevitably become worse than worthless when the increased running costs of older-generation hardware exceed the cost of buying next-generation hardware. At some point it won't make sense to use more electricity, more cooling, more rack space to run a hospice for old cards, when the same workload can be done easier, quicker, and cheaper on newer hardware, even after adding the cost of buying the new hardware. The Xeons that used to cost $4000 can now be found on eBay for 1% of their original sticker price, because they're so unprofitable to run.

fancyfredbot 2y ago
The GB200 is specifically called out by the linked article - I didn't pick it at random. "The researchers point out that the weight of Nvidia's latest Blackwell platform in a rack system — designed for intensive LLM inference, training and data processing tasks — tips the scales at 1.36 tons, demonstrating how material-intensive GenAI can be" While I certainly agree that old Xeons are selling for 1% of their original MSRP, it doesn't really seem like this disagrees with what I'm saying - if someone's buying it for 40$, that's not e-waste (yet). I do agree that eventually things can become e-waste if the initial savings are significantly offset by running costs. However it's not clear how much longer we're going to continue to see such large generational improvements in power efficiency or whether these GB200s will be entirely obsolete when such improvements eventually stop happening.
Incipient 2y ago
Those would be 10 year old or so CPUs. Not only is it because they're unprofitable to run, but they're end of life. I know CPUs do and can run longer, but realistically they're towards the end.

by pornel 2y ago

fancyfredbot 2y ago

The GB200 is specifically called out by the linked article - I didn't pick it at random. "The researchers point out that the weight of Nvidia's latest Blackwell platform in a rack system — designed for intensive LLM inference, training and data processing tasks — tips the scales at 1.36 tons, demonstrating how material-intensive GenAI can be" While I certainly agree that old Xeons are selling for 1% of their original MSRP, it doesn't really seem like this disagrees with what I'm saying - if someone's buying it for 40$, that's not e-waste (yet). I do agree that eventually things can become e-waste if the initial savings are significantly offset by running costs. However it's not clear how much longer we're going to continue to see such large generational improvements in power efficiency or whether these GB200s will be entirely obsolete when such improvements eventually stop happening.

Incipient 2y ago

Those would be 10 year old or so CPUs. Not only is it because they're unprofitable to run, but they're end of life. I know CPUs do and can run longer, but realistically they're towards the end.