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> Another possibility that has long been on my personal list of “future articles to write” is that the future of computing may look more like used cars. If ther

> Another possibility that has long been on my personal list of “future articles to write” is that the future of computing may look more like used cars. If there is little meaningful difference between a chip manufactured in 2035 and a chip from 2065, then buying a still-functional 30-year-old computer may be a much better deal than it is today. If there is less of a need to buy a new computer every few years, then investing a larger amount upfront may make sense – buying a $10,000 computer rather than a $1,000 computer, and just keeping it for much longer or reselling it later for an upgraded model. This seems improbable. 50-year-old technology works because 50 years ago, transistors were micron-scale. Nanometer-scale nodes wear out much more quickly. Modern GPUs have a rated lifespan in the 3-7 year range, depending on usage. One of my concerns is we're reaching a point where the loss of a fab due to a crisis -- war, natural disaster, etc. -- may cause systemic collapse. You can plot lifespan of chips versus time to bring a new fab online. Those lines are just around the crossing point; modern electronics would start to fail before we could produce more.

skissane 1y ago
> Nanometer-scale nodes wear out much more quickly. Modern GPUs have a rated lifespan in the 3-7 year range, depending on usage. I recently bought a new MacBook, my previous one having lasted me for over 10 years. The big thing that pushed me to finally upgrade wasn’t hardware (which as far as I could tell had no major issues), it was the fact that it couldn’t run latest macOS, and software support for the old version it could run was increasingly going away. The battery and keyboard had been replaced, but (AFAIK) the logic board was still the original
- chii 1y ago
  > it couldn’t run latest macOS, and software support for the old version it could run was increasingly going away. which is very annoying, as none of the newer OS versions has anything that warrants dumping hardware to buy brand new to run them with! With the exception of security upgrades, which i find dubious for a company to stop creating (as they would need to do so for their newer OS versions just as well, so the cost of maintaining security patches ought to not be much, if at all), it is definitely more likely to be a dark-pattern to force hardware upgrades.
  - speed_spread 1y ago
    That's not just a dark pattern, it's the logical conclusion to Apple's entire business model. It's what you get for relying on the proprietary OS supplied by a hardware manufacturer. It's why Asahi Linux is so important.
    - scarface_74 1y ago
      And then he still couldn’t use the third party software he says he depends on…
    - Narishma 1y ago
      I'm not sure I agree. Open source software also regularly drops support for old hardware and OSes.
      - em3rgent0rdr 1y ago
        "regularly" is doing a lot of work here. When Linux drops hardware support, we are talking about ancient hardware. An example of a regular drop: Linux 6.15 just a month ago dropped support for 486 (from 1989)!
        SlowTao 1y ago
        Pretty much, you can still get modern distros that support 32bit PowerPC.
        cout 1y ago
        That's surprising. What is the 486 missing that Linux needs? Or is it that there are no volunteers to test and maintain Linux on a 486 (as often happens with older architectures)?
        detaro 1y ago
        It needs a bunch of compatibility code and the maintainers felt it wasn't worth the effort of taking care of that anymore: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250425084216.3913608-1-mingo@kernel.org/ https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250425084216.3913608-1-mingo@... https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wicfBCyMj_x5BiL32o55jqXfnxgn=X5BZZjA-FFER82Jg@mail.gmail.com/ https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wicfBCyMj_x5BiL32o55jqXfn... https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wjCiEk-kc-vOug2GKJdhHKce3vWALbqjybLPcKLHNmEbQ@mail.gmail.com/ https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wjCiEk-kc-vOug2GKJdhHKce3...
- lizknope 1y ago
  I've got 3 Macbooks from 2008, 2012, and 2013. Apple dropped MacOS support years ago. They all run the latest Fedora Linux version with no problems. The screen on the MacBookPro10,2 is 2560x1600 which is still higher than a lot of brand new laptops. The latest version it will run is 10.15 from 2019. I know Apple switched to ARM but most people don't need a new faster computer. I stopped buying Apple computers because I want my computer supported more than 6 years. I do have 3 newer computers but these old Macbooks are kept at various relative's houses for when I visit and wnat my own Linux machine. They have no problems running a web browser and watching videos so why replace them?
sapiogram 1y ago
> Modern GPUs have a rated lifespan in the 3-7 year range, depending on usage. That statement absolutely needs a source. Is "usage" 100% load 24/7? What is the failure rate after 7 years? Are the failures unrepairable, i.e. not just a broken fan?
- Mistletoe 1y ago
  I’ve never heard of this and I was an Ethereum miner. We pushed the cards as hard as they would go and they seemed fine after. As long as the fan was still going they were good.
  - SlowTao 1y ago
    So Intel used to claim a 100,000+ hour life time on their chips. They didnt actually test them to this because that is 11.4 years. But it was basically saying, these things will last at full speed way beyond any reasonable life time. Many chip could probably go way beyond that. I think it was about 15 years back they stopped saying that. Once we passed the 28nm mark it started to become apparent that they couldnt really state that. It makes sense, as parts get smaller they will get more fragile from general usage. With your GPUs yeah they are probably still fine but they could already be half way through their life time, you wouldnt know it until failure point. Add in the silicon lotto and it gets more complicated.
  - bgnn 1y ago
    One thing to realize is the lifetime is a statistical thing. I design chips in modern tech nodes (currently using 2nm). What we get feom the fab is a statistical model of device failure modes. Aging is one of them. When transistors gradually age they get slower sue to increased threshold voltage. This eventually causes failure at a point where timing is tight. When will it happen varies greatly sue to initial conditions, exact conditions the chip was in(temp, vdd, number of on-off cycles, even the workload). After an agong failure the chip will still work if the clock freq is reduced. There are aging monitors on-chip sometimes which try to catch it early and scale down the clock. There are catastrophic failures too, like gate insulator breakdown, electromigration or mechanical failures of IO interconnect. The last one is orders of magnitude more likely than anything else these days.
Robotbeat 1y ago
This is just untrue, and you’ve provided no citation, either. The silicon gates in GPUs just don’t wear out like that, not at that timescale. The only thing that sort of does is SSDs (and that’s a write limit, which has existed for decades, not a new thing).
- Symmetry 1y ago
  Electromigration tends to get worse with small sizes but also higher voltage and temperatures. I could see a GPU wearing out that quickly if it were overclocked enough, but stock consumer GPUs will last much longer than that.
  - markhahn 1y ago
    electromigration is real, but is it relevant? since electromigration is basically a matter of long, high-current interconnect, I guess I have been assuming it's merely designed around. By, for instance, having hundreds of power and ground pins, implying quite a robust on-chip distribution mesh, rather than a few high-current runs.
- SlowTao 1y ago
  Wouldnt it depend on work loads? My GPU that kicks into high gear for maybe 2-3 hours a week will probably do decades of use before chip degradation kicks in. The power capacitors will give out long before the silicon does. But it someone is running an LLM 24 hours a day, might not go for as long. We are flying blind, both on those claiming short life span and those who are not.
- frognumber 1y ago
  3 second with a web search would bring up citations: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=gpu+lifespan&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=gpu+lifespan&ia=web You'll need to scroll past the ones talking about obsolescence versus failure. Toss in 'data center' if you like. You'll see a range of numbers -- including some lower than I cited -- but it's all in that ballpark.
colonial 1y ago
> Modern GPUs have a rated lifespan in the 3-7 year range, depending on usage. I seriously doubt this is true. The venerable GTX 1060 came out 9 years ago, and still sees fairly widespread use based on the Steam hardware survey. According to you, many (most?) of those cards should have given out years ago.
markhahn 1y ago
you're thinking of what, electromigration? what is the age-related failure mode you're referring to? or are you merely referring to warranty period? (which has more to do with support costs, like firmware - not expected failures.)
MangoToupe 1y ago
> One of my concerns is we're reaching a point where the loss of a fab due to a crisis -- war, natural disaster, etc. -- may cause systemic collapse. This is absolutely ridiculous. Even if Taiwan sank today we really don't need those fabs for anything critical. i strongly suspect we could operate the entire supply chain actually necessary for human life with just z80s or some equivalent.

skissane 1y ago

> Nanometer-scale nodes wear out much more quickly. Modern GPUs have a rated lifespan in the 3-7 year range, depending on usage. I recently bought a new MacBook, my previous one having lasted me for over 10 years. The big thing that pushed me to finally upgrade wasn’t hardware (which as far as I could tell had no major issues), it was the fact that it couldn’t run latest macOS, and software support for the old version it could run was increasingly going away. The battery and keyboard had been replaced, but (AFAIK) the logic board was still the original

chii 1y ago
> it couldn’t run latest macOS, and software support for the old version it could run was increasingly going away. which is very annoying, as none of the newer OS versions has anything that warrants dumping hardware to buy brand new to run them with! With the exception of security upgrades, which i find dubious for a company to stop creating (as they would need to do so for their newer OS versions just as well, so the cost of maintaining security patches ought to not be much, if at all), it is definitely more likely to be a dark-pattern to force hardware upgrades.
- speed_spread 1y ago
  That's not just a dark pattern, it's the logical conclusion to Apple's entire business model. It's what you get for relying on the proprietary OS supplied by a hardware manufacturer. It's why Asahi Linux is so important.
  - scarface_74 1y ago
    And then he still couldn’t use the third party software he says he depends on…
  - Narishma 1y ago
    I'm not sure I agree. Open source software also regularly drops support for old hardware and OSes.
    - em3rgent0rdr 1y ago
      "regularly" is doing a lot of work here. When Linux drops hardware support, we are talking about ancient hardware. An example of a regular drop: Linux 6.15 just a month ago dropped support for 486 (from 1989)!
      - SlowTao 1y ago
        Pretty much, you can still get modern distros that support 32bit PowerPC.
      - cout 1y ago
        That's surprising. What is the 486 missing that Linux needs? Or is it that there are no volunteers to test and maintain Linux on a 486 (as often happens with older architectures)?
        detaro 1y ago
        It needs a bunch of compatibility code and the maintainers felt it wasn't worth the effort of taking care of that anymore: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250425084216.3913608-1-mingo@kernel.org/ https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250425084216.3913608-1-mingo@... https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wicfBCyMj_x5BiL32o55jqXfnxgn=X5BZZjA-FFER82Jg@mail.gmail.com/ https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wicfBCyMj_x5BiL32o55jqXfn... https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wjCiEk-kc-vOug2GKJdhHKce3vWALbqjybLPcKLHNmEbQ@mail.gmail.com/ https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wjCiEk-kc-vOug2GKJdhHKce3...
lizknope 1y ago
I've got 3 Macbooks from 2008, 2012, and 2013. Apple dropped MacOS support years ago. They all run the latest Fedora Linux version with no problems. The screen on the MacBookPro10,2 is 2560x1600 which is still higher than a lot of brand new laptops. The latest version it will run is 10.15 from 2019. I know Apple switched to ARM but most people don't need a new faster computer. I stopped buying Apple computers because I want my computer supported more than 6 years. I do have 3 newer computers but these old Macbooks are kept at various relative's houses for when I visit and wnat my own Linux machine. They have no problems running a web browser and watching videos so why replace them?

sapiogram 1y ago

> Modern GPUs have a rated lifespan in the 3-7 year range, depending on usage. That statement absolutely needs a source. Is "usage" 100% load 24/7? What is the failure rate after 7 years? Are the failures unrepairable, i.e. not just a broken fan?

Mistletoe 1y ago
I’ve never heard of this and I was an Ethereum miner. We pushed the cards as hard as they would go and they seemed fine after. As long as the fan was still going they were good.
- SlowTao 1y ago
  So Intel used to claim a 100,000+ hour life time on their chips. They didnt actually test them to this because that is 11.4 years. But it was basically saying, these things will last at full speed way beyond any reasonable life time. Many chip could probably go way beyond that. I think it was about 15 years back they stopped saying that. Once we passed the 28nm mark it started to become apparent that they couldnt really state that. It makes sense, as parts get smaller they will get more fragile from general usage. With your GPUs yeah they are probably still fine but they could already be half way through their life time, you wouldnt know it until failure point. Add in the silicon lotto and it gets more complicated.
- bgnn 1y ago
  One thing to realize is the lifetime is a statistical thing. I design chips in modern tech nodes (currently using 2nm). What we get feom the fab is a statistical model of device failure modes. Aging is one of them. When transistors gradually age they get slower sue to increased threshold voltage. This eventually causes failure at a point where timing is tight. When will it happen varies greatly sue to initial conditions, exact conditions the chip was in(temp, vdd, number of on-off cycles, even the workload). After an agong failure the chip will still work if the clock freq is reduced. There are aging monitors on-chip sometimes which try to catch it early and scale down the clock. There are catastrophic failures too, like gate insulator breakdown, electromigration or mechanical failures of IO interconnect. The last one is orders of magnitude more likely than anything else these days.

Robotbeat 1y ago

This is just untrue, and you’ve provided no citation, either. The silicon gates in GPUs just don’t wear out like that, not at that timescale. The only thing that sort of does is SSDs (and that’s a write limit, which has existed for decades, not a new thing).

Symmetry 1y ago
Electromigration tends to get worse with small sizes but also higher voltage and temperatures. I could see a GPU wearing out that quickly if it were overclocked enough, but stock consumer GPUs will last much longer than that.
- markhahn 1y ago
  electromigration is real, but is it relevant? since electromigration is basically a matter of long, high-current interconnect, I guess I have been assuming it's merely designed around. By, for instance, having hundreds of power and ground pins, implying quite a robust on-chip distribution mesh, rather than a few high-current runs.
SlowTao 1y ago
Wouldnt it depend on work loads? My GPU that kicks into high gear for maybe 2-3 hours a week will probably do decades of use before chip degradation kicks in. The power capacitors will give out long before the silicon does. But it someone is running an LLM 24 hours a day, might not go for as long. We are flying blind, both on those claiming short life span and those who are not.
frognumber 1y ago
3 second with a web search would bring up citations: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=gpu+lifespan&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=gpu+lifespan&ia=web You'll need to scroll past the ones talking about obsolescence versus failure. Toss in 'data center' if you like. You'll see a range of numbers -- including some lower than I cited -- but it's all in that ballpark.

colonial 1y ago

> Modern GPUs have a rated lifespan in the 3-7 year range, depending on usage. I seriously doubt this is true. The venerable GTX 1060 came out 9 years ago, and still sees fairly widespread use based on the Steam hardware survey. According to you, many (most?) of those cards should have given out years ago.

markhahn 1y ago

you're thinking of what, electromigration? what is the age-related failure mode you're referring to? or are you merely referring to warranty period? (which has more to do with support costs, like firmware - not expected failures.)

MangoToupe 1y ago

> One of my concerns is we're reaching a point where the loss of a fab due to a crisis -- war, natural disaster, etc. -- may cause systemic collapse. This is absolutely ridiculous. Even if Taiwan sank today we really don't need those fabs for anything critical. i strongly suspect we could operate the entire supply chain actually necessary for human life with just z80s or some equivalent.