3 ms·
The difference is the hardware will become obsolete in a few years, unlike the dark fibre (really, rights of way) that provided cheap connectivity for years aft
by rwmj 4mo ago
The difference is the hardware will become obsolete in a few years, unlike the dark fibre (really, rights of way) that provided cheap connectivity for years after the crash.
- cyanydeez 4mo agonot if they completely crash manufacturing with their push for fascism; be more optimistic!
- johndhi 4mo agoIt's obsolete for training but is it obsolete for inference?
- disgruntledphd2 4mo agoThe factories won't be obsolete, even if the chips are.
- rwmj 4mo agoThe fabs for current nodes will be obsoleted by newer nodes.
- bwb 4mo agoDo we have any good data on how many of the GPU burn out given hard usage? Are we talkinga bout loosing 50% of the hardware as it fails? Or far less?
- digdugdirk 4mo agoIt's an inherently different thing. Fibre is infrastructure. It'll still function decades later. GPUs at this scale are consumables. I've heard 3-5 years lifespan before they fail out. This might be a low estimate, but even if you double it - they're 50% of the cost of datacenters. We're flushing entire countries worth of economic value down an Nvidia shaped toilet.
- bwb 4mo agoAnyone got any good testing data? Surely someone knows rough failure rate from constant usage?
- rwmj 4mo agoIt's not that they fail (which they also do), it's that they become obsolete. They consume more energy to do fewer operations relative to newer nodes. This is the basis behind Moore's law.
- bwb 4mo agoAh gotcha, ya that will be interesting to see, but does seem like a more likely life of 7 to 10 years is possible. I am curious on actual hardware failure rates due to heat etc.
- rightbyte 4mo agoI tried to do a calculation. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48762428 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48762428 So 10% failure rate per gpu year. Some might be repairable and there might be a failure rate acceleration as time passes etc. So very approximate numbers.
- Traster 4mo agoThe hardware will become obsolete but we may end up with an oversupply of cheap power - overbuild on things like Nuclear and solar. That would be nice.