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roughly • today at 4:50 PM • 2 replies • view on HN

One problem for internet vs AI is the internet boom laid down a bunch of fiber, which has a usable life of decades. The AI boom is 10% datacenter, 90% GPU, and the GPUs are consumables on a timeline of ~3-5 years, and even that's being optimistic compared to rumored real-world degradation rates. 2000 put a couple trillion in the ground that we got to dig up later, 2026 is setting a couple trillion on fire.


Replies

timcobb • today at 5:03 PM

The infra and its lifespan isn't what created the value that came out of the Internet. The question I think is how much value will people create with these investments

smilekzs • today at 5:05 PM

> the GPUs are consumables on a timeline of ~3-5 years

When newer GPUs with clearly better perf/$ are released at a yearly cadence, then older GPUs might indeed become _obsolete_ at this pace, meaning that it makes more economic sense to swap them out because datacenter occupancy is extremely limited. Many of these GPUs might themselves still be functional.

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