[mbrumlow]

It’s not that they don’t work. It’s how businesses handle hardware.

I worked at a few data centers on and off in my career. I got lots of hardware for free or on the cheap simply because the hardware was considered “EOL” after about 3 years, often when support contracts with the vendor ends.

There are a few things to consider.

Hardware that ages produce more errors, and those errors cost, one way or another.

Rack space is limited. A perfectly fine machine that consumes 2x the power for half the output cost. It’s cheaper to upgrade a perfectly fine working system simply because it performs better per watt in the same space.

Lastly. There are tax implications in buying new hardware that can often favor replacement.

[fooker]

I’ll be so happy to buy a EOL H100!

But no, there’s none to be found, it is a 4 year, two generations old machine at this point and you can’t buy one used at a rate cheaper than new.

[pixl97]

Well demand is so high currently that it's likely this cycle doesn't exist yet for fast cards.

For servers I've seen where the slightly used equipment is sold in bulk to a bidder and they may have a single large client buy all of it.

Then around the time the second cycle comes around it's split up in lots and a bunch ends up at places like ebay

[aswegs8]

Not sure why this "GPUs obsolete after 3 years" gets thrown around all the time. Sounds completely nonsensical.

[SequoiaHope]

There’s plenty on eBay? But at the end of your comment you say “a rate cheaper than new” so maybe you mean you’d love to buy a discounted one. But they do seem to be available used.

[JMiao]

Do you know how support contract lengths are determined? Seems like a path to force hardware refreshes with boilerplate failure data carried over from who knows when.

[aorloff]

> Rack space is limited.

Rack space and power (and cooling) in the datacenter drives what hardware stays in the datacenter