[acchow]

> This is a question that analysts don't even ask

On the contrary, data centers continue to pop up deploying thousands of GPUs specifically because the numbers work out.

The H100 launched at $30k GPU and rented for $2.50/hr. It's been 3 years since launch, the rent price is still around $2.50.

During these 3 years, it has brought in $65k in revenue.

[kd913]

They worked out because there was an excess of energy and water to handle it.

We will see how the maths works out given there is 19 GW shortage of power. 7 year lead time for Siemens power turbines, 3-5 years for transformers.

Raw commodities are shooting up, not enough education to cover nuclear and SMEs and the RoI is already underwater.

[SketchySeaBeast]

My cynical take is that it'll works out just fine for the data centers, but the neighbouring communities won't care for the constant rolling blackouts.

[fauigerzigerk]

Beyond GPUs themselves, you also have other costs such as data centers, servers and networking, electricity, staff and interest payments.

I think building and operating data center infrastructure is a high risk, low margin business.

[hdjrudni]

They can run these things at 100% utilization for 3 years straight? And not burn them out? That's impressive.

[imtringued]

I don't see anything impressive here?

[vlovich123]

Not really. GPUs are stateless so your bounded lifetime regardless of how much you use them is the lifetime of the shitties capacitor on there (essentially). Modulo a design defect or manufacturing defect, I’d expect a usable lifetime of at least 10 years, well beyond the manufacturer’s desire to support the drivers for it (ie the sw should “fail” first).