Lifespan of AI Chips: The $300B Question
blog.citp.princeton.edu
blog.citp.princeton.edu
Technical analysis is not good enough. It hides some tricks these companies seem to be relying upon.
If you buy/manufacture a bleeding edge server chip, and you don't use it, then you can resell it or repurpose it into an end consumer product.
I already explained this. It is what happened with Xeon processors. Lots of obsolete server chips that chinese manufacturers found a way to repurpose into competitive mid-tier end user machines. I think that's a significant event that ties in directly to the bubble we're seeing.
I also already explained why I believe M4 mac minis are a product of a similar practice. A little less obscene because it's mostly inside the same company, with no way of selling the same chip twice to different buyers.
These new deals are just the next iteration of this trick, in which the surpluses of overscaling are being dealt beforehand instead of waiting for them to become e-waste.
I also believe the confidence these companies have in this trick is overestimated. It works for Apple (for now) because they have a loyal customer base willing to buy newer versions even if the new versions are not that better than the previous.
This also explains why the cycles of hardware generations are getting shorter.
The application layer accounts for what percentage of produced components (the max they can build, presumably) will be used (instead of saved for being repurposed). It's not holding the whole thing together.
The more I look into it, the more it seems that it's going that way. For example, the Broadcom deal could be a sign of guaranteeing a supply of wifi chips, necessary to make end user products from the obsolete server parts that were not used in datacenters.
Again, I could be wrong, but I don't think I am. The predictions I'm making for these moves can be tested with time, and we will see what happens. There are ways it can go terribly wrong.