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Comment by HoldOnAMinute | Hacker News Reader

Technology has a very short life. The difference is that a REIT might contain an office buildings that can be used for any business, but a data center is filled with carcasses that start rotting and stinking from the day of installation.

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The idea that the AI data centers would depreciate in just a few years is plain wrong. The argument was that new chips would be so much more powerful and efficient that it would be cheaper to buy and operate the new chips than to just operate the old chips. Except that demand is significantly outpacing new chip manufacturing, and until it catches up years and years from now, the efficiency argument doesn't matter at all.

I was wondering, with the "10k" price tag quoted here for some earlier (!) units, how much of that is R&D + cost, and how much is just gouging the companies?

No, that's silly. Chips don't rot like produce. Some components will go bad and will need to be replaced. The owner can choose how fast to replace them depending on how prices look in a few years. The rest of the building (including things like power) will still be useful.

i think what op meant is they're instantly out of date. You're not going to be able replace every GPU in your datacenter on every new release from Nvidia and customers are going to go to whoever has the highest performing gear.

> customers are going to go to whoever has the highest performing gear

This is where we lack data. I’m skeptical of the claim. If anything will force retirement of old chips, it will be power efficiency, not customers being picky amidst a chip shortage.

Demand is so high and supply so low customers will go to anyone that has any gear, period. Anthropic is paying xAI for GPUs from 2022, not the latest Nvidia release.

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