Not necessarily if you count capital costs vs operating costs/margins.

Replacing cars every 3 years vs a couple % in efficiency is not an obvious trade off. Especially if you can do it in 5 years instead of 3.

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iancmceachern 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You highlight the exact dilemma.

Company A has taxis that are 5 percent less efficient and for the reasons you stated doesn't want to upgrade.

Company B just bought new taxis, and they are undercutting company A by 5 percent while paying their drivers the same.

Company A is no longer competitive.

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Dylan16807 4 hours ago | parent [-]

The debt company B took on to buy those new taxis means they're no longer competitive either if they undercut by 5%.

The scenario doesn't add up.

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iancmceachern 3 hours ago | parent [-]

But Company A also took on debt for theirs, so that's a wash. You assume only one of them has debt to service?

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Dylan16807 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Both companies bought a set of taxis in the past. Presumably at the same time if we want this comparison to be easy to understand.

If company A still has debt from that, company B has that much debt plus more debt from buying a new set of taxis.

Refreshing your equipment more often means that you're spending more per year on equipment. If you do it too often, then even if the new equipment is better you lose money overall.

If company B wants to undercut company A, their advantage from better equipment has to overcome the cost of switching.

	▲	iancmceachern an hour ago \| parent [-]
		You are assuming something again. They both refresh their equipment at the same rate.

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zozbot234 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You can sell the old, less efficient GPUs to folks who will be running them with markedly lower duty cycles (so, less emphasis on direct operational costs), e.g. for on-prem inference or even just typical workstation/consumer use. It ends up being a win-win trade.

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lazide 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Then you’re dealing with a lot of labor to do the switches (and arrange sales of used equipment), plus capital float costs while you do it.

It can make sense at a certain scale, but it’s a non trivial amount of cost and effort for potentially marginal returns.

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pixl97 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Building a new data center and getting power takes years to double your capacity. Swapping out out a rack that is twice as fast takes very little time in comparison.

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lazide 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Huh? What does your statements have to do with what I’m saying?

I’m just pointing out changing it out at 5 years is likely cheaper than at 3 years.

	▲	pixl97 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Depends at the rate of growth of the hardware. If your data center is full and fully booked, and hardware is doubling in speed every year it's cheaper to switch it out every couple of years.