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.