how long do ai data centres last? what happens to them once they reach eol? what happens to the computing kit inside?
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@otfrom The buildings themselves should last as long as any other commercial building. The data centre I had things racked in in London was by no means new when I used it and is still in business.
Commodity hardware gets replaced on 3-5 year cycles typically. Specialist hardware either ends up as ewaste or someone figures out how to reuse it. A good example are the BC-250 boards that were used for crypto mining and are now being turned into cheap gaming PCs since they used PS5 APUs.
@semanticist are the new AI data centres that re-usable? (see other thread where I wonder if over optimisation of the buildings are true or not)
@otfrom I would assume the building is reusable - if they're using non-commodity hardware then parts might need to be reworked when replaced, but they're not going to do something like make an entire building that only works with a specific GPU. Commodity stuff is commodity stuff, and specialist stuff would be made to work with existing systems where possible.
It's more likely that there's entire racks which take power, data, and water connections which would be swapped out as needed.
@semanticist I had been reading about the special cooling needs of the particular GPUs having a lot of demand on the overall building that might change some of that, but it is difficult to know between marketing, slop, and fud
@otfrom I'd assume that folk from round these parts then start arguing about which flavour of Linux will run best on it.
@pete I've seen some of that already (and I approve).
I'm just not sure how true what I've been reading is.
(that they have a lifespan of 3-5 years, and are basically useless after that period as they are designed around a particular GPUs cooling set up needs)
I think that the AI supporters in gov't partly think they are getting long term assets not a 14 acre box of e-waste in 3-5 years.
