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Nobody knows what a used GPU cluster is worth

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Re: Nobody knows what a used GPU cluster is worth

#91
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so are buybacks. you choose to sign the contract. there's no way they didn't have an escape clause, although likely it meant not using the cloud provider anymore

> so are buybacks. you choose to sign the contract Right, so they're not voluntary.

Literally what? Do you understand what is being proposed?

Re: Nobody knows what a used GPU cluster is worth

#92

One data point: 512GB Mac Studios are selling on ebay for double what they were selling for new at the beginning of the year.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49005798 "I have an M3 ultra mac studio with 512 GB of memory. I want to sell it, [...] Given the high cost of the Mac studio ($20,000 or more)"

Re: Nobody knows what a used GPU cluster is worth

#93
post #2

I half expect Nvidia to have buyback contacts like Ferrari with the larger customers to prevent a price crash when they all upgrade and to keep them scarce. I hope not though, perhaps I can pick up a H100 in a few years if they get sold on the open market.

isn't Ferrari the brand that requires any purchaser to be an existing owner? I could see NVIDIA going for something like that.

Re: Nobody knows what a used GPU cluster is worth

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so are buybacks. you choose to sign the contract Right, so they're not voluntary.

Literally what? Do you understand what is being proposed?

Yes. "You choose to sign the contract" is not a reasonable argument, for two reasons:

1. There is one supplier, so you have no choice. 2. Even if you had a choice to sign the contract, this still means that it's not the same as a trade-in, because trade-ins are always voluntary, but once you have signed the contract, a right of first refusal is not.

In general, the "you chose to sign the contract" argument is a poor justification for bad contracts. If the contract is bad, it is bad regardless of whether you chose to sign it.

Re: Nobody knows what a used GPU cluster is worth

#95
post #75

"Secondary market data shows moderately-used 2 to 3 year old GPUs trading at 50% to 70% of new pricing under normal conditions." That's for good NVidia H100 units.[1] There's a shortage of those. That seems to be the price after removal, cleaning, testing and refurbishing. Raw units removed from a shutdown will not be as valuable. H100 units are available on eBay, but multiple sellers are using the same picture of a…

Who is buying these at 70% of new pricing given the sky high likelihood of them being shot? Maybe it's safe to buy from small labs that went under quickly, but I can't imagine a cluster that has been operating near its thermal limits for a couple years fetching that kind of resale.

It was true of crypto GPUs too, although mostly people picking them up for gaming. Always seems high to me too but if you can get any guarantee of them not being on fire when they were pulled the bathtub curve keeps you pretty safe, thermal limits are limits for a reason.

Re: Nobody knows what a used GPU cluster is worth

#96
Essentially nothing, fractions of a penny on a dollar, because players who could afford paying real money won't risk the crusty old hardware - so you're limited to buyers who still need a massive cluster but don't have AI infinite money glitch enabled

Re: Nobody knows what a used GPU cluster is worth

#97

The relatively slow depreciation of GPU value is an artifact of supply constraints. If you run fp4 inference and could choose freely between Hopper and a Rubin, the performance per watt would make the Hopper unattractive even if you paid zero for the hardware and only for the power. You can't get the Rubin, or even the Blackwell, so you will pay for the H100 but this won't last if fabs ramp up capacity.

Are fabs going to ramp up capacity? Wouldn't it make more business sense for them to just not ramp up capacity and enjoy the higher prices?

Re: Nobody knows what a used GPU cluster is worth

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is buying these at 70% of new pricing given the sky high likelihood of them being shot? Maybe it's safe to buy from small labs that went under quickly, but I can't imagine a cluster that has been operating near its thermal limits for a couple years fetching that kind of resale.

It was true of crypto GPUs too, although mostly people picking them up for gaming. Always seems high to me too but if you can get any guarantee of them not being on fire when they were pulled the bathtub curve keeps you pretty safe, thermal limits are limits for a reason.

crypto gpus didnt run at 100% power draw so the strain wasn't that massive

Re: Nobody knows what a used GPU cluster is worth

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow at any given moment every possible topic to discuss on HN belongs to either the set of "it's amazing and nobody can say anything bad about it" or the set of "this thing sucks and nobody is allowed to say anything positive about it" and I never have ANY idea which one any given topic will be in on any given day.

latchkey is being restrained. He runs a data center filled with AMD GPUs. He's got a lot more insight to the business of it than the post does.

In 2008, was the opinion of a banker more "insightful" than they opinion of journalists, bloggers and normal people talking about the imminent subprime crash?

Re: Nobody knows what a used GPU cluster is worth

#100
post #14
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't that be crazy - a hobbyist market for H100s? Maybe someone could start a business buying up and rehousing these.

They're pretty specific to the datacenter use case with no outputs and they need to be cooled externally, principally through the very loud high speed fans used in data centers. I suppose you could strap a fan to one and put it in a normal case or maybe make a dedicated after market cooler (like the water blocks made for water cooling cases).

> Very loud high speed fans

if you haven't heard a 5u server intended for a datacenter rack come to life it's quite the experience. Sounds like a plane taking off.

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