Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Meta building cloud business to sell excess AI capacity

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–67 of 67 posts

Re: Meta building cloud business to sell excess AI capacity

#61

Post by bwb »

rwmj wrote: post #57
bwb wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone got any good testing data? Surely someone knows rough failure rate from constant usage?

It's not that they fail (which they also do), it's that they become obsolete. They consume more energy to do fewer operations relative to newer nodes. This is the basis behind Moore's law.

Ah gotcha, ya that will be interesting to see, but does seem like a more likely life of 7 to 10 years is possible.

I am curious on actual hardware failure rates due to heat etc.

Re: Meta building cloud business to sell excess AI capacity

#62

Post by rightbyte »

Sol- wrote: post #11

xAI has shown this to be quite lucrative. And it seems to even make some sense - if the contract can be ended on relatively short notice, you basically have the capacity on stand-by if you ever need it yourself (accumulating GPUs is not trivial), but can monetize it if you don't need it. Though it's probably a bad sign generally that you can't capitalize on all the GPUs you've acquired.

> (accumulating GPUs is not trivial)

Also like accumulating milk rather than gold.

A approximate failure rate I have been able to find is: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intell...

Which would imply 42% loss over 5 years if linear attrition at 10% failure rate per gpu year.

(((1-(148+72+19+17+6)÷16 384)^(1÷54))^(365)

Dunno how many faults are repairable in practice. The failure rates of CPUs were alot lower for comparison.

Re: Meta building cloud business to sell excess AI capacity

#63

Post by rightbyte »

bwb wrote: post #22
rwmj wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is the hardware will become obsolete in a few years, unlike the dark fibre (really, rights of way) that provided cheap connectivity for years after the crash.

Do we have any good data on how many of the GPU burn out given hard usage? Are we talkinga bout loosing 50% of the hardware as it fails? Or far less?

I tried to do a calculation.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48762428

So 10% failure rate per gpu year. Some might be repairable and there might be a failure rate acceleration as time passes etc. So very approximate numbers.

Re: Meta building cloud business to sell excess AI capacity

#64

Post by wmf »

rightbyte wrote: post #62
Sol- wrote: post #11

xAI has shown this to be quite lucrative. And it seems to even make some sense - if the contract can be ended on relatively short notice, you basically have the capacity on stand-by if you ever need it yourself (accumulating GPUs is not trivial), but can monetize it if you don't need it. Though it's probably a bad sign generally that you can't capitalize on all the GPUs you've acquired.

> (accumulating GPUs is not trivial) Also like accumulating milk rather than gold. A approximate failure rate I have been able to find is: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intell... Which would imply 42% loss over 5 years if linear attrition at 10% failure rate per gpu year. (((1-(148+72+19+17+6)÷16 384)^(1÷54))^(365) Dunno how many faults are repairable in practice. The failure rates of CPUs wer…

Newer generations are supposed to be more reliable. You're also not counting warranty replacement.

Re: Meta building cloud business to sell excess AI capacity

#66

Post by TYPE_FASTER »

XorNot wrote: post #35
khurs wrote: post #26

Good news. The more providers, the more competition and lower prices. Meta are laying their own sub-sea cables globally at present: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgrgz8271go

In the grim darkness of the AI boom everyone is watching high profitability industries move into areas characterized by having few providers due to incredibly poor margins and high expenses and declare it business genius.

Are we watching the next sacrificial infra build-out happen (Global Crossing/Iridium), where eventually a bankruptcy will lead to affordability? Is this an artificial semiconductor demand peak with rapid expansion due to business FOMO? Will semi manufacturing ramp up to meet this peak, leading to a glut? Will this be like the pandemic supply chain whiplash impact on outdoor gear (Kona Bicycles at one point was offering a BOGO deal)?

Re: Meta building cloud business to sell excess AI capacity

#67

Post by gloryjulio »

eiejee wrote: post #27
gloryjulio wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For one thing, I still don't understand Meta as a business Zuck got spooked by apple ads change a few years ago, which crashed the meta's stock to double digit. So Zuck is trying to own a platform. They want to be a version of openai selling ads

Actually his basket case investments with VR is what led to a loss of investor trust

That's true. But trying out a new sector is one thing, even apple build their own vr. Zuck took so long to cut loss on vr platform because he wants to have this platform to be solely under his control
Post reply on HN