Ask Lemmy

What's probably gonna happen is a rapid buildout of infrastructure for cloud compute by reusing the datacenters for things like Windows 365 subscriptions.

There's gotta be a second ulterior motive besides AI behind these datacenters, and the fact that Win365 exists could be one such motive.

Make them detention camps for MAGA traitors and pedophiles.

A golden age for laser tag arenas

Survielllance centers for all the data being stolen off your smartphone and flock cameras.

If anyone thinks I'm wrong, they're completely blind to what's going on and their future plan.

Apparently the US government is looking to give a massive bailout under the guise of "public partnership" so the public will pay for them and then corporations will get to use them and not pay us more than likely. They'll be put to use, we'll pay for them to take our jobs. It's really the best situation possible...

/Wrist

In past crypto busts, Nvidia bought used datacenter GPUs and threw them away, to keep prices of new cards high.

They will undoubtedly do this again. Probably AMD/Intel too.

And “FOMO” style crypto mining sites were just abandoned or repurposed AFAIK.

But honestly, I don’t know what will happen now. Especially to the “quick and dirty” sites like Meta’s server tents, all the supposedly temporary evaporative cooling/gas generators and such.

Used server GPUs are still pretty good processors for all sorts of things. I would guess that Nvidia pivots towards robotics and“business virtual reality,” kinda like they’re already pivoting towards more utilitarian LLMs with the Nemotron releases, so maybe the surviving GPUs will get used for that.

They are disposable. Meta is deploying them in tents. Elements of the infrastructure like power generation and heat management could be made durable, but I imagine that isn't a huge cost compared to replacing the entire guts of the thing every generation.

One thing not mentioned here: Hardware has an expiration date. As hardware improves and becomes more performant, with reduced power consumption and heat generation, older hardware loses its value (I've got free servers and switches this way).

AI data centers have been built anticipating a demand that won't happen, therefore they are in a market already over saturated, dominated by few and just selling allocation won't let them cover costs if they are supposed to compete against the big 5.

I would say that in EU or few other countries where they care about data locality that could help, but chances are some providers won't get paid, some people will lose their jobs, and taxpayers will give a bailout to the wrong people.

Not sure about the buildings themselves, but I'm pretty confident at least their contents will flood the secondhand market with cheap secondhand gear. I won't say the crypto bubble has burst, but a lot of the mining rigs are being parted out and sold fairly cheap, and one specific crypto mining board has become popular as a DIY gaming system. (Currently doing a BC-250 "DIY SteamMachine" build myself).

As for the buildings, maybe we'll see some creative uses like indoor farms or something. Or, perhaps, it'll just be a mundane "AI datacenter becomes a generic data center".

I'd guess they'd be repurposed into business centers or office space like we've seen with old malls, but malls were usually in populated areas where datacenters aren't.

Do these datacenters even exist or are they just plans on paper?

My impression is we aren't axtually building anywhere near what these investors are investing in.

Will there even be anything to repurpose or scrap on the other side?

I am not so sure.

Indoor golf. Karts. Lazer tag.

Datacenters aren't only used for AI. They could be used for cloud gaming, or in general for hardware-as-a-service models as a capitalist solution to high hardware prices for consumers.

Or just good old server hosting.

If/when the AI bubble bursts, I'm skeptical that they would get repurposed as any kind of non-AI data center, as I doubt the demand would come anywhere close to matching the supply. The hardware would probably be sold off for pennies on the dollar, and hopefully these parts weren't designed to be unusable in consumer PCs. I'd like to see those data centers turn into homeless shelters or something of benefit to the community, but that'd require extensive reconfiguring of the interior for a non-profit cause. More likely they'll end up as warehouses and distribution centers, or end up as long-term vacancies.

Hopefully cheap parts, but more likely just another excuse for higher consumer prices on everything.

Burn

They become the go to place for huge LAN parties.

We'll use them for other data applications.

Some will continue working just drop the compute price by a lot. Others will be mothballed for a while until someone can figure out how to run them profitably.

Expect a lot of new (or even resurrected old) use cases to pop up. For example I expect cloud gaming to make a huge comeback driven by cheaper prices. Us mortals won't be able to afford our own GPUs for a while, but there will suddenly be a surplus of data center units for rent.