Yes, it probably won't be clear until we have the benefit of some hindsight.
One thing I'm inclined to believe though is that the investment being made into compute and research today may not benefit the investors, but it will be net-positive on a longer time scale for the wider populace. A comparison to the internet and the dot-com bubble seems fitting.
And from that perspective I'd also be worried about the bubble bursting before Europe even gets started, as what remains after a bubble would still largely serve the US and China.
I think one problem with that comparison is that due to how energy intensive these datacentres are, they are very fast depreciating assets, unlike e.g. the telecom infrastructure that was (over-)built during the dot-com bubble, or the railway tracks from the era of Railway Mania.
The only reason a GPU-based compute-heavy datacentre built 5 years ago is still in operation today is the component shortage.
Without the current component shortages, those datacentres would just be so much less energy efficient per flop that it would literally be cheaper to just scrap the thing and rebuild it.
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This is not to say that we shouldn't build datacentres, but just that I wouldn't be so sure that the datacentres being built today won't be stranded assets long before they pay themselves off.
I agree, the datacenters and the GPUs inside them might be the least valuable thing to come out of the boom. The research in chips, architectures, and training, and the supporting infrastructure in fabs and energy grids still seems highly valuable. Europe will still see very little of that, but at least the Chinese labs still publish some of their research.
Comments
Yes, it probably won't be clear until we have the benefit of some hindsight.
One thing I'm inclined to believe though is that the investment being made into compute and research today may not benefit the investors, but it will be net-positive on a longer time scale for the wider populace. A comparison to the internet and the dot-com bubble seems fitting.
And from that perspective I'd also be worried about the bubble bursting before Europe even gets started, as what remains after a bubble would still largely serve the US and China.
I think one problem with that comparison is that due to how energy intensive these datacentres are, they are very fast depreciating assets, unlike e.g. the telecom infrastructure that was (over-)built during the dot-com bubble, or the railway tracks from the era of Railway Mania.
The only reason a GPU-based compute-heavy datacentre built 5 years ago is still in operation today is the component shortage.
Without the current component shortages, those datacentres would just be so much less energy efficient per flop that it would literally be cheaper to just scrap the thing and rebuild it.
_________
This is not to say that we shouldn't build datacentres, but just that I wouldn't be so sure that the datacentres being built today won't be stranded assets long before they pay themselves off.
I agree, the datacenters and the GPUs inside them might be the least valuable thing to come out of the boom. The research in chips, architectures, and training, and the supporting infrastructure in fabs and energy grids still seems highly valuable. Europe will still see very little of that, but at least the Chinese labs still publish some of their research.