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tucnak parent
The actual lead times on similarly-capable GPU systems are so long, by the time your order is executed, you're already losing money. Even assuming perfect utilization, and perfect after-market conditions—you won't be making any money on the hardware anyway.

Buy v. rent calculus is only viable if there's no asymmetry between the two. Oftentimes, what you can rent you cannot buy, and vice-versa, what you can buy—you could never rent. Even if you _could_ buy an actual TPU, you wouldn't be able to run it anyway, as it's all built around sophisticated networking and switching topologies[1]. The same goes for GPU deployments of comparable scale: what made you think that you could buy and run GPU's at scale?

It's a fantasy.

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.01433

menaerus
Right. Your argument doesn't really follow. Since I cannot buy a TPU, which you agree with, then a single viable option is really only a GPU, which I _can_ buy.

So, according to that, GPUs aren't really going anywhere unless there's a new player in a town who will compete with the Nvidia and sell at lower prices.

almostgotcaught
Is your answer to "where can I buy a TPU" that you can't buy a GPU either? That's a new one.

First of all I don't understand how that's an answer. Second of all it's laughably wrong - I can name 5 firms (outside of FAANG) off the top of my head with >1k Blackwell devices and they're making very good money (have you ever heard of quantfi....). Third of all, how is TPU going to conquer absolutely anything when (as you admit) you couldn't run one even if you could buy one?

tucnak OP
I'd never claimed that "TPU is going to conquer everything," it's a matter of fact that the latest-generation TPU is currently the most cost-effective solution for large-scale training. I'm not even saying that NVIDIA has lost, just that GPU's have lost. Maybe NVIDIA comes up with a non-GPU based system, and it includes programmable fabric to enable compute-in-network capabilities, sure, anything other than Bluefield nonsense, but it's already clear from the engineering standpoint that the large HBM-stacks attached to a "GPU"+Bluefield formula is over.
almostgotcaught
> NVIDIA has lost, just that GPU's have lost

i hope you realize how silly you sound when

1. NVDA's market cap is 70% more than GOOG's

2. there is literally not a single other viable competitor to GPGPU amongst the 30 or so "accelerator" companies that all swear their thing will definitely be the one, even with many of them approaching 10 years in the market by now (cerebras, samba nova, groq, dmatrix, blah blah blah).

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