EP 138: Talking GPU Depreciation, OCP Takeaways

The Circuit · 20 Oct 2025 · 51m · Episode 140

What this episode covers

Ben Bajarin and Jay Goldberg discuss the debate over GPU depreciation cycles, arguing that while NVIDIA's Blackwell offers significant performance gains, physical infrastructure limits and economic viability suggest a 4-5 year lifecycle rather than the feared 2-year cycle. Goldberg shares takeaways from the Open Compute Project (OCP) forum, highlighting the rise of 'neoclouds' as a key growth driver for hardware vendors and the strategic pressure on hyperscalers like Amazon and Microsoft to maintain market share. The hosts also analyze the supply chain constraints in power equipment, noting severe backlogs for transformers and gas turbines, and touch on TSMC's cautious approach to capital expenditure despite record demand.

Mentioned

Companies
NVIDIA, Open Compute Project, Cisco, Rista, Google, Oracle, XAI, Aligned Data Centers, BlackRock, Microsoft, Honeywell, TSMC, ASML
Products
Blackwell, Hopper, A100, Vera Rubin, VMware, Lepton, AWS, Azure

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