Electromigration tends to get worse with small sizes but also higher voltage and temperatures. I could see a GPU wearing out that quickly if it were overclocked enough, but stock consumer GPUs will last much longer than that.
electromigration is real, but is it relevant?
since electromigration is basically a matter of long, high-current interconnect, I guess I have been assuming it's merely designed around. By, for instance, having hundreds of power and ground pins, implying quite a robust on-chip distribution mesh, rather than a few high-current runs.
Wouldnt it depend on work loads? My GPU that kicks into high gear for maybe 2-3 hours a week will probably do decades of use before chip degradation kicks in. The power capacitors will give out long before the silicon does.
But it someone is running an LLM 24 hours a day, might not go for as long.
We are flying blind, both on those claiming short life span and those who are not.
Re:The Unsustainability of Moore's Law
by frognumber on Monday July 07, 2025 @04:46PM
(#44494527)
3 second with a web search would bring up citations:
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=gpu+lifespan&ia=web
You'll need to scroll past the ones talking about obsolescence versus failure. Toss in 'data center' if you like.
You'll see a range of numbers -- including some lower than I cited -- but it's all in that ballpark.
The silicon gates in GPUs just don’t wear out like that, not at that timescale. The only thing that sort of does is SSDs (and that’s a write limit, which has existed for decades, not a new thing).