IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off

Re:IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data center... by PunchyHamster on Tuesday December 02, 2025 @07:10PM (#46128690)

Eh, not exactly. If you don't run CPU at 70%+ the rest of the machine isn't that much more inefficient that model generation or two behind.

It used to be that new server could use half power of the old one at idle but vendors figured out that servers also need proper power management a while ago and it is much better.

Last few gens increase could be summed up to "low % increase in efficiency, with TDP, memory channels and core count increase".

So for loads not CPU bound the savings on newer gen aren't nearly worth it to replace it, and for bulk storage the CPU power usage is even smaller part

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Re:IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data center... by matt-p on Tuesday December 02, 2025 @08:10PM (#46129090)

Definitely single thread performance and storage are the main reasons not to use an old server. A 6 year old server didn't have nvme drives, so SATA SSD at best. That's a major slow down if disk is important.

Aside from that there's no reason to not use a dual socket server from 5 years ago instead of a single socket server of today. Power and reliability maybe not as good.

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Re:IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data center... by zozbot234 on Wednesday December 03, 2025 @12:51AM (#46130719)

NVMe is just a different form factor for what's essentially a PCIe connection, and adapters are widely available to bridge these formats. Surely old servers will still support PCIe?

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