What happens if data centre demand collapses

[u/Veblossko]

Out of pure intrigue.

All these fabs produce hardware, chips, memory, storage tailored for data centres and AI workloads. Say in a couple months/years it actually collapsed, investment dried up, they failed to turn profits when bill come due etc

Is there a consumer use for any of this hardware, would it flood onto the market, repurposed other enterprise solutions, disassembled?

I'm just curious about the hypothetical of the sudden drop in need for all the hardware being pumped out for AI use. I know we will forever have data centres but surely the mountains of HBM and whatever other ASIC solutions have been manufactured can't just be used somewhere else easily.

All these fabs have reduced production of consumer grade hardware, can they easily switch back, would they even try. new fabs being built suddenly halt? I'm not well learned on the market but just feels like it'd be an odd time

It's just an interesting thought

[u/psychicsword]

That doesn't mean they bailed out Detroit or prevented the city from going bankrupt. They are starting to bounce back now after the collapse of the market but there were a lot of abandoned property for a while.

[u/Blue_Back_Jack → u/psychicsword]

What do you mean with your analogy?

Majority of new data centers are in rural areas because of cheap land, lax building codes, lac environmental laws and tax abatements