(separate email for a separate point/idea) On Thu, 20 Aug 2026 at 12:31, Simon Richter <[email protected]> wrote:
> I suspect that this will change soon as well, because increased hardware > prices will also affect the business model where a generous amount of CI > time is essentially free for open source projects, in the hope that the > people will get used to it, and convince their companies to buy the > expensive business plans. I was not really aware of this until recently, but there is a real trend of even datacenters using older hardware for use-cases where top-of-the-line performance is not needed. You can see it in the https://youtu.be/MQeJYEN_lrg that I linked in other email in the thread - Linus Sebastian (LTT) visiting a Hetzner data center. Among many other things they show how they are assembling *new* customer bare metal systems using consumer-grade AMD AM4 CPUs with DDR4 memory and even older Xeon systems with DDR3 memory. Today. It is hard to source too many new parts for this, but sufficient reserve of parts already exists out there to allow this kind of usage to happen. And some manufacturers are re-opening previous generation manufacturing plants to make new components for this market. https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ram/production-of-ddr4-memory-and-motherboards-is-restarting-amid-unprecedented-memory-shortages-pc-industry-preparing-for-a-world-without-ddr5 There may be some efficiency trade-offs. But if the datacenter is green anyway and is not really space-limited, then re-using old tech is a net benefit. It also reduces the e-waste (or effort of e-recycling). I am *generally* an optimistic person, I understand that others may be way more sceptical than me in evaluating events and possible future developments. But decisions should not be made from extreme predictions - neither from absolute optimism, nor from absolute doomerism. -- Best regards, Aigars Mahinovs
