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> GPUs aren’t cars

I think another comparison is with hard drives, which are also used by some cryptocurrency schemes, and do degrade faster with intensive use.

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Yes, because hard drives, like cars, have moving parts that can wear out.[a] The silicon of a GPU doesn't have moving parts and is therefore more resilient.

[a]: It's (hopefully) common knowledge in the tech community that purchasing used hard drives is a Bad Idea(TM)

SSD's have no moving parts, and wear out too, right?

Yes, but for different reasons. The grandparent is probably incorrect though, there is emerging evidence that silicon is actually changing/failing over time. See this paper from google on their CPU cores where they have practical evidence of this occuring: https://sigops.org/s/conferences/hotos/2021/papers/hotos21-s...

If their data is correct, it should follow that these exact issues will happen on the small transistor process GPUs as well.

It's not emerging, electromigration been a core constraint in semiconductor design for 60 odd years. E.g.,:

Blech, I. A. and Sello, H. (1966). The Failure of Thin Alluminum Current-Carrying Strips on Oxidized Silicon. In Proc. Symposium on PoF in Electronics, 496-505.

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