More compute made one agent 13x faster, another just 4%: agents' bottlenecks are task-dependent
alex_verem · x · 2026-09-24
A Korea University and Microsoft Research Asia paper measured where agents spend time across RAG QA, web search, and coding tasks. Key findings:
- Web search agents use only 14% CPU, waiting nearly half their time on websites; QA agents burn 62% of time searching local libraries at 86% CPU
- Going from 2 to 8 cores made the QA agent 13x faster but the web search agent just 4% faster
- Tool concurrency limits sped up the QA agent 3.2x while slowing the coding agent 2.8x
- Redistributing the same 6 cores cut average response time 32% with no new hardware (QA agent 5.4x faster)
Takeaway: before buying more compute, check what your agent is actually waiting on.
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