Reddit debates the post-GPU paradigm: 80% of datacenter energy wasted moving bytes under the Von Neumann bottleneck
TheWrathRF · reddit · 2026-11-05
- The poster argues our path to AGI relies on scaling a 1945 Von Neumann bottleneck: nearly 80% of datacenter energy reportedly goes to moving bytes between HBM/DRAM/SRAM and cores rather than to actual compute.
- A second tension: neural weights are naturally analog and probabilistic, yet we force them into strict 0s and 1s simulated in software.
- With node shrinks and software optimization hitting physical limits, the thread asks whether neuromorphic, photonic, or thermodynamic computing will be the "discovery of electricity"-level breakthrough that replaces the GPU+RAM triad.
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