The CPU Comeback Is Upon Us
IEEE Spectrum 2 months ago 21 ● 2 sources
AWS has seen a surge in CPU wait times for server capacity as AI workloads, especially agentic systems, strain its cloud infrastructure. The article says 2026 brought a spike in CPU demand, much of it driven by agentic AI that can spawn tens of thousands to millions of agents. As a result, CPU scheduling, core counts, and tokenization bottlenecks are being treated as critical for reducing latency and may contribute to broader CPU shortages and higher prices.