🤖 Large Language Models

LLM Inference's Power Lie: 99.8% Wasted on Data Hauling, Not Crunching Numbers

We all figured bandwidth or VRAM would cap LLMs. Nope. Power's the brick wall, and it's mostly pissed away shuffling weights—not doing math.

theAIcatchup Apr 08, 2026 3 min read 10 views
Pie chart breaking down LLM inference power: 99.8% data movement vs 0.2% compute on NVIDIA H100

⚡ Key Takeaways

  • 99.8% of LLM inference power moves data, not computes. 𝕏
  • Dennard scaling's death means more TDP for gains—1000W+ GPUs standard. 𝕏
  • Datacenter power caps scaling; nuclear neighbors incoming. 𝕏
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#Dennard scaling #GPU TDP #LLM inference #NVIDIA GPUs #power consumption #power wall

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Originally reported by Dev.to

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