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Why does David Patterson say CPUs still matter in the age of AI accelerators?

Answered from Turing Award Winner: The Difference Between a CPU, GPU, and TPU | David Patterson · Ryan Peterman · 2026-11-04

David Patterson says that if CPUs could still get dramatically faster, GPUs would have stayed a niche. Clock speeds have barely improved since two-to-three-gigahertz chips in 2005, so specialization took over. CPUs remain the right tool for operating systems, compilers and similar work, even as most industry investment now goes to AI accelerators.

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