Gaming: 'the Compute Bottleneck Is Massively Under Appreciated' Says Google...

'In practice, this will be the rate limit on the impact AI will have in the economy/society.'

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As the AI boom continues to, well, boom, it's not surprising that some are questioning the viability of rampant AI adoption, and the pace at which the hardware supply chain underneath it has to keep up.

One such commenter on the subject is none other than the product lead for Google AI Studio, Logan Kilpatrick. Posting on X, Kilpatrick said: "The compute bottleneck is massively under appreciated."

The compute bottleneck is massively under appreciated. I would guess the gap between supply and demand is growing single digit % every day.February 25, 2026

"I would guess the gap between supply and demand is growing single digit % every day", Kilpatrick continued. "In practice, this will be the rate limit on the impact AI will have in the economy/society."

Certainly, it's not the first time we've heard Google's name in association with massive, seemingly unsustainable AI compute demands. A leaked internal slide shown during a company meeting last year informed one of its teams that AI compute "must double every six months... the next 1000x in 4-5 years."

Simply put, there's only so much compute to go around, and there's a limit to how quickly it can be realistically expanded, even for Google.

TSMC, the manufacturer behind 90-95% of the world's most advanced chips, already looks to be near maximum capacity, resulting in Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang giving the company the hurry up in public.

More facilities look to be on their way—but the idea of it catching up with current demand any time soon seems unlikely. And let's not even mention the DRAM supply crisis, and what that's doing to electronics pricing right now.

Source: PC Gamer