Software Pushes The AI Pareto Frontier More Than Hardware
Modern AI has introduced a new generation of people to the concept of the Pareto frontier, a curve showing the tradeoff between different factors.
The Pareto frontier was famously used by Nvidia's co-founder and CEO to describe the tradeoff between AI inference throughput and response time performance during his GTC 2025.
Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian mathematician, civil engineer, and economist, created the 80-20 rule, observing that 80 percent of the wealth in Italy was concentrated in the hands of 20 percent of the population.
The concept of the Pareto frontier is driving the modern economy, with software playing a significant role in pushing its boundaries.
Author's summary: Software advances drive AI progress.