IEEE Spectrum: Agentic AI Makes CPU the New Bottleneck, AWS Orders Cycle Rationing as Intel Sells Out

IEEE Spectrum reported Aug 17 that agentic AI has flipped CPUs into the new performance bottleneck. AWS has ordered engineers to conserve CPU cycles 'at all costs' after wait times for CPU capacity exploded, and Intel researcher Souvik Kundu cites AMD tests showing seven of the eight stages in a realistic agentic pipeline run entirely on CPU. Intel has sold out of server CPUs through year-end, AMD doubled its forecast, and Arm, Qualcomm and Nvidia have all launched agentic-AI-focused CPU parts.