Category: Technology

How fast has the computing behind AI grown? Training compute since 2010

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Scatter plot on a log scale of the training compute of 457 notable AI models from 2010 to 2025. A dashed trend line rises steeply, doubling every 5.7 months, far steeper than a dotted line for the pre-2010 pace of a doubling every 20 months. A solid line traces the record-holding models.

The compute used to train notable AI models has doubled about every 5.7 months since 2010, against roughly every 20 months in the decades before. Researchers count that compute in FLOP (floating point operations), the total number of arithmetic operations performed during training. This article uses an open dataset of 457 notable models published from 2010 to 2025 to show how fast it has grown.

Large numbers are hard to feel, so here is one way to scale them. If all 8 billion people on Earth each carried out one calculation per second, without stopping, they would manage about 2.5...

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