[HN]score: 0.09
The Hardware Lottery
May 20, 2026
Sara Hooker's 2020 essay 'The Hardware Lottery' argues research ideas succeed based on hardware/software compatibility rather than merit, explaining why CNNs and transformers thrived while other architectures didn't. Still highly relevant as practitioners evaluate which architectures survive the GPU/TPU monoculture. A foundational read for anyone designing novel model architectures.