The Hardware Lottery

How hardware and software determine what research ideas succeed and fail.

Hardware, systems and algorithms research communities have historically had different incentive structures and fluctuating motivation to engage with each other explicitly. This historical treatment is odd given that hardware and software have frequently determined which research ideas succeed (and fail). This essay introduces the term hardware lottery to describe when a research idea wins because it is suited to the available software and hardware and not because the idea is universally superior to alternative research directions. History tells us that hardware lotteries can obfuscate…

saved by

• Varun Shenoy
• Rishi Kothari
• Felipe Calero Forero
• vik r

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