Equation 11 · The Deployment Envelope: Small Models Where the Power Is Not
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with mean power , tokens generated and sustained token rate r . Both and r are set by the thermal wall, and r falls as the device heats — so a long deliberation is charged at a worsening exchange rate the longer it runs, which is exactly the behaviour the sustained-load measurements show [ 6 , 5 ] . The remedy that works best in the cloud is the one the device can least afford. Any claim that a small model closes a reasoning gap by thinking longer needs to be checked against the device’s sustained rate, not its first-token rate.
Sources cited in the article section
- [19] Physics of Language Models: Part 3.3, Knowledge Capacity Scaling Laws ↗
- [15] Gemma 3 Technical Report ↗
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