The tech community has been buzzing about DeepSeek’s latest language model releases, and reading through various discussions brought back memories of my early computing days. Someone mentioned running a 671B parameter model at 12 seconds per token using an NVMe SSD for paging, and while many scoffed at the impracticality, it struck a chord with me.

Remember when waiting was just part of the computing experience? Back in the 80s, loading a simple game from a cassette tape could take 10-15 minutes, and we’d sit there watching those hypnotic loading stripes, filled with anticipation. The thought of having a machine that could answer complex questions in just a few hours would have seemed like science fiction back then.