Empirical differences between hosting local weights on customer silicon vs remote API dispatch arrays.
Proprietary APIs command near infinite computational resources dynamically. When dispatching to OpenAI or Anthropic, response payloads frequently hit massive Token Per Second velocity curves (100+ TPS). However, they mandate total data surrender and subject developers to systemic multi-hour outages on global load.
Locally served weights (e.g. Meta LlaMA iterations) operate inherently on consumer graphics buffers (VRAM). Their TPS is fiercely capped by local memory bandwidth and GPU matrix multiplication speeds. Yet, they provide permanent uptime capabilities, immunity to privacy auditing, and zero variable API cost billing structures.