Why Your CPU Is Fast but Your Program Is Slow: Understanding the Memory Wall

Many production RAG systems in 2026 fail because of poor document chunking, which accounts for 80% of failures. Teams often mistakenly attempt to fix bad answers by upgrading the LLM, rewriting prompts, or switching embedding models. While these systems may seem functional during initial testing, they consistently provide incorrect answers when facing real user queries. This failure pattern remains largely invisible during development, as the core issue lies in how documents were originally chunked.