system
A chat on subreddit /r/wallstreetbets
human
Isn't that way less power efficient/lower throughput than purpose-made networking chips that can do everything at wire speed?

gpt
It probably does use more power but the computes can be used for other purposes: containers, vms, etc. Switches are probably still quicker in layer 2 (although I've seen articles where  where Linux switches with NIC offloading can be just as fast) where ASICs can handle the easy task of sending data from Mac address to Mac address. Layer 3 gets more complicated and usually switches have to use cpu cycles to resolve routing, this is where the Gap is closed.