Papers for

gpu software developers

Papers whose findings have a practical use for this group, as judged from the abstract. Open a paper to read what it means in practice.

Physical limits in chips affect GPU kernel speeds and optimization

Kernel Performance Engineering under Physical Non-Idealities

Abstract: Physical non-idealities in integrated circuit (IC) design and fabrication are concealed by conventional hardware abstractions, yet they can limit kernel performance and obscure optimization opportunities. Using distributed shared memory (DSMEM) on NVIDIA H100 GPUs as a case study, we show how floorsweeping restricts hardware resources available for clustered execution, potentially offsetting the benefits of reduced data movement enabled by DSMEM. Guided by these insights, we develop a wave-aware clustering strategy that accounts for these resource constraints to improve kernel performance. Evaluations using a global-load-and-broadcast microbenchmark, GEMM, and the Hopper version of FlashAttention 4 demonstrate the performance implications of these constraints, with wave-aware clustering improving FlashAttention 4 throughput by up to 5.30% over its baseline. We further show that, under thermal design power (TDP) limits, reduced data movement enables higher Streaming Multiprocessor (SM) frequencies through Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS), explaining otherwise unexpected throughput improvements. Extending this analysis beyond GPUs, we show that power constraints also limit throughput scaling on Tenstorrent's Wormhole accelerator, highlighting the broader importance of accounting for physical non-idealities when analyzing and optimizing kernel performance.

Tue 27 OctHardware Architecture
The gist
Physical imperfections in how computer chips are made can slow down important computer tasks, even if software tries to hide those flaws. The authors looked at a special way GPUs handle memory and found that usual safety rules can limit how well tasks run. They created a better grouping method that works around these limits, speeding up some tasks by over 5%. They also found that using less power can let the chip run faster, and similar effects happen in other specialized chips, showing the need to consider real hardware limits when improving software.
Open → 2610.37466v1

Gpu kernel optimization improves by learning adaptive profiling strategies

Less is more: learning what to profile for GPU kernel optimization

Abstract: Large language models have recently shown strong potential for automatically optimizing GPU kernels, yet their effectiveness depends critically on the hardware information available to the kernel optimization model. Existing systems typically rely on predefined profiling strategies, leaving what to profile largely outside the optimization process. We show that effective profiling is not simply about collecting more information: increasing the number of profiling metrics does not monotonically improve kernel optimization, while the most useful profiling information varies across kernels. Our theoretical analysis further shows that, under such heterogeneous profiling utility, kernel-conditioned selection can outperform any single fixed profiling configuration. Motivated by this observation, we propose AutoProfiler, a feedback-driven framework for learning a deterministic profiling tree from optimization feedback. The tree is iteratively refined through REWRITE and SPLIT operations, with an LLM generating candidate modifications and empirical evaluation determining their acceptance. Once constructed, the tree quickly gathers the required profiling information for any kernel, allowing the LLM rewriter to be invoked only once. Experiments on KernelBench show that our approach improves kernel optimization over fixed profiling configurations under constrained profiling budgets. These results suggest that hardware profiling should evolve from static metric collection toward profiling reasoning, making profiling itself a new dimension for improving kernel optimization. The codes are available at https://github.com/Satissss/AutoProfiler.

Tue 27 OctMachine LearningArtificial Intelligence
The gist
Optimizing GPU programs often needs information about how they run on the hardware. The authors found that collecting more data about the hardware doesn't always help improve optimization and that the most useful data depends on each program. They created a system called AutoProfiler that learns which hardware details to gather by trying and testing different options automatically. This makes optimization faster and better by focusing on the most helpful information for each program.
Open → 2610.36576v1

Multiple megakernels improve streaming inference over single monolithic kernels

One Megakernel is Not Enough: Predicting Where to Cut for Streaming Inference

Abstract: We address a fundamental question: How far should kernel fusion extend and which boundaries are worth preserving? Unlike the general convention of using one monolith megakernel at lower batch sizes or supporting only a selective model component as megakernel and rest of the model as conventional graph, we show that the best configuration is a composition of multiple megakernels with no overlapping conventional graph component, or a fully conventional graph. We present a framework that selects megakernel regions in a streaming inference model from conventional-graph profiles and standalone kernel benchmarks, without running any candidate design end to end. It simulates each candidate's tile and event graphs to predict time to first output and selects the measured best design in all 13 combinations of model and batch size we tested. Across NH-TTS, Qwen3-TTS and Llama-1B, the best composition ranges from two to four megakernels to fully conventional execution and none is a single megakernel. We introduce four model categories (megakernel-stable/ receding/ advancing/ averse) that capture how a model's best megakernel composition changes with batch size. Using NH-TTS model on H100 NVL GPU, we demonstrate that preserving three specialized megakernels can improve both latency and throughput despite introducing additional kernel boundaries. At batch size 32, this design delivers 21.4% lower mean batch-p95 time to first audio (TTFA) and 28% higher throughput than the evaluated monolith megakernel. Against conventional TensorRT graph execution, it reduces engine-level mean batch TTFA p95 by 4.05x and increases throughput by 19.7%.

Mon 26 OctPerformanceDistributed, Parallel, and Cluster ComputingMachine Learning
The gist
When computers process speech or text with AI, they run many small programs called kernels. Usually, people either combine all these kernels into one big program or keep them mostly separate. The authors found that breaking the AI work into a few joined parts, called megakernels, works better than either extreme. Their method predicts which parts should be grouped without testing everything by hand. Using this approach, they made AI systems run faster and produce output sooner on special high-end GPUs.
Open → 2610.35336v1

Gpu engines shrink memory use with tile-based decompression

Tile-Based Decompression in Compiled GPU Engines

Abstract: Modern GPUs reach record analytical performance only when a query's working set fits within its GPU memory budget, and that budget is under growing pressure: GPUs are partitioned and shared, working sets are outgrowing high-bandwidth memory (HBM), and HBM is a fixed on-device resource whose per-dollar capacity has stagnated across generations. Lightweight compression can relieve this pressure by shrinking both footprint and bandwidth demand, but existing GPU compressed-execution techniques either bind decompression to a specific execution model or materialize decompressed columns in HBM before query execution. We present a compression subsystem for compiled GPU query engines that treats decompression as a first-class physical operator. Compression-specific logic is isolated behind a narrow backend interface, so new GPU-oriented encodings can be added without rewriting downstream operators. We implement the design in Proteus and study where decompressed values should be materialized in the GPU memory hierarchy. Our compiler-integrated shared-memory strategy fuses cooperative tile decompression with tuple-at-a-time query execution inside a single generated GPU kernel, avoiding decompressed-column materialization in HBM. Compared with HeavyDB and Sirius on GPU-resident data, fused on-chip decompression achieves competitive query times while reducing the resident memory footprint by up to 4x and memory-bandwidth consumption by up to 6x.

Fri 23 OctDatabasesDistributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
The gist
Modern GPUs have limited high-speed memory, which can restrict how much data they can analyze quickly. The authors introduce a new method that compresses data and decompresses it right when needed inside GPU programs, without fully expanding the data first. This approach reduces memory use and data movement while keeping analysis speeds competitive. By making decompression a modular part of the processing pipeline, it’s easier to add new compression methods in the future.
Open → 2610.32695v1

BiLoCo method reduces memory and speeds up large model quantization

BiLoCo: Binary Low-Rank Corrections for Post-Training Quantization

Abstract: Post-training quantization (PTQ) to FP4 has emerged as a key technique for reducing large language model inference cost, especially on Blackwell GPUs, which offer native FP4 tensor core support. Direct PTQ to FP4, however, still leaves a noticeable accuracy gap. Recent work on SVDQuant mitigates the errors introduced through FP4 quantization for diffusion models by adding high-precision low-rank corrections obtained via SVD. However, this high-precision low-rank correction requires many bits per rank, and it runs on the same tensor cores as the main FP4 GEMM. We introduce BiLoCo, a low-rank correction method whose left and right factors are stored as binary ${\{\pm 1\}}$ sign vectors rather than as BF16 numbers. The signed format uses $16{\times}$ less storage per rank-one component, and since the correction now consists of additions/subtractions, this can be run on CUDA cores concurrently with the FP4 tensor-core GEMM. On 4B--72B LLMs, BiLoCo matches or improves memory-matched SVDQuant for PTQ. We implement BiLoCo on B300 as a fused single kernel, where the FP4 GEMM runs on tensor cores, the bit-packed correction on the CUDA cores of the same launch, and the two are combined in the GEMM epilogue. With batch size $1$, the fused kernel is at most $11\%$ slower than the FP4-only GEMM for every rank up to $512$. At rank $128$, it is at most $20\%$ slower up to batch size $8$.

Fri 23 OctMachine Learning
The gist
Large language models need lots of computing power, so people use tricks like quantization to make them run faster and cheaper. The authors developed BiLoCo, which stores corrections needed after reducing number size in a very simple binary form. This saves a lot of memory and allows the corrections to happen faster on different hardware parts. Their method keeps the model accurate while increasing speed and lowering storage needs compared to older methods.
Open → 2610.32243v1

GKSM cuts GPU memory use by over half for serverless AI inference

gKSM: GPU Memory Deduplication at Driver Layer for Serverless LLM Inference

Abstract: In serverless LLM inference, cloud providers commonly locate multiple instances on a single GPU to improve utilization. However, each instance independently maintains its model weights and runtime state, making duplicate GPU memory the primary bottleneck. Memory deduplication is a widely-used technique for eliminating duplicate data in CPU systems, but extending it to GPU memory faces fundamental challenges. Effective GPU memory deduplication must avoid redundant data movement between CPU and GPU while preserving write isolation for shared pages without native copy-on-write (COW) support. This paper presents gKSM, a transparent GPU memory deduplication framework for serverless LLM inference. gKSM addresses these challenges through CPU-GPU collaborative hash management that offloads hash computation to GPU kernels, zero-copy model weight deduplication that eliminates duplication before model weight transfer, and a cross-privilege page fault handler that combines a lightweight kernel hook and CUDA Virtual Memory Management (VMM) remapping in the user space. gKSM also designs a stable page scanning algorithm and a reuse-aware placement policy in cluster scale. Experiments show that gKSM reduces GPU memory usage by 59.8% while maintaining high throughput compared to ServerlessLLM. Under memory constrained workloads, gKSM improves aggregate throughput by 2.15X and supports five instances concurrently. In cluster level simulation, gKSM achieves a service rate of 99.97%, compared to 78.2% for SLInfer and 26.9% for ServerlessLLM.

Sun 18 OctOperating Systems
The gist
Cloud providers running many AI chatbots on the same GPU waste a lot of memory by storing the same data multiple times. The authors created gKSM, a system that smartly finds and removes these duplicated data inside GPU memory without slowing things down. It works by having the CPU and GPU collaborate to detect duplicates and handle data safely, letting more AI chatbots run at once and boosting overall performance. Their tests show it can reduce memory needs by nearly 60% and more than double throughput under tight memory conditions.
Open → 2610.25219v1

Gpu runtime system improves task handling and latency hiding

HEL: A Heterogeneous Extensible Layer for GPU-Resident Runtime Orchestration

Abstract: We describe a GPU-resident runtime system, HEL, built on stateful services that persist throughout the lifespan of a user application. A HEL programmer expresses a workload as an application that spawns coroutine-like tasks, which are then scheduled and run by the HEL runtime. HEL supports synchronous and asynchronous tasks, tasks with runtime dependencies, batched task submission, and automatic retries. Applications and tasks run alongside each other on the spatially partitioned GPU. Using producer-consumer and host-RPC benchmarks together with a PFPL compression case study, we show that HEL demonstrates a performance advantage for underutilized GPUs and for scenarios where HEL enables hiding task latency.

Sat 17 OctDistributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
The gist
Running many small tasks efficiently on a graphics processing unit (GPU) can be tricky because tasks must be managed carefully. The authors created HEL, a system that lives on the GPU and organizes these tasks like little programs that can pause and resume. HEL can handle tasks that wait for others, retry failed tasks automatically, and run multiple tasks together. Their tests show HEL works better when GPUs are not fully busy and helps hide delays between tasks, making some programs run faster.
Open → 2610.24830v1

Hexagonal image grids improve CT scan reconstruction quality

Hexagonal Basis Projectors for Model-Based Iterative CT Reconstruction

Abstract: Image representation affects both the forward model and quantitative feature recovery in model-based iterative CT reconstruction. For isotropically bandlimited signals, the hexagonal lattice is the most sampling-efficient lattice in two dimensions, with greater directional isotropy and a larger alias-free bandwidth than the Cartesian grid at equal density. We develop constant and linear hexagonal projectors for two-dimensional fan-beam CT using box spline calculus. Both bases form a partition of unity on common coefficient centers; the linear tent also reproduces affine functions. We derive analytic ray footprints and effective detector-blur expressions and implement efficient GPU forward and backprojection. On simulated FORBILD data, the linear model improves on Cartesian and hexagonal pixels, with its best noisy-data accuracy at the coarser resolution. Real-world 2DeteCT comparisons use high-dose, high-resolution Cartesian reconstructions as pseudo ground truth and show competitive image and feature agreement. These results establish a practical hexagonal representation for quantitative CT.

Sat 17 OctComputer Vision and Pattern Recognition
The gist
CT scans create pictures of the inside of the body by measuring X-rays from many angles. The way the image is built from the data affects how clear and accurate these pictures are. The authors show that using a hexagonal grid for this image building, instead of the usual square grid, can make the process more efficient and capture details better. Their method works well both in computer simulations and when tested on real CT data. This approach offers a practical way to improve CT images used for diagnosis.
Open → 2610.24363v1

LunaTP speeds up tensor operations for atom simulations on GPUs

LunaTP: Enabling Efficient and Scalable Tensor Product for Equivariant MLIPs

Abstract: Equivariant machine learning interatomic potentials (MLIPs) promise atomistic simulations with accuracy approaching that of quantum-mechanical calculations. However, the high computational cost of their core Clebsch--Gordan tensor product (CGTP) convolutions severely limits model scalability and efficiency. In this paper, we rethink the parallel execution of CGTP convolutions and introduce LunaTP. Built on node-centric execution, LunaTP exploits path-group parallelism and multi-level reuse to accelerate CGTP convolutions and higher-order derivative computation while preserving the underlying mathematical formulation. On an NVIDIA H100 GPU, LunaTP achieves kernel speedups of up to 250.0$\times$ over e3nn and 17.1$\times$ over OpenEquivariance. It also delivers end-to-end training throughput gains of up to 28.7$\times$ over e3nn and 3.11$\times$ over OpenEquivariance. Finally, LunaTP demonstrates scalability and robust performance across models, workload scales, and GPUs, delivering substantial acceleration for training and atomistic simulation with high-accuracy equivariant MLIPs.

Tue 13 OctDistributed, Parallel, and Cluster ComputingMachine Learning
The gist
Equivariant machine learning models can simulate atoms very accurately but are often too slow because they use complex math operations called tensor products. The authors developed LunaTP, a new way to run these operations faster on GPUs by reorganizing calculations and reusing data efficiently. This approach keeps the math exactly the same but makes the computations up to hundreds of times quicker. LunaTP works well on different scales and hardware, allowing faster training and simulations in atomistic modeling.
Open → 2610.18393v1

Stencil computations transformed for faster matrix processing on gpus

PrismStencil: Transforming Stencil Computations into Matrix Multiplications

Abstract: Stencil computations are a fundamental class of workloads in scientific and engineering applications. Although Tensor Cores offer new opportunities for stencil acceleration, existing tensorization methods suffer from substantial redundant computation and insufficient data reuse. We propose PrismStencil, a stencil tensorization algorithm that introduces a novel mapping scheme between matrices and stencil grid points. PrismStencil employs multidimensional vector mapping to accommodate the multidimensional data dependencies of stencil computations and a unified gather--scatter tensorization scheme to exploit the relative sizes of the matrix dimensions in Tensor Core operations, thereby reducing the redundant computation introduced by tensorization. Moreover, it introduces a cross-product data-reuse mechanism that exploits the overlap among neighboring stencil updates to further enhance data reuse. Across representative stencil kernels on an NVIDIA A100 GPU, PrismStencil achieves average speedups of 2.13x and 2.17x over state-of-the-art Tensor Core stencil methods with FP64 and TF32 precision, respectively.

Tue 13 OctPerformance
The gist
Stencil computations are common calculations used in science and engineering to update grid points based on neighbors. The authors found that special GPU hardware called Tensor Cores can speed these up but existing methods waste effort and data. They designed PrismStencil, a new way to convert stencil tasks into matrix operations that cuts down repeated work and uses data better. This method runs more than twice as fast on a popular NVIDIA GPU compared to older techniques.
Open → 2610.18382v1

Efficient method finds shortest time paths in changing satellite networks

Computing All-Pairs Shortest Communication Time Paths for Periodically Varying Satellite Networks

Abstract: We address the problem of designing an efficient algorithm for computing the all-pairs shortest-time paths in time-varying networks, specifically targeting the dynamic topological characteristics of low earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellations. We model such temporal graphs as $G = (V, E_t)$, where $V=\{1, 2,\ldots , n\}$ is the set of $n$ vertices in the graph, and $E_t$ is the set of $M$ time-varying edges considered over a total time window of size $T = Mτ$, $τ$ being the duration of each interval in that time window. For such a network, our algorithm finds the all-pair shortest paths in $O(M^2n^3)$-time. A key advantage of our approach is its computational structure, which mirrors two matrix multiplication steps, first in the forward direction and then in the backward direction. This structure of the algorithm makes it exceptionally suitable for parallelization on SIMD architectures like GPUs, thereby offering a significant speedup over traditional shortest-path algorithms and enabling efficient, network-wide message routing in rapidly changing LEO satellite constellations.

Mon 12 OctNetworking and Internet ArchitectureDistributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
The gist
The paper tackles the problem of finding the fastest routes between all pairs of satellites in networks that change over time, like networks of low earth orbit satellites. The authors model the network as a series of snapshots with changing connections and propose an algorithm that computes shortest communication times across the whole network efficiently. Their method has a special structure that resembles two matrix multiplications, making it well suited for running quickly on graphics processing units (GPUs). This can help routing messages quickly across rapidly changing satellite constellations.
Open → 2610.17372v1

CPU GPU memory sharing improved with portable efficient library

Characterizing CPU-GPU Memory Sharing over Unified Memory Architecture

Abstract: Unified Memory Architecture (UMA) enables the CPU and GPU to share a single physical memory. However, its complexity and opacity often drive applications back to inefficient copying or to incorrect direct access that sacrifices performance or even correctness. This paper presents a comprehensive study of CPU-GPU memory sharing on UMA, covering correctness and performance across data-plane transmission and control-plane coordination on four platforms. It yields four findings that guide libumsh, a portable library that delivers correct and efficient memory sharing across platforms and extends to emerging ones (e.g., NVIDIA DGX Spark). Applied to nine real-world systems, libumsh reduces data-plane time by 16-75% and control-plane overhead by 7-90%.

Fri 9 OctOperating SystemsHardware Architecture
The gist
Sharing memory between a computer’s processor (CPU) and its graphics card (GPU) can be tricky and slow. The authors studied how this memory sharing works on several different computer platforms and found common problems that hurt performance or cause errors. They created a library called libumsh that makes memory sharing faster and more reliable across different systems. When tested on real-world applications, libumsh cut the time spent moving data by up to 75% and reduced coordination overhead by up to 90%.
Open → 2610.13125v1

IbUMAP speeds up and stabilizes UMAP data visualizations

ibUMAP: Coherent and Scalable Field Evaluation for UMAP Optimization

Abstract: UMAP achieves scalable layout optimization through stochastic negative sampling. However, this stochasticity can lead to unstable embeddings across reruns and downstream reuse, as the estimated repulsive forces depend on the ordering of sampling events. We present ibUMAP, a coherent field-based alternative that evaluates attraction and repulsion from a shared embedding snapshot and applies them synchronously. Its degree-weighted repulsive field is motivated by the conditional expectation of negative sampling for a fixed embedding and represented by three scalar moments, which are evaluated efficiently on CPUs and GPUs using an interpolation-based FFT scheme. This formulation avoids explicit all-pairs computations while inducing optimization dynamics that differ from those of standard online UMAP. Controlled experiments show that synchrony and kernel capping alter the local-global fidelity trade-off, whereas FFT evaluation produces small average changes in final quality. End-to-end benchmarks show median speedups of 3.29x unseeded and 5.79x seeded over umap-learn on CPU, and 1.44x over cuML on million-scale datasets under unseeded GPU execution. These gains accompany greater run-to-run stability and measurable fidelity trade-offs.

Thu 1 OctMachine LearningHuman-Computer Interaction
The gist
UMAP is a popular method to visualize complex data in simpler forms but can produce different results each time because of randomness in its calculations. The authors introduce ibUMAP, a new approach that calculates forces between data points all at once rather than in random order, making the results more consistent. They use clever math and computing tricks to do this quickly, even for very large datasets. Their tests show it runs faster and produces more stable visualizations compared to the usual method.
Open → 2610.01445v1

Algorithm design agents improve by reusing self-created algorithms

Self-Evolving Algorithm-Design Agents: Escaping In-Context Evolutionary Stagnation via Population-Curated Policy Optimization

Abstract: Large language models are increasingly participating in complex real-world tasks in the form of algorithm-design agents, designing and refining algorithms. Many successful algorithm-design agents adopt pure in-context evolutionary frameworks, but they may quickly plateau in domains that require specialized knowledge. Parametric adaptation offers a way to internalize specialized knowledge, but conventional training requires abundant domain-specific corpora while high-quality algorithms are scarce in complex algorithm-design scenarios. In this paper, we propose sample-efficient parametric self-evolution where agents can explore and learn from self-generated algorithms. First, we characterize in-context evolutionary stagnation and analytically propose the Improvement Chain proposition, showing how learning successive self-generated algorithms can locally increase the likelihood of neighboring algorithms. Motivated by this local-transfer perspective, we further propose Population-Curated Policy Optimization (PCPO) to utilize a global population and a hybrid policy update scheme for retaining and reusing high-quality, diverse self-generated algorithms, shifting the policy towards stronger algorithms. In the task of learning rate schedule design for global placement in electronic design automation, trained only on 4 chip cases, PCPO outperforms the state-of-the-art in-context evolutionary methods (e.g., OpenEvolve and ShinkaEvolve) on average across 16 chip cases. With an 8B-size base model, PCPO achieves competitive performance compared to frontier closed-source models such as GPT-5.5. PCPO also reduces inference-time token cost by internalizing grounded domain knowledge and prompt distillation. Moreover, PCPO achieves significant speedups on four GPU kernel designs, with an average of 8.27$\times$ speedup against the PyTorch Eager baseline.

Wed 30 SeptArtificial IntelligenceNeural and Evolutionary Computing
The gist
Designing better computer algorithms is hard, especially in complex areas needing special knowledge, and existing methods tend to get stuck improving further. The authors introduce a way for AI agents to learn efficiently by reusing algorithms they invent themselves, helping them improve continuously. They show this method works better than previous ones in designing electronic chip components and speeding up computations, even rivaling some advanced AI models. Their approach also saves computing effort by internalizing key knowledge.
Open → 2609.38757v1

LeapQuant speeds up linear attention for large language models

LeapQuant: Efficient Linear Attention with Accurate Recurrent State Quantization

Abstract: Recent LLMs increasingly adopt hybrid designs that replace standard attention with linear attention, such as Gated DeltaNet (GDN) and Kimi Delta Attention (KDA). Although they compress the context into a fixed-size recurrent state and substantially reduce the cost of long-context processing, repeatedly reading and updating that state remains a major inference bottleneck. Quantization offers a natural way to reduce this cost, but can significantly degrade model quality, due to the accumulation of rounding errors and the presence of outlier rows and columns in the state. To address these challenges, we propose LeapQuant, a training-free method that achieves near-lossless performance under 8-bit recurrent-state quantization. First, to mitigate error accumulation, we propose per-window quantization, which leaps over a window of tokens and quantizes the state only once at its end. Within a window, outputs are computed from the fixed low-bit state together with high-precision buffered updates. Second, to reduce the error introduced by each quantization, LeapQuant retains the state's largest outliers as a few high-precision Compensator Tokens, which share the update path of real tokens. We then smooth the remaining residual before quantization to further reduce the error. Comprehensive experiments across the Qwen, Kimi, and GLM model families show that LeapQuant substantially reduces memory and compute costs during inference. With accuracy comparable to the FP32 baseline, it achieves average speedups of 2.05--3.70$\times$ at the kernel level and 1.47$\times$ for end-to-end inference on NVIDIA B200, RTX PRO 6000, and RTX 5090 GPUs.

Tue 29 SeptMachine LearningArtificial Intelligence
The gist
Large language models use a process called attention to understand context, but it can be slow and computationally heavy. Some newer designs use a smaller fixed-size memory to handle long texts more efficiently, but updating this memory repeatedly still takes time. The authors propose LeapQuant, a method that compresses this memory using fewer bits without losing accuracy, by updating it less often and carefully handling data that could cause errors. This allows the models to work faster and use less memory during inference while maintaining quality.
Open → 2609.38166v1

Benchmark tests gpu coding agents on physical simulation tasks

GPUPhysBench: Benchmarking Coding Agents for Correct and Efficient GPU Physics Simulation

Abstract: Writing fast GPU code for physical simulation is difficult: implementations must preserve numerical accuracy while handling irregular data access, synchronization, and iterative solvers. We introduce GPUPhysBench, a benchmark of 50 tasks testing whether coding agents can meet these demands. Tasks cover fluids, deformable solids, and granular materials, from individual simulation operators to complete simulators. Agents write, compile, test, and optimize GPU code with access to a NVIDIA GPU under fixed time budgets. We report pass rates and runtime performance relative to expert-optimized reference implementations. In a single-attempt evaluation of six frontier model-harness pairs, the two strongest pass all 50 tasks, but even the fastest reaches at least 0.9 the reference speed on only 22% of them, and no submission is more than 5% faster than the reference. The largest gaps arise in collision detection, constraint solving, and iterative solvers. GPUPhysBench brings physical simulation workloads to coding-agent evaluation, testing both the ability to implement numerical methods correctly and the ability to make them run efficiently.

Mon 28 SeptDistributed, Parallel, and Cluster ComputingArtificial Intelligence
The gist
Writing fast and correct programs that run on graphics cards to simulate physical systems is very challenging. The authors introduce GPUPhysBench, a set of 50 tasks that checks whether coding AI agents can write code to simulate fluids, solids, and granular materials accurately and efficiently. They test different AI models on these tasks and find that while some can complete all tasks correctly, only a few can run the simulations nearly as fast as expert-written code. The hardest parts involve handling collisions and solving complex equations. This benchmark helps measure both correctness and speed in programming physical simulations on GPUs.
Open → 2609.35639v1

Reinforcement learning kernel optimization speeds training and inference

AReaL-TIK: Stateful Agentic Optimization of Unified RL Kernels through an Optimization IR

Abstract: Reinforcement learning (RL) post-training often uses distinct GPU kernels for rollout and policy update. In synchronous PPO and GRPO, numerical disagreement can perturb ratios between current token probabilities and those assigned during rollout. Recomputing rollout log-probabilities with the policy-update backend avoids this discrepancy but adds a forward pass. Bitwise-consistent unified kernels permit reuse when the policy snapshot and probability processing match the objective. Their optimization must preserve agreement across distinct execution regimes. We present KernelBraid, an agentic framework starting from a hand-tuned, bitwise-consistent implementation. Its optimization intermediate representation (IR) organizes source-code search by linking implementations and modifications to numerical requirements, workload measurements, and derivation history. The agent coordinates changes and retains verified intermediates for further exploration; promotion requires passing correctness checks and improving aggregate latency within per-workload limits. Across 12 end-to-end training configurations on H20, KernelBraid achieves 1.10x average throughput relative to AReaL with log-probability recomputation, and the mean training-reward ratio rounds to 1.00x. Isolated-layer profiling yields 1.40x average speedup in summed phase time across 15 model-GPU pairs. Operator-level evaluation covers correctness and performance for 10 operators on A100, H20, and H200, all passing the prescribed bitwise checks. Unified-attention search achieves 2.52x speedup in summed workload latency over the starting implementation using 7M LLM tokens; ablations assess the contributions of retained evidence and branch exploration to search efficiency and attained performance. Our code is open-sourced at https://github.com/areal-project/AReaL-TIK.

Mon 28 SeptDistributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
The gist
Training reinforcement learning models on GPUs often uses different code pieces for running simulations and updating the model, which can cause small mismatches affecting performance and results. The authors present KernelBraid, a system that optimizes a single unified code kernel ensuring exact numerical agreement across different training steps. Their method carefully checks correctness while improving speed, achieving about 10% faster throughput on average and up to 2.5 times faster on some tasks. This work helps speed up RL training and inference without changing the learned results.
Open → 2609.35140v1

Vision transformers keep accuracy when compressed with global local features

GLF-Q: Global-Local Feature-based Quantization for Vision Transformers

Abstract: Post-training quantization (PTQ) efficiently compresses Vision Transformers (ViTs) without retraining, yet suffers severe accuracy degradation at low bit-widths. Existing optimization-based PTQ methods guide block reconstruction via either soft logits or second-order Hessian proxies. Logit supervision is prone to overfitting on limited calibration data, while Hessian approximations incur structural truncation errors. To address these limitations, we propose \textbf{GLF-Q}, a novel PTQ framework guided by Global-Local Feature alignment. GLF-Q propagates quantized block outputs through downstream full-precision layers to align penultimate-layer representations under local output regularization, providing downstream feature supervision without explicitly approximating the Hessian or using a Taylor expansion. Furthermore, offline Hadamard transformations are introduced with zero runtime overhead to disperse activation outliers across channels, effectively contracting dynamic ranges and reducing quantization errors. Meanwhile, optimizing this loss via a Straight-Through Estimator (STE) achieves rapid convergence, bypassing continuous relaxation rounding formulations such as AdaRound. Extensive experiments across representative ViT architectures demonstrate that GLF-Q with standard uniform quantizers substantially outperforms state-of-the-art methods under 3-bit quantization on image classification. In addition, GLF-Q exhibits strong out-of-domain calibration robustness and achieves speedups under 8-bit GPU deployment.

Mon 28 SeptComputer Vision and Pattern Recognition
The gist
Vision transformers are powerful image recognition models but shrink them too much, and their accuracy drops sharply. The authors introduce GLF-Q, a technique that helps compress these models to very small sizes without losing much accuracy by aligning detailed and overall features in the model’s layers. They also apply a special transform to spread out odd activation values, making the compression simpler and more effective. Their method works well across various models and keeps performance reliable even with less common input data.
Open → 2609.34564v1

Flare speeds up micromagnetic simulations by predicting magnetization directly

FLARE: Flow Matching with Local Axis-Angle Representations for Stochastic Micromagnetic Evolution

Abstract: Long-horizon micromagnetic simulation remains expensive because conventional and learned solvers typically propagate Landau--Lifshitz--Gilbert (LLG) dynamics step by step. Existing learned approaches generally retain stepwise integration or model deterministic evolution, leaving full-field, direct-horizon stochastic prediction largely unexplored. We propose FLARE, a flow-matching framework that recasts stochastic finite-time magnetization prediction as conditional transport over anchor-relative local axis-angle rotations. This rotation-space formulation respects the intrinsic geometry of magnetization dynamics and preserves pointwise unit norm by construction. By explicitly conditioning on the physical prediction horizon, FLARE directly generates full-field stochastic endpoints across multiple target times without stepwise integration. Against the strongest single-checkpoint external baseline on each metric, FLARE achieves 29.9% lower angular energy distance ($15.30^\circ$), and a 37.3% lower fair energy score (0.393). On a representative composed 5-ns two-segment protocol, FLARE achieves a $3{,}062\times$ best-batch speedup over the widely used GPU micromagnetic solver MuMax$^3$ on a single GPU.

Mon 28 SeptMachine LearningArtificial Intelligence
The gist
Simulating how tiny magnets change over time usually takes many small calculation steps, which is slow. The researchers developed FLARE, a new way to predict how magnetization evolves directly at specific future times, skipping slow step-by-step calculations. This method respects the nature of magnetization changes and keeps the math true to physics. FLARE is shown to be much faster and more accurate than existing simulation tools on standard tests.
Open → 2609.34070v1

KernelOPT improves GPU kernel speed by optimizing compiler outputs

KernelOPT: Dispatch-Aware Agentic Search for GPU Kernel Optimization

Abstract: Deep learning inference and training performance depends critically on GPU kernel efficiency. Modern compilers such as PyTorch Inductor automatically generate GPU kernels from high-level model code, but frequently underperform expert-written implementations by wide margins. Recent LLM-assisted kernel optimizers can close this gap for standalone kernels, yet treat compiled models as black boxes, generally optimizing individual standalone kernels without respecting the compiler's structural decisions or verifying the model end-to-end. We present KernelOPT, a multi-agent system that treats compiled models as structured artifacts. It preserves vendor library calls (cuBLAS, cuDNN) and exclusively targets generated Triton sub-kernels using five profiling-guided LLM agents. A four-gate verification cascade of static validation, multi-seed correctness, model-level float64-fallback verification, and performance gating filters candidates during optimization and verifies the re-stitched model end-to-end. If no candidate passes all four gates, the system preserves the compiler baseline. The system accepts PyTorch nn.Modules, standalone Triton kernels, and Helion kernels. Evaluated on 250 KernelBench problems, KernelOPT achieves geometric mean speedups over \texttt{torch.compile} of 1.40$\times$ (Level 1: 51/100), 1.15$\times$ (Level 2: 31/100), and 1.07$\times$ (Level 3: 12/50) across all problems.

Thu 24 SeptDistributed, Parallel, and Cluster ComputingArtificial IntelligenceMachine Learning
The gist
Deep learning run times strongly depend on how efficiently GPU code is written, but automatically generated GPU programs are often slower than expert ones. The authors present KernelOPT, a new tool that safely improves GPU code by focusing on specific parts while keeping trusted library calls intact. It uses multiple AI helpers to propose improvements and checks that the overall program still works well before adopting changes. Tests on many problems show KernelOPT can make GPU code run up to 40% faster than current compiler outputs.
Open → 2609.30059v1

Gpu techniques speed up turbulent flow simulations with mixed precision

Mixed-precision GPU algorithms for efficient turbulent flow simulations with Raviart-Thomas finite elements

Abstract: We propose GPU algorithms for high-fidelity simulation of incompressible turbulent flows. Discretization in space is performed with H(div)-conforming high-order Raviart-Thomas finite elements for the velocity and an $L^2$-conforming discontinuous Galerkin approximation for the pressure. In time, a consistent splitting scheme based on higher-order BDF time stepping is used, with convection treated explicitly. In this scheme, a pressure Poisson equation and a symmetric reaction-diffusion-type equation for the velocity need to be solved in each time step. We develop a solution framework with fast matrix-free operator evaluation for all ingredients, combined with multigrid solvers for the Poisson problem, and propose a robust mixed-precision algorithmic framework. A key to mixed-precision efficiency is a least-squares projection to generate accurate initial guesses for the iterative linear solvers, enabling us to work with relative residual tolerances of $10^{-3}$. In this regime, running the solvers entirely in single precision leads to almost no change in overall iteration counts and maintains the crucial turbulence statistics, while showing up to $1.7\times$ speedup over pure double-precision simulations.

Thu 17 SeptMathematical Software
The gist
Simulating turbulent flows in fluids is very complex and needs powerful computing. The authors develop new algorithms that run on graphics cards (GPUs) to solve these fluid equations more efficiently. They use a smart mix of single and double precision math to speed up calculations without losing accuracy in flow patterns. This approach makes the simulation faster by up to 70%, helping run detailed fluid studies more easily.
Open → 2609.19828v1

Language model mimics brain neurons for efficient learning from small data

URCHIN: A Horizontal Spiking Language Model for Data-Constrained Pretraining

Abstract: The BabyLM challenge measures how much language a model can learn from developmentally-plausible, child-scale data rather than internet-scale corpora, yet prior language models forgo the biological constraints of the neural circuitry that acquires human language: spiking neurons separated into excitatory and inhibitory populations wired by a recurrent lateral connectome. This paper presents URCHIN (Unified Recurrent Connectome with Horizontal Integrate-and-fire Neurons), which applies the Parallelized Hierarchical Connectome Spiking State-space Model (PHCSSM) to language modeling: leaky integrate-and-fire neurons coupled by a Dale's-law lateral connectome resolve each token through a multi-transmission loop that recirculates activity to a fixed point. The instantiation is deliberately minimal: a single horizontal layer of 128 neurons, no attention, and 4.23M parameters. Two implementations share one set of weights and produce identical benchmark scores, so URCHIN is trained once and deployed either way with no conversion step: a parallel state-space model (SSM) scan that is GPU-efficient for training, or an event-driven recurrent spiking neural network (RSNN) with constant-cost inference for CPU or neuromorphic edge deployment. Across all three BabyLM tracks (Strict-100M, Strict-Small, and Multilingual), URCHIN offers a biologically plausible, efficient, and directly deployable reference point.

Sat 12 SeptComputation and Language
The gist
Most language models learn from huge amounts of text data, unlike the human brain which learns language from much less data. The authors created URCHIN, a language model designed to work like the brain’s neurons, using spiking neurons organized in a biologically realistic way. URCHIN uses a small network mimicking excitatory and inhibitory brain neurons to understand and generate language efficiently with limited data. It runs efficiently on GPUs for training and on CPUs or special hardware for practical use, matching benchmarks on child-scale language tasks.
Open → 2609.13899v1

ForgeMegakernel speeds up model decoding with tailor-made GPU kernels

ForgeMegakernel: A General Framework for Efficient Auto-Regressive Model Decode Megakernels

Abstract: Auto-regressive model decode is bandwidth-bound, since every weight and key/value-cache byte crosses high-bandwidth memory once per token. A megakernel is an ideal solution, but existing automatic megakernel generation approaches cannot achieve both generalization across models and correctness guarantees. We present ForgeMegakernel, which generates a per-model high-performance decode megakernel using coding agents. ForgeMegakernel pairs a universal knowledge base of ten progressive milestones with an independent mid-state test oracle. The milestones provide the megakernel's structural properties: a fine-grained instruction stream for each SM, dependency counters replacing the global synchronization, and a shared-memory buffer pool for workload balance across SMs and greater parallelism. The test oracle derives the mid-states of the megakernel and checks the performance, error and precision during the generation process, guaranteeing a correct and trustworthy forged megakernel. We evaluated ForgeMegakernel on 14 representative decoding operations across eight model families spanning 0.6B-13B parameters. The generated megakernels achieved 50.5-85.9% MBU and geometric mean speedups of 1.21x over SGLang 0.5.18 and 1.54x over a megakernel compiler under identical configurations. Inside SGLang, evaluated on GSM8K with ragged prompts, all 14 megakernels decoded faster than the SGLang engine at comparable answer accuracy.

Fri 11 SeptDistributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
The gist
Auto-regressive models generate text one token at a time, but decoding each token is slow because moving data in and out of memory limits speed. The authors created ForgeMegakernel, which automatically builds custom compute kernels for each model to decode tokens faster and correctly. ForgeMegakernel uses a step-by-step design guide and tests during creation to ensure the kernels work well and stay accurate. Their system improved decoding speed notably on many models, making text generation more efficient.
Open → 2609.12379v1

Gpu memory safety evaluated with new standardized benchmark suite

Towards Standardized Evaluation of GPU Memory Safety with GMSBench

Abstract: As GPUs become increasingly integral to high-performance computing and machine learning, ensuring memory safety in GPU programs has become crucial for reliable and secure execution. However, evaluating GPU memory safety techniques remains challenging due to the lack of comprehensive and standardized benchmarks. In this paper, we present GMSBench, a GPU memory safety benchmark designed to evaluate a broad range of memory safety violations across different GPU memory spaces and execution scenarios. GMSBench comprises 149 self-contained CUDA tests spanning spatial, temporal, and concurrency errors. The suite provides a standardized foundation for the evaluation and comparative analysis of GPU memory safety mechanisms and helps expose gaps in their detection coverage. We demonstrate the utility of GMSBench by evaluating Compute Sanitizer, a widely used GPU memory error detection tool across multiple GPU architectures.

Tue 8 SeptCryptography and SecurityHardware Architecture
The gist
Memory bugs in programs that run on GPUs can cause crashes or security risks, but testing tools that find these bugs is hard without a common set of tests. The authors created GMSBench, a collection of 149 small CUDA tests that cover many types of memory errors in GPU programs. This benchmark helps see how well different tools catch these errors and reveals where they may miss problems. The authors used GMSBench to check one popular GPU debugging tool across several GPU types, showing how it can improve evaluation.
Open → 2609.08871v1

RouteRelay cuts routing costs in transformer sparse attention models

RouteRelay: Event-Triggered Cross-Layer Route Reuse for Efficient Dynamic Sparse Attention

Abstract: Dynamic sparse attention reduces long-context prefill cost by routing each query chunk to a small set of key chunks at every Transformer layer. The sparse attention kernel avoids most token interactions, but the router still rebuilds a chunk--chunk score matrix layer after layer, even when the selected routes change little. We introduce RouteRelay, a router-agnostic method that reuses only route metadata across depth while continuing to compute attention with the current layer's queries, keys, and values. Anchor layers perform full routing. Intermediate layers rescore the previous top-$k$ route and a compact sentinel set of near-miss and randomly probed chunks. A query row is rerouted only when a sentinel challenges its weakest selected chunk. We give a top-$k$ stability condition, a probabilistic bound on missed challengers, and a row-selective GPU execution design. In a reproducible empirical evaluation, RouteRelay retains at least 99.99% route recall while rerouting 25.0%, 55.4%, and 78.2% of rows under low, moderate, and high cross-layer drift, respectively. Across routing scales, RouteRelay retains 100.0% recall while evaluating 38.4--51.6% of full-routing score pairs as the key-chunk count grows from 128 to 1024. Its unfused CPU execution remains slower than dense matrix multiplication, exposing row compaction and ledger updates as the main kernel-engineering targets.

Mon 7 SeptComputation and Language
The gist
Transformers use attention to figure out which parts of input text to focus on, but this can be expensive with long inputs. Dynamic sparse attention saves work by only looking at a few key pieces for each query, but it still recomputes routing scores at every layer, which can be wasteful. The authors designed RouteRelay, which reuses routing decisions across layers whenever possible, saving computation by only recomputing when necessary. Tests show RouteRelay keeps nearly all important routes while reducing routing effort significantly.
Open → 2609.07306v1