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.

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