GPU Kernel Optimization

GPU: Graphics Processing Unit

Overview

GPU kernel optimization studies how to implement individual operations—such as matrix multiplication, attention, reductions, and sparse computations—so they use GPU memory and compute units efficiently. Common approaches include tiling and fusion, low-precision arithmetic, compiler scheduling, and domain-specific languages such as CUDA, Triton, and CuTe. Autotuners and LLM-based agents increasingly search these design spaces using profiling, execution feedback, evolutionary search, or reinforcement learning, with benchmarks such as KernelBench measuring correctness and speed. A central challenge is that gains often depend on the workload and GPU architecture: generated kernels may pass correctness checks yet lose to vendor libraries, regress on unseen shapes, or yield little end-to-end improvement.

Latest papers

CardsList

211 papers28 papers in the last four weeks, up 56% on the four weeks before. 0.2% of all new papers.

  1. AscendOptimizer: Episodic Agent for Ascend NPU Operator Optimization

    Mar 24, 2026Jiehao Wu, Zixiao Huang, Wenhao Li +3GPU Kernel OptimizationBlack-Box Optimization

  2. InCoder-32B: Code Foundation Model for Industrial Scenarios

    Mar 17, 2026Jian Yang, Wei Zhang, Jiajun Wu +25Compiler OptimizationCode Language Models

  3. An Efficient Heterogeneous Co-Design for Fine-Tuning on a Single GPU

    Mar 17, 2026Ruijia Yang, Zeyi WenFine-TuningMemory-Efficient Fine-Tuning

  4. FlashSampling: Fast and Memory-Efficient Exact Sampling

    Mar 16, 2026Tomas Ruiz, Zhen Qin, Yifan Zhang +3LLM Inference AccelerationGPU Kernel Optimization

  5. KernelFoundry: Hardware-aware evolutionary GPU kernel optimization

    Mar 12, 2026Nina Wiedemann, Quentin Leboutet, Michael Paulitsch +2GPU Kernel OptimizationGPU Acceleration

  6. KernelClaw: A Multi-Agent Framework for GPU Kernel Optimization with Dual-Memory Mechanisms

    Mar 10, 2026Qitong Sun, Jun Han, Tianlin Li +6GPU Kernel OptimizationGPU Kernel Generation

  7. Making LLMs Optimize Multi-Scenario CUDA Kernels Like Experts

    Mar 7, 2026Yuxuan Han, Meng-Hao Guo, Zhengning Liu +2Sparse Matrix MultiplicationGPU Kernel Optimization

  8. PolyBlocks: A Compiler Infrastructure for AI Chips and Programming Frameworks

    Mar 6, 2026Uday Bondhugula, Akshay Baviskar, Navdeep Katel +3Compiler OptimizationGPU Kernel Generation

  9. FlashAttention-4: Algorithm and Kernel Pipelining Co-Design for Asymmetric Hardware Scaling

    Mar 5, 2026Ted Zadouri, Markus Hoehnerbach, Jay Shah +3Efficient AttentionGPU Kernel Optimization

  10. GPUTOK: GPU Accelerated Byte Level BPE Tokenization

    Mar 3, 2026Venu Gopal Kadamba, Kanishkha JaisankarSubword TokenizationLLM Inference Acceleration

  11. CUCo: An Agentic Framework for Compute and Communication Co-design

    Mar 2, 2026Yoga Sri Varshan Varadharajan, Bodun Hu, Saurabh Agarwal +1GPU Kernel OptimizationLLM Inference Acceleration

  12. TiledAttention: a CUDA Tile SDPA Kernel for PyTorch

    Mar 2, 2026Taimur KhanGPU Kernel OptimizationSelf-Attention

  13. CUDA Agent: Large-Scale Agentic RL for High-Performance CUDA Kernel Generation

    Feb 27, 2026Weinan Dai, Hanlin Wu, Qiying Yu +13GPU Kernel GenerationGPU Kernel Optimization

  14. RedFuser: An Automatic Operator Fusion Framework for Cascaded Reductions on AI Accelerators

    Feb 24, 2026Xinsheng Tang, Yangcheng Li, Nan Wang +5GPU Kernel OptimizationGPU Kernel Generation

  15. SoftDTW-CUDA-Torch: Memory-Efficient GPU-Accelerated Soft Dynamic Time Warping for PyTorch

    Feb 19, 2026Ron Shapira Weber, Oren FreifeldDynamic Time WarpingGPU Acceleration

  16. KernelEvolve: Scaling Agentic Kernel Coding for Heterogeneous AI Accelerators at Meta

    Dec 29, 2025Gang Liao, Hongsen Qin, Ying Wang +36GPU Kernel OptimizationGPU Acceleration

  17. Cerium: A Multi-GPU Framework for Terabyte-Scale Encrypted Inference

    Dec 12, 2025Siddharth Jayashankar, Joshua Kim, Michael B. Sullivan +2Homomorphic EncryptionGPU Kernel Optimization

  18. FuseSampleAgg: One-Pass Neighborhood Estimation for Budgeted Knowledge-Graph Refresh and Validation

    Nov 17, 2025Aleksandar Stanković, Haoran Du, Xinming WangGraph Neural NetworksGPU Kernel Optimization

  19. From Legacy Fortran to Portable Kokkos: An Autonomous Agentic AI Workflow

    Sep 15, 2025Sparsh Gupta, Kamalavasan Kamalakkannan, Maxim Moraru +2Code TranslationAgentic Code Generation

  20. FSA: An Alternative Efficient Implementation of Native Sparse Attention Kernel

    Aug 25, 2025Ran Yan, Youhe Jiang, Zhuoming Chen +3GPU Kernel OptimizationGPU Acceleration