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Event Tensor: A Unified Abstraction for Compiling Dynamic Megakernel (arxiv.org)
6 points by matt_d 134 days ago | hide | past | pdf | discuss on HN

In plain words: It records which small tiled tasks depend on which, letting a compiler fuse many GPU operations into one long-running kernel that still adapts to changing shapes and data-driven branches. The resulting kernels gave the lowest LLM serving latency while cutting startup warmup time.

Abstract

Modern GPU workloads, especially large language model (LLM) inference, suffer from kernel launch overheads and coarse synchronization that limit inter-kernel parallelism. Recent megakernel techniques fuse multiple operators into a single persistent kernel to eliminate launch gaps and expose inter-kernel parallelism, but struggle to handle dynamic shapes and data-dependent computation in real workloads. We present Event Tensor, a unified compiler abstraction for dynamic megakernels. Event Tensor encodes dependencies between tiled tasks, and enables first-class support for both shape and data-dependent dynamism. Built atop this abstraction, our Event Tensor Compiler (ETC) applies static and dynamic scheduling transformations to generate high-performance persistent kernels. Evaluations show that ETC achieves state-of-the-art LLM serving latency while significantly reducing system warmup overhead.

Hongyi Jin, Bohan Hou, Guanjie Wang, Ruihang Lai, Jinqi Chen, Zihao Ye, Yaxing Cai, Yixin Dong, Xinhao Cheng, Zhihao Zhang, Yilong Zhao, Yingyi Huang, et al.
arXiv:2604.13327 · cs.DC, cs.LG, cs.PL · submitted Apr 14, 2026 · updated Apr 21, 2026
abstract · pdf · html · 16 pages. 18 figures. accepted in MLSys 2026. References corrected

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