Test-Input Generation for Tensor Programs: What Actually Finds Kernel Bugs
arXiv:2606. 27396v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Test-input generation for tensor kernels is folkloric.
arXiv:2606. 20128v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Benchmarks for LLM-generated GPU kernels (KernelBench, TritonBench, GEAK) score correctness through fixed-shape, small-sample allclose-style checks.
arXiv:2606. 27396v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Test-input generation for tensor kernels is folkloric.
The paper introduces mutation analysis as a metric for evaluating GPU‑kernel benchmark oracles, injecting over ten thousand faults into verified CUDA implementations of 188 KernelBench problems. It shows that the current official checkers miss 16.9% of faults, with precision faults being especially problematic, and demonstrates that optimized test suites can achieve 98% detection with only two inputs per problem. The study also reveals flaws in existing patches and a fuzzing recipe that incorrectly rejects correct kernels 107 times.
arXiv:2607. 16228v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Most tensor-kernel correctness tests go through a fixed-shape all close-style check with hand-picked absolute and relative tolerances.
arXiv:2608. 12700v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Systems that generate GPU kernels with language models report high correctness rates.
The paper addresses the problem of non‑deterministic outputs from large language models (LLMs) when run on different GPU architectures, caused by floating‑point non‑associativity and hardware‑dependent kernel choices. It proposes a set of fixed‑configuration fused‑upcast GEMM kernels that load 16‑bit weights, upcast to FP32, and perform IEEE‑754 compliant reductions in a problem‑shape‑dependent order, ensuring identical linear‑layer outputs across NVIDIA Ampere, Ada, and Hopper GPUs. The new approach achieves 1.17–3.1× faster end‑to‑end performance than existing solutions and halves weight‑memory traffic while maintaining cross‑architecture reproducibility.
The paper examines how large‑language‑model (LLM) decompilers, which produce clean, idiomatic C code, are currently evaluated mainly on recompilability and passing shipped tests. It shows that these metrics can mask significant behavioral differences: a decompiled function may recompile and pass all tests yet diverge on other inputs or lose disclosed vulnerabilities. To address this, the authors propose Decompile‑Diverge, a behavioral oracle that synthesizes drivers, fuzzes inputs, and compares the decompiled code’s behavior to the original, revealing divergences in up to 13% of cases and exposing gaps in current evaluation suites.
arXiv:2607. 16241v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Recent large language models (LLMs) can generate custom CUDA kernels that appear to outperform PyTorch on benchmarks such as KernelBench.
arXiv:2603.24595v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Large language model (LLM) inference systems rely on CUDA kernels for core GPU computations, yet the interface between models and kernels is...
AutoTuneBench introduces a trustworthy measurement protocol for evaluating how large language model agents auto‑tune GPU kernels and serving engines. The benchmark addresses four failure modes—strawman baselines, machine‑dependent timing, saturated tasks, and infrastructure defects—by enforcing code‑frozen protocols, database validation, anti‑cheat checks, pre‑registered comparisons, and external result anchoring. Using this protocol, the authors demonstrate that previously reported speedups are inflated, revealing more modest improvements across different engines and machines.
Apple Silicon machines with large unified memory allow large tensors on a desktop GPU, but PyTorch’s Metal Performance Shaders (MPS) backend silently returns incorrect results for batched matrix multiplication when the output exceeds $2^{32}$ elements. The authors swept over dtypes, memory layouts, shapes, and batch sizes around $2^{31}$ and $2^{32}$ elements, finding that errors arise when operands are transposed views or when contiguous inputs exceed $2^{32}$ elements, with the backward pass also affected. They reproduced the issue on multiple machines and macOS versions, confirmed correct behavior on an NVIDIA A100, and demonstrated real‑world impact in a sentiment classifier, releasing a harness and guard to prevent such silent failures.
arXiv:2608. 02712v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Kernel generation for hardware accelerators such as GPUs and NPUs has become a proving ground for large language models (LLMs), and state-of-the-art systems raise correctness through pipelines that couple LLMs with agentic reinforcement learning and evolutionary search.
AsmEvo is an agentic assembly-level optimizer that targets compiled AMDGPU code objects, reconstructing a reassemblable representation and applying low-level edits guided by a long-horizon agent. It rebuilds ABI-preserving optimized objects and verifies functional equivalence through differential testing against the original binary. Experiments show significant speedups—up to 1.35× geometric mean on MI308X and 1.18× on MI300X—while maintaining correctness.