arXiv subjects

Muthu Baskaran

Publications and source records attributed to Muthu Baskaran.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Hexagon-MLIR: An AI Compilation Stack For Qualcomm's Neural Processing Units (NPUs)

In this paper, we present Hexagon-MLIR,an open-source compilation stack that targets Qualcomm Hexagon Neural Processing Unit (NPU) and provides unified support for lowering Triton kernels and PyTorch models . Built using the MLIR framework, our compiler applies a structured sequence of passes to exploit NPU architectural features to accelerate AI workloads. It enables faster deployment of new Triton kernels (hand-written or subgraphs from PyTorch 2.0), for our target by providing automated compilation from kernel to binary. By ingesting Triton kernels, we generate mega-kernels that maximize data locality in the NPU's Tightly Coupled Memory (TCM), reducing the bandwidth bottlenecks inherent in library-based approaches. This initiative complements our commercial toolchains by providing developers with an open-source MLIR-based compilation stack that gives them a path to advance AI compilation capabilities through a more flexible approach. Hexagon-MLIR is a work-in-progress, and we are continuing to add many more optimizations and capabilities in this effort.

cs.PL↗

arXiv2026

Analyzing Latency Hiding and Parallelism in an MLIR-based AI Kernel Compiler

AI kernel compilation for edge devices depends on the compiler's ability to exploit parallelism and hide memory latency in the presence of hierarchical memory and explicit data movement. This paper reports a benchmark methodology and corresponding results for three compiler-controlled mechanisms in an MLIR-based compilation pipeline: vectorization (Vec), multi-threading (MT) across hardware contexts, and double buffering (DB) using ping--pong scratchpad buffers to overlap DMA transfers with compute. Using Triton/Inductor-generated kernels, we present an ablation ladder that separates the contribution of Vec, MT, and DB, and we quantify how MT speedup scales with problem size using GELU as a representative activation kernel. The results show that vectorization provides the primary gain for bandwidth-sensitive kernels, MT delivers substantial improvements once scheduling overhead is amortized, and DB provides additional benefit when transfers and compute can be overlapped (i.e., outside the extremes of purely memory-bound or purely compute-bound behavior).

cs.PL↗

arXiv2025

Tensor Evolution: A Framework for Fast Evaluation of Tensor Computations using Recurrences

This paper introduces a new mathematical framework for analysis and optimization of tensor expressions within an enclosing loop. Tensors are multi-dimensional arrays of values. They are common in high performance computing (HPC) and machine learning domains. Our framework extends Scalar Evolution - an important optimization pass implemented in both LLVM and GCC - to tensors. Scalar Evolution (SCEV) relies on the theory of `Chain of Recurrences' for its mathematical underpinnings. We use the same theory for Tensor Evolution (TeV). While some concepts from SCEV map easily to TeV -- e.g. element-wise operations; tensors introduce new operations such as concatenation, slicing, broadcast, reduction, and reshape which have no equivalent in scalars and SCEV. Not all computations are amenable to TeV analysis but it can play a part in the optimization and analysis parts of ML and HPC compilers. Also, for many mathematical/compiler ideas, applications may go beyond what was initially envisioned, once others build on it and take it further. We hope for a similar trajectory for the tensor-evolution concept.

cs.PL↗

arXiv2016

Efficient Compilation to Event-Driven Task Programs

As illustrated by the emergence of a class of new languages and runtimes, it is expected that a large portion of the programs to run on extreme scale computers will need to be written as graphs of event-driven tasks (EDTs). EDT runtime systems, which schedule such collections of tasks, enable more concurrency than traditional runtimes by reducing the amount of inter-task synchronization, improving dynamic load balancing and making more operations asynchronous. We present an efficient technique to generate such task graphs from a polyhedral representation of a program, both in terms of compilation time and asymptotic execution time. Task dependences become materialized in different forms, depending upon the synchronization model available with the targeted runtime. We explore the different ways of programming EDTs using each synchronization model, and identify important sources of overhead associated with them. We evaluate these programming schemes according to the cost they entail in terms of sequential start-up, in-flight task management, space used for synchronization objects, and garbage collection of these objects. While our implementation and evaluation take place in a polyhedral compiler, the presented overhead cost analysis is useful in the more general context of automatic code generation.

cs.DC↗

arXiv2015

Optimizing the domain wall fermion Dirac operator using the R-Stream source-to-source compiler

The application of the Dirac operator on a spinor field, the Dslash operation, is the most computation-intensive part of the lattice QCD simulations. It is often the key kernel to optimize to achieve maximum performance on various platforms. Here we report on a project to optimize the domain wall fermion Dirac operator in Columbia Physics System (CPS) using the R-Stream source-to-source compiler. Our initial target platform is the Intel PC clusters. We discuss the optimization strategies involved before and after the automatic code generation with R-Stream and present some preliminary benchmark results.

hep-lat↗

arXiv2014

A Tale of Three Runtimes

This contribution discusses the automatic generation of event-driven, tuple-space based programs for task-oriented execution models from a sequential C specification. We developed a hierarchical mapping solution using auto-parallelizing compiler technology to target three different runtimes relying on event-driven tasks (EDTs). Our solution benefits from the important observation that loop types encode short, transitive relations among EDTs that are compact and efficiently evaluated at runtime. In this context, permutable loops are of particular importance as they translate immediately into conservative point-to-point synchronizations of distance 1. Our solution generates calls into a runtime-agnostic C++ layer, which we have retargeted to Intel's Concurrent Collections (CnC), ETI's SWARM, and the Open Community Runtime (OCR). Experience with other runtime systems motivates our introduction of support for hierarchical async-finishes in CnC. Experimental data is provided to show the benefit of automatically generated code for EDT-based runtimes as well as comparisons across runtimes.

cs.DC↗