logoalt Hacker News

Aurornistoday at 2:38 AM2 repliesview on HN

> - The knobs you'd need to get serious performance are nearly unreachable in languages which LMs are good at (even Rust requires a discipline that the default language doesn't enforce). When you drop into the lower realms, you're trading consumption context for access to these levers. The levers are also "soft": you find yourself writing a bunch of skills, and tools to try and enforce the discipline.

Hasn’t been my experience at all. The latest LLMs can knock out assembly optimized subroutines and benchmark 100 different variations faster than I ever could dream of.


Replies

mccoybtoday at 2:41 AM

That's fair for a well-scoped subroutine: what I meant is that if you ask an agent to write a compiler and let it rip for a few days, you are going to be spending a few more days correcting the default behaviors in the distribution, which often do not tend towards hardware-oriented design.

To correct those behaviors, you're going to write tools and skills, and that's going to help, but it is still clear that you are fighting the distribution (today).

show 2 replies
senderistatoday at 4:01 AM

Agreed, IME Fable can churn out decent SIMD kernels optimized for whatever tradeoffs you give it.