6bcfac823d40046dca25ef6d6d59cc3f@2021@MLSYS

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#1 A Learned Performance Model for Tensor Processing Units [PDF] [Copy] [Kimi] [REL]

Authors: Sam Kaufman ; Phitchaya Phothilimthana ; Yanqi Zhou ; Charith Mendis ; Sudip Roy ; Amit Sabne ; Mike Burrows

Accurate hardware performance models are critical to efficient code generation. They can be used by compilers to make heuristic decisions, by superoptimizers as a minimization objective, or by autotuners to find an optimal configuration for a specific program. However, they are difficult to develop because contemporary processors are complex, and the recent proliferation of deep learning accelerators has increased the development burden. We demonstrate a method of learning performance models from a corpus of tensor computation graph programs for Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) instances. We show that our learned model outperforms a heavily-optimized analytical performance model on two tasks—tile-size selection and operator fusion—and that it helps an autotuner discover faster programs in a setting where access to TPUs is limited or expensive.