@TheAhmadOsman: You don’t “run a model” You run Kernels The model is just a graph The Inference Engine is scheduler / optimizer / execu…

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Summary

The tweet explains that running AI models is really about running optimized kernels, and that inference engines and their kernel implementations are critical for performance, not just the model or hardware.

You don’t “run a model” You run Kernels The model is just a graph The Inference Engine is scheduler / optimizer / executor But the actual work? That happens in the Kernels - MatMul Kernels - Attention Kernels - RMSNorm Kernels - KV cache Kernels - Quantized linear Kernels - Sampling Kernels - Fused “please don’t write this back to memory 9 times” Kernels Same model, same GPU, same VRAM Wildly different performance Because one stack is using optimized fused Kernels that understand your hardware And the other stack is playing hot potato with tensors through 47 tiny launches and pretending the GPU is the problem Bad Kernels make people say: “this model is slow” Good Kernels make people say: “wait how is this running locally?” This is why Inference Engines and the Kernels implemented within them matter The model is the recipe The hardware is the kitchen The Kernels are the knives, pans, burners, and the chef not cutting onions with a spoon Most people benchmark models The real ones benchmark the Kernels underneath
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Cached at: 06/08/26, 11:19 AM

You don’t “run a model” You run Kernels

The model is just a graph

The Inference Engine is scheduler / optimizer / executor

But the actual work? That happens in the Kernels

  • MatMul Kernels
  • Attention Kernels
  • RMSNorm Kernels
  • KV cache Kernels
  • Quantized linear Kernels
  • Sampling Kernels
  • Fused “please don’t write this back to memory 9 times” Kernels

Same model, same GPU, same VRAM Wildly different performance

Because one stack is using optimized fused Kernels that understand your hardware

And the other stack is playing hot potato with tensors through 47 tiny launches and pretending the GPU is the problem

Bad Kernels make people say: “this model is slow”

Good Kernels make people say: “wait how is this running locally?”

This is why Inference Engines and the Kernels implemented within them matter

The model is the recipe The hardware is the kitchen The Kernels are the knives, pans, burners, and the chef not cutting onions with a spoon

Most people benchmark models The real ones benchmark the Kernels underneath

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