Luis Ceze — Accelerating Machine Learning Systems

Luis Ceze — Accelerating Machine Learning Systems

Author: Lukas Biewald June 24, 2021 Duration: 48:28
From Apache TVM to OctoML, Luis gives direct insight into the world of ML hardware optimization, and where systems optimization is heading. --- Luis Ceze is co-founder and CEO of OctoML, co-author of the Apache TVM Project, and Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. His research focuses on the intersection of computer architecture, programming languages, machine learning, and molecular biology. Connect with Luis: 📍 Twitter: https://twitter.com/luisceze 📍 University of Washington profile: https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~luisceze/ --- ⏳ Timestamps: 0:00 Intro and sneak peek 0:59 What is TVM? 8:57 Freedom of choice in software and hardware stacks 15:53 How new libraries can improve system performance 20:10 Trade-offs between efficiency and complexity 24:35 Specialized instructions 26:34 The future of hardware design and research 30:03 Where does architecture and research go from here? 30:56 The environmental impact of efficiency 32:49 Optimizing and trade-offs 37:54 What is OctoML and the Octomizer? 42:31 Automating systems design with and for ML 44:18 ML and molecular biology 46:09 The challenges of deployment and post-deployment 🌟 Transcript: http://wandb.me/gd-luis-ceze 🌟 Links: 1. OctoML: https://octoml.ai/ 2. Apache TVM: https://tvm.apache.org/ 3. "Scalable and Intelligent Learning Systems" (Chen, 2019): https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/handle/1773/44766 4. "Principled Optimization Of Dynamic Neural Networks" (Roesch, 2020): https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/handle/1773/46765 5. "Cross-Stack Co-Design for Efficient and Adaptable Hardware Acceleration" (Moreau, 2018): https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/handle/1773/43349 6. "TVM: An Automated End-to-End Optimizing Compiler for Deep Learning" (Chen et al., 2018): https://www.usenix.org/system/files/osdi18-chen.pdf 7. Porcupine is a molecular tagging system introduced in "Rapid and robust assembly and decoding of molecular tags with DNA-based nanopore signatures" (Doroschak et al., 2020): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19151-8 --- Get our podcast on these platforms: 👉 Apple Podcasts: http://wandb.me/apple-podcasts​​ 👉 Spotify: http://wandb.me/spotify​ 👉 Google Podcasts: http://wandb.me/google-podcasts​​ 👉 YouTube: http://wandb.me/youtube​​ 👉 Soundcloud: http://wandb.me/soundcloud​ Join our community of ML practitioners where we host AMAs, share interesting projects and meet other people working in Deep Learning: http://wandb.me/slack​​ Check out Fully Connected, which features curated machine learning reports by researchers exploring deep learning techniques, Kagglers showcasing winning models, industry leaders sharing best practices, and more: https://wandb.ai/fully-connected

Lukas Biewald hosts Gradient Dissent: Conversations on AI, a series that moves beyond theoretical discussions to examine how artificial intelligence is actually built and deployed. Each episode features a direct, unscripted talk with a leading practitioner-you’ll hear from engineers and researchers at places like NVIDIA, Meta, Google, Lyft, and OpenAI. The focus is on the tangible challenges and breakthroughs they encounter, from initial research to the complex reality of putting models into production. This isn't about abstract futures; it's a grounded look at the decisions shaping the field right now. Biewald, bringing his perspective from Weights & Biases, steers conversations toward the practical trade-offs and collaborative efforts that define modern AI work. For anyone in technology or business who wants to understand the mechanics behind the headlines, this podcast offers a rare, candid window into the process. You’ll come away with a clearer sense of how ideas become functional systems and what it really takes to operate at the cutting edge.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Gradient Dissent: Conversations on AI
Podcast Episodes
What a $42B Software Co. Really Spends on AI Tools [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:07:46
“I don't worry about being replaced by AI. I worry about being replaced by someone who's really good at using AI.”Atlassian has 10,000+ engineers currently split-testing the world’s top AI coding tools, from GitHub Copil…
Inside the $41B AI Cloud Challenging Big Tech | CoreWeave SVP [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 53:19
The future of AI training is shaped by one constraint: keeping GPUs fed.In this episode, Lukas Biewald talks with CoreWeave SVP Corey Sanders about why general-purpose clouds start to break down under large-scale AI work…
Why Physical AI Needed a Completely New Data Stack [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:00:52
The future of AI is physical. In this episode, Lukas Biewald talks to Nikolaus West, CEO of Rerun, about why the breakthrough required to get AI out of the lab and into the messy real world is blocked by poor data toolin…
The Engineering Behind the World’s Most Advanced Video AI [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 14:50
Is video AI a viable path toward AGI? Runway ML founder Cristóbal Valenzuela joins Lukas Biewald just after Gen 4.5 reached the #1 position on the Video Arena Leaderboard, according to community voting on Artificial Anal…
The Startup Powering The Data Behind AGI [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 56:15
In this episode of Gradient Dissent, Lukas Biewald talks with the CEO & founder of Surge AI, the billion-dollar company quietly powering the next generation of frontier LLMs. They discuss Surge's origin story, why tradit…
Arvind Jain on Building Glean and the Future of Enterprise AI [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 43:41
In this episode of Gradient Dissent, Lukas Biewald sits down with Arvind Jain, CEO and founder of Glean. They discuss Glean's evolution from solving enterprise search to building agentic AI tools that understand internal…