Performance Optimization and Software/Hardware Co-design across PyTorch, CUDA, and NVIDIA GPUs

Performance Optimization and Software/Hardware Co-design across PyTorch, CUDA, and NVIDIA GPUs

Author: Demetrios February 24, 2026 Duration: 1:25:49

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Chris Fregly is currently focused on building and scaling high-performance AI systems, writing and teaching about AI infrastructure, helping organizations adopt generative AI and performance engineering principles on AWS, and fostering large developer communities around these topics.


Performance Optimization and Software/Hardware Co-design across PyTorch, CUDA, and NVIDIA GPUs // MLOps Podcast #363 with Chris Fregly, Founder, AI Performance Engineer, and Investor


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// Abstract

In today’s era of massive generative models, it's important to understand the full scope of AI systems' performance engineering. This talk discusses the new O'Reilly book, AI Systems Performance Engineering, and the accompanying GitHub repo (https://github.com/cfregly/ai-performance-engineering).


This talk provides engineers, researchers, and developers with a set of actionable optimization strategies. You'll learn techniques to co-design and co-optimize hardware, software, and algorithms to build resilient, scalable, and cost-effective AI systems for both training and inference.


// Bio

Chris Fregly is an AI performance engineer and startup founder with experience at AWS, Databricks, and Netflix. He's the author of three (3) O'Reilly books, including Data Science on AWS (2021), Generative AI on AWS (2023), and AI Systems Performance Engineering (2025). He also runs the global AI Performance Engineering meetup and speaks at many AI-related conferences, including Nvidia GTC, ODSC, Big Data London, and more.


// Related Links

AI Systems Performance Engineering: Optimizing Model Training and Inference Workloads with GPUs, CUDA, and PyTorch 1st Edition by Chris Fregly: https://www.amazon.com/Systems-Performance-Engineering-Optimizing-Algorithms/dp/B0F47689K8/

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Timestamps:

[00:00] SageMaker HyperPod Resilience

[00:27] Book Creation and Software Engineering

[04:57] Software Engineers and Maintenance

[11:49] AI Systems Performance Engineering

[22:03] Cognitive Biases and Optimization / "Mechanical Sympathy"

[29:36] GPU Rack-Scale Architecture

[33:58] Data Center Reliability Issues

[43:52] AI Compute Platforms

[49:05] Hardware vs Ecosystem Choice

[1:00:05] Claude vs Codex vs Gemini

[1:14:53] Kernel Budget Allocation

[1:18:49] Steerable Reasoning Challenges

[1:24:18] Data Chain Value Awareness


Hosted by Demetrios, MLOps.community is a space for honest, meandering talks about the real work of making artificial intelligence systems actually work. This isn't about hype or theoretical papers; it's about the messy, practical, and often surprising journey of taking models from a notebook into a live environment. You'll hear from engineers and practitioners who are in the trenches, discussing the tools, the frustrations, and the occasional breakthroughs that define the day-to-day. The conversations are deliberately relaxed, covering everything from traditional machine learning pipelines to the new world of large language models and even the intangible "vibes" of team culture and process. Each episode peels back a layer on what "production" really means, whether that involves deploying a predictive service, managing an agentic system, or maintaining reliability as everything scales. Tuning into this podcast feels like grabbing a coffee with colleagues who aren't afraid to dig into the technical nitty-gritty while keeping the tone conversational and accessible. It's for anyone who builds, manages, or is just curious about the operational backbone that allows AI to deliver value, offering a grounded perspective often missing from the broader conversation.
Author: Language: en-us Episodes: 50

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