AI Accelerator Design · All levels

AI Accelerator Design Cheatsheet

Dense reference for mechanism-first accelerator debugging and architecture closure decisions.

Debug order

diagram
WORKLOAD -> MECHANISM -> ARTIFACT -> OWNER -> DECISION

MAPPING: fusion boundaries, tile shapes, and launch plan assumptions
MEMORY: reuse quality, bandwidth pressure, and bank conflicts
COMPUTE: occupancy, tensor utilization, and synchronization losses
PRECISION: quality drift, scaling policy, and overflow behavior
SILICON: thermal limits, DVFS behavior, and sustained perf-per-watt

Questions before proposing a fix

  1. Which workload fails first and how reproducible is it?

  2. Which mechanism path fails first under fixed metadata?

  3. Which artifact proves causality?

  4. Who owns the smallest reversible fix?

  5. What validation and rollback gates close release risk?