Engineer questions the inline PTX hype DeepSeek sparked: hand-written PTX isn't a proxy for performance

mike64_t · x · 2026-09-14

Engineer mike64t questions the inline PTX obsession DeepSeek sparked, arguing that hand-written PTX isn't directly indicative of performance in the "just write it in assembly" sense. Ironically the claim holds truer for AMD, where there's essentially no way to reach roofline without inline asm blocks — largely blamed on poor LLVM register allocation. He adds he agrees agents hillclimbing a training stack are hard to compete with given competent human architecture guidance, but doubts that's what SpaceX is actually doing.

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