MLSys 2026 Competition - NVIDIA Track

FlashInfer AI Kernel Generation Contest

Create high-performance GPU kernels for state-of-the-art LLM architectures on NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs with humans and/or AI agents

Organizer and Sponsors

Contest Overview

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The Challenge

Create optimized CUDA kernels for cutting-edge LLM operations, either by hand or with AI agents. Receive kernel specifications and produce high-performance code for NVIDIA Blackwell B200 GPUs.

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Benchmark

Compete across workloads derived from production models. Kernels are evaluated on correctness, speed, and win rate against FlashInfer baselines.

Platform

Submit and evaluate your kernels on FlashInfer-Bench (bench.flashinfer.ai).

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Two Approaches

We welcome both expert-crafted seed kernels with agent-assisted evolution, and fully agent-generated solutions. The two approaches will be evaluated separately. Agent solutions must open-source scripts to reproduce kernels. No API credits provided.

Competition Tracks

Three kernel categories targeting the most important operations in modern LLMs

Track A

Fused MoE

Fused Mixture-of-Experts kernels with FP8 support.

FP8 MoE
Track B

Sparse Attention

Deepseek Sparse Attention from Deepseek V3.2

Track C

Gated Delta Net

Gated Delta Net used in Qwen3-Next

Getting Started

Everything you need to start competing

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Starter Kit

Development environment setup and test/benchmark scripts.

View Starter Kit
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Submission Format

Use any language (CuTe DSL, CUDA, Tilelang, Triton, cuTile, etc.). Host your code in a GitHub repo following our starter kit format, then share the repo URL with organizers (private repos welcome, just add organizer access).

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Evaluation

Biweekly evaluations plus final evaluation. Tag your commits on GitHub to participate. Note: Modal scores are for reference only (clock frequency cannot be locked). Official evaluations run on bare metal machines.

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Baselines

FlashInfer production kernels and OpenEvolve-based references.

Coming Soon

Timeline

Jan 22, 2026

Public Launch

  • Registration opens
  • Starter kit released
Feb 9, 2026

Baselines Released

  • OpenEvolve-based baselines available
Feb 15, 2026

Registration Deadline

  • Last day to register your team
Apr 24, 2026

Kernel Submission Deadline

  • 11:59 PM AoE
May 1, 2026

Writeup Deadline

  • Technical report due (max 4 pages)
  • 11:59 PM AoE
May 11, 2026

Winners Notified

  • Results announced via email
May 17-22, 2026

MLSys 2026 Award Ceremony

  • Bellevue, WA
  • Winners present their solutions

Prizes & Resources

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GPU Prizes

GPU cards for top performing teams. Details coming soon.

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Free Registration

Winners receive complimentary MLSys 2026 conference registration.

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GPU Access

Registered teams receive Modal compute credits for NVIDIA B200 GPU development.

Ready to Compete?

Join teams from around the world in pushing the boundaries of AI kernel generation.

Teams of up to 5 members | Registration deadline: February 15, 2026

Resources