Four-bit floating-point (FP4) Tensor Cores accelerate matrix multiplication, but scale computation, operand packing, layout construction, and saved backward state can erase the gain. We present \emph{format-aware fusion}, which co-designs each quantization producer with its scale domain and consumer layout for native \mxfp{}, global \nvfp{}, and cooperative-thread-array-local \nvfp{}. We evaluate Llama-3-family 8B pretraining through 160 billion tokens using bfloat16 output projections and compiled cross entropy. In matched same-accelerator probes, bfloat16 and Transformer Engine \nvfp{} reach 18.8K and 27.6K tokens/s/GPU, while our fastest custom route reaches 37.9K. \mxfp{} with row-gradient stochastic rounding and fixed-sign 32-value Hadamard weight-gradient preconditioning reaches 37.2K tokens/s/GPU (86.3\% bfloat16 model FLOP utilization) and ends 2.11\% above the raw bfloat16 training-loss endpoint. A Transformer Engine recipe with four final bfloat16 blocks ends 0.87\% above bfloat16 at 27.1K tokens/s/GPU. Downstream rankings differ from training-loss rankings, showing that FP4 outcomes depend jointly on scale contract, operand, and execution path.
The results indicate that software engineering work practices are chosen opportunistically, adapted and configured to provide value under the constrains imposed by the startup context.
Nicolò Paternoster, Carmine Giardino, M. Unterkalmsteiner et al.· Information and Software Tec...· 394 citations· ⚡54
The possibility of inferring high-dimensional data inference in a model that consists of a prior and an auxiliary differentiable constraint given some additional information is considered, thereby allowing a range of potential applications in adapting models to new domains and tasks.
Alexandros Graikos, Esmeralda S. Whitammer, N. Jojic et al.· Neural Information Processin...· 316 citations· ⚡15
It is proved that any global minimizer of the trajectory balance objective can define a policy that samples exactly from the target distribution, and empirically demonstrate the benefits of the trajectories balance objective for GFlowNet convergence, diversity of generated samples, and robustness to long action sequenc...
Esmeralda S. Whitammer, Moksh Jain, Emmanuel Bengio et al.· Neural Information Processin...· 302 citations· ⚡60
This state-of-practice investigation was performed using a literature review followed by a multiple-case study approach and presents how inconsistency between managerial strategies and execution can lead to failure by means of a behavioral framework.
Carmine Giardino, Xiaofeng Wang, P. Abrahamsson· International Conference on...· 175 citations· ⚡19
This work investigates the possibilities of using LLMs in a resume screening setting via a document retrieval framework that simulates job candidate selection and finds that the MTEs are biased, significantly favoring White-associated names in 85% of cases and female-associated names in only 11.1% of cases.
This study conducts a case survey study based on the secondary data of the major pivots happened in 49 software startups, and demonstrates that customer need pivot is the most common among all pivot types.
Sohaib Shahid Bajwa, Xiaofeng Wang, Anh Nguyen-Duc et al.· Empirical Software Engineeri...· 127 citations· ⚡15
Exploring how generative AI could make machine vision more accessible to businesses. The post GenEye in a Box: Making Machine Vision Something You Can Just Ask For appeared first on GPT-Lab.
MIT News · Artificial Intelligence· news.mit.eduOct 7, 2026
Students in MIT’s Concourse program delve deeply into the human condition, debate challenging questions, and learn to develop judgment about issues that can’t be quantified.
Training AI agents with reinforcement learning can be challenging because their tools, context, and decision-making are managed by complex frameworks. Agent Lightning connects existing agents to RL training, making it easier to improve them without rebuilding them. The post Agent Lightning v1.0: A 3,500-Line Lightweight Agentic RL Framework for Training Agents with Real Harnesses appeared first on Microsoft Research.
MIT News · Artificial Intelligence· news.mit.eduOct 6, 2026
