A compiler that solves Anthropic's VLIW optimization challenge

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Anthropic published their original performance take-home interview challenge: optimize a kernel running on a simulated VLIW SIMD virtual machine to minimize cycle count for a tree traversal + hash computation workload.

Instead of hand-optimizing the kernel, I wrote an optimizing compiler that takes a high-level IR description of the kernel and compiles it down to efficient VLIW bundles.

Project Structure

ai-comp/ ├── compiler/ # Optimizing compiler (HIR → LIR → MIR → VLIW) │ ├── passes/ # Optimization passes (DCE, CSE, SLP vectorization, etc.) │ └── tests/ # Compiler unit and regression tests ├── programs/ # Kernel implementations using the compiler ├── vm/ # Thin wrapper around the upstream VM simulator ├── original_performance_takehome/ # Unmodified upstream challenge code ├── tests/ # Submission correctness and speed tests ├── docs/ # Architecture and design documents └── tools/ # Development utilities

Usage

Compile and run the tree hash kernel

python programs/tree_hash.py

Run submission tests (correctness must pass; speed tests are informational)

python tests/submission_tests.py

Run compiler unit tests

python -m pytest compiler/tests/ -v

Kernel Parameters

python programs/tree_hash.py --forest-height 10 --rounds 16 --batch-size 256

Flag Default Description

--forest-height 10 Height of the forest tree

--rounds 16 Number of hash rounds

--batch-size 256 Elements per batch

Compiler Diagnostics

python programs/tree_hash.py --print-after-all # Print IR after each pass python programs/tree_hash.py --print-metrics # Print pass metrics and diagnostics python programs/tree_hash.py --print-ddg-after-all # Print data dependency graphs python programs/tree_hash.py --print-vliw # Print final VLIW instructions python programs/tree_hash.py --profile-reg-pressure # Write register pressure HTML chart

Custom Pass Config

The compiler pipeline is defined in compiler/pass_config.json. To run with a different config (e.g. for A/B testing or parallel searches):

python programs/tree_hash.py --pass-config /path/to/my_config.json

This allows multiple compiler instances to run concurrently with different configurations. The config file has two sections:

pipeline — ordered list of pass names to execute (passes can appear multiple times)

passes — per-pass enabled flag and options dict

Trace Viewer

python programs/tree_hash.py --trace python original_performance_takehome/watch_trace.py

Open http://localhost:8000 and click "Open Perfetto"

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