Walk through optimizing a CUDA kernel: warp divergence, memory coalescing, and shared-memory bank conflicts.
Kernel-level questions separate people who have written CUDA from people who have read about it. The signal is commanding the SIMT execution model and the three classic throughput killers, with a concrete fix for each. Here is the low-level answer.
Updated Sep 2026 · Grounded in real GenAI, LLM, and AI/ML engineering interview loops and written to a senior-engineer editorial bar.
Kernel-level questions separate people who have written CUDA from people who have read about it. The signal is commanding the SIMT execution model and the three classic throughput killers, with a concrete fix for each. Here is the low-level answer.
Lead with where the obvious approach breaks, because that is the judgment they are screening for — most candidates jump straight to the happy path and lose the room.
Then walk the failure back through the pipeline in order, naming the one metric the customer's exec sponsor actually cares about before you propose the fix.