What every AI engineer needs to know about GPUs — Charles Frye, Modal

Every programmer needs to know a few things about hardware, like processors, memory, and disks. Due to AI systems' extreme demand for mathematical processing power, AI engineers need to know a few things about GPUs -- the world's most popular high-throughput mathematical co-processor. In this talk, I will explain the fundamental engineering constraints and design decisions that shape GPUs and trace those up to some counter-intuitive facts about the performance characteristics of AI systems, with actionable insights for their deployers and consumers. --related links-- --- Watch along with the corrected transcript, summary, timestamps and resources on this talk's official AIE page: https://ai.engineer/talks/y-UGrYbJsJk... Join our upcoming AI Engineer conferences (see https://ai.engineer landing page): AIEi Shanghai, November 5–6 — the first for meeting top Chinese labs and engineers AIE CODE in SF, November 10–12 — the top AI Coding conference returns AIEi Sydney, December 7–8 — the first AIEi run alongside NeurIPS 2026 in Sydney ---