Performance Optimization Plan for a Compute Kernel

Context

You are given:

• A compute kernel (single critical function or set of loops) to optimize.
• A cycle-accurate simulator that both verifies functional correctness and reports runtime/cycle counts.

Goal: Within two weeks, achieve the largest possible speedup without changing the kernel's outputs.

Task

Describe your end-to-end plan to:

1. Establish a reproducible baseline.
2. Profile to find bottlenecks and form hypotheses.
3. Select and apply optimizations, including:
   • Data-layout transformations.
   • Strength reductions via bitwise operations.
   • Hashing where helpful.
   • VLIW-style instruction scheduling (manual ILP and software pipelining).
4. Validate correctness after each change.
5. Avoid overfitting to the simulator.
6. Quantify speedup improvements.

Requirements

• Outputs must be identical to baseline.
• Prioritize the first three optimizations you would try and justify them.
• Explain how you will measure and report gains after each change.