Compiler Durden

Compiler Durden / Umang Kaushik

ubermenchh · nerd

Serial obsessive at the intersection of low-level systems and machine intelligence.

About

I work on AI agents during the day and CUDA kernels and model training during the night. Currently breaking and learning CUDA kernels, deep RL environments, and interpretability research. The goal: make the smallest intelligent model possible.

My brain runs 47 tabs across four centuries and three levels of abstraction. I collect intellectual hobbies like a crow hoards shiny things — compilers, dead philosophers, the psyche, and history.

Now
  • Writing custom CUDA kernels for sparse attention mechanisms.
  • Building deep RL environments from scratch to understand sample efficiency.
  • Reading mechanistic interpretability papers; trying to see inside the black box.
  • Working toward the smallest model that can be meaningfully called intelligent.
Interests

Systems

Compilers, CUDA, parallel computation, low-level architecture.

ML Research

Interpretability, RL, efficient training, small models.

Philosophy

Dead thinkers, phenomenology, philosophy of mind, Nietzsche.

History

Intellectual history, science history, how ideas spread and die.

Recent Writing

Compiler Durden · ubermenchh · updated 2026-03-04