AI Workload Optimization and Hardware Architectures

A Comprehensive Technical Report

March 2026

Production inference and training optimization techniques, hardware architectures, and their interactions as of Q1 2026

Classification: Each technique labeled [PRODUCTION] / [NEAR-DEPLOYMENT] / [RESEARCH-STAGE]

Table of Contents

Executive Summary ........................................... 3

Part 1: Attention and Kernel Optimization ................... 4

Part 2: Memory and KV Cache Management ...................... 8

Part 3: Quantization and Precision .......................... 11

Part 4: Parallelism and Distributed Serving ................. 14