Decoder. plain-English AI glossary

Triton

▲ Rising

OpenAI's open-source language for writing GPU kernels; makes it easier to write custom CUDA code without low-level details.

Think of it like

High-level GPU programming; closer to Python, farther from CUDA.

Example

Write a fused attention kernel in Triton; compiles to optimized CUDA.

How it actually works

Triton abstracts memory layouts and synchronization; code is faster to write and still efficient. Enables rapid experimentation with new operations.

For product teams

Reduces time to optimize kernels; speeds up research.

For engineers

Triton kernels are fast and maintainable; becoming standard for LLM-specific optimizations.

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