From CUDA to MLX: How K-Search Brings Decades of Kernel Expertise to Apple Silicon

Figure 1: CUDA-to-MLX optimization translation map. CUDA optimization knowledge can be translated into architecture-native MLX strategies rather than copied instruction-for-instruction. We face a new epoch in computing. Hardware is changing rapidly — not just faster GPUs, but a growing range of chips from different vendors, each with its own architecture and often tailored to specific AI workloads. Software is changing just as fast, and AI coding tools now generate in minutes what took months of effort a few years ago. With so much of computing now centered on AI, GPU kernels are a crucial component of its success. These are the low-level programs that run inside the GPU, and writing efficient ones is far from obvious — it takes years of expertise to get right. Transferring a kernel from one vendor’s hardware to another is harder still, and often means rediscovering the same optimizations from scratch. The CUDA ecosystem, for example, has accumulated decades of hard-won kernel expertise: hand-tuned implementations of attention, state space models, and other critical operations representing thousands of engineering hours. Newer hardware ecosystems (Apple Silicon, custom AI accelerat