ECE 498 AI Systems & Engineering · Fall 2026

Machine Problems

Coursework consists of four machine problems (MP0–MP3).
This page contains links to MP documents and their due dates.

Machine Problems

Machine Problems

MP documents will be linked here as they are released.

Machine Problems and checkpoints with release and due dates
Assignment Description Release Due
Team-upForm MP teamsAug 25Sep 7
MP0Prerequisites (PyTorch / CUDA)Aug 25Sep 15
MP1Pre-trainingSep 8Oct 6
MP1 CP1LLM ArchitectureSep 8Sep 22
MP1 CP2LLM Training LogicSep 22Sep 29
MP1 CP3Pre-training & EvaluationSep 29Oct 6
MP2Post-trainingOct 6Nov 3
MP2 CP1Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT)Oct 6Oct 13
MP2 CP2Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR)Oct 13Oct 20
MP2 CP3Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback (RLHF)Oct 20Oct 27
MP2 CP4Open-ended ExtensionOct 27Nov 3
MP3Inference engineNov 3Dec 10
MP3 CP1Inference engine basicsNov 3Nov 10
MP3 CP2PagedAttention, chunked prefill, prefix cachingNov 10Dec 1
MP3 CP3Inference parallelisms, speculative decoding, FlashAttention, CUDA graphNov 19Dec 10

MPs typically release Tuesday after class; they are due Monday AoE before class.