Rethinking Agentic Kernel Generation for Emerging Accelerators

Abstract

Emerging accelerators often lack mature compiler backends, motivating neural agents that generate and repair kernels from architectural documentation and simulator feedback. This approach repeatedly reconstructs workload-invariant machine semantics--including instruction behavior, legality constraints, synchronization rules, and memory protocols--for every workload. We argue that these semantics should be compiled once into a persistent symbolic artifact, while neural reasoning should focus on workload-dependent mapping decisions. We present Zomboss, a compiler-mediated agentic framework for kernel generation that places neural search within a verified compiler boundary. Zomboss compiles machine semantics and legality constraints into a reusable mapping interface, then uses a neural agent to optimize workload-dependent decisions within the validated mapping space. Across 20 Gemmini and 36 PLENA workload instances, Zomboss returns a correct verified kernel on all 56 instances. Relative to the compiler default, Zomboss achieves geometric-mean speedups of $3.34\times$ on Gemmini and $1.10\times$ on PLENA. Relative to direct agentic generation, it reduces inference tokens by 71.2% on Gemmini and 54.2% on PLENA. These results show that a compiler-defined symbolic interface turns native kernel synthesis into verified design-space exploration: compiler infrastructure preserves legality and correctness, while neural guidance improves workload-specific performance with lower search cost and complete coverage.