Files
cs249r_book/labs
Vijay Janapa Reddi ca34ba6bc7 fix: update lab_17_ml_conclusion with spec-accurate structure
Second agent pass matched the LABS_SPEC brief more precisely:
- Act I renamed to 'Design Ledger Archaeology' — reads actual ledger history,
  computes per-domain constraint hit rate, renders radar chart + bar chart
- Act II is 'The Final Architecture Challenge' with 6 simultaneous scorecard
  constraints (accuracy, P99, DP, adversarial, carbon, fault tolerance)
- Stakeholder scenario: Chief Architect / Principal Engineer promotion framing
- Medical fleet (1000 hospitals, 100k inferences/day) as the deployment target
- Curriculum journey timeline grid (all 33 labs) in closing section
- All constants match spec: FLEET_SIZE_NODES=1000, COAL_CI_G_KWH=820, etc.
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Labs

Understanding the Interplay Between Algorithms and Systems

Status: Coming Summer 2026


What Are Labs?

Labs are hands-on interactive notebooks that bridge the gap between reading about ML systems (the textbook) and building them from scratch (TinyTorch).

┌─────────────────┐     ┌─────────────────┐     ┌─────────────────┐
│                 │     │                 │     │                 │
│    Textbook     │────▶│      Labs       │────▶│    TinyTorch    │
│                 │     │                 │     │                 │
│  Concepts &     │     │  Experiment &   │     │  Build from     │
│  Theory         │     │  Explore        │     │  Scratch        │
│                 │     │                 │     │                 │
└─────────────────┘     └─────────────────┘     └─────────────────┘
      READ                    EXPLORE                  BUILD

The Learning Journey

Phase Resource What You Do
Understand Textbook Learn concepts, theory, and system design principles
Experiment Labs Explore tradeoffs, tweak parameters, see how decisions ripple through systems
Build TinyTorch Implement everything from scratch, own every line of code

Why Labs?

ML systems are where algorithms meet hardware. A model that works perfectly in theory can fail in practice due to memory limits, latency constraints, or numerical precision. Labs help you develop intuition for these algorithm-system interactions.

  • See the tradeoffs — How does batch size affect memory? How does quantization affect accuracy?
  • Explore interactively — Adjust parameters and watch how changes ripple through the system
  • Build intuition — Understand why systems behave the way they do, not just what they do
  • Zero setup — Run directly in your browser via Google Colab

Example Topics (Planned)

  • Memory vs. Compute Tradeoffs — Watch how batch size affects memory footprint and training speed
  • Quantization Effects — See accuracy degradation as you reduce precision from FP32 → INT8 → INT4
  • Attention Visualization — Explore what transformer attention heads actually learn
  • Optimization Landscapes — Navigate loss surfaces with different optimizers
  • Pruning Strategies — Compare structured vs. unstructured pruning on real models

Stay Updated

Labs are under active development. To be notified when they launch:


Resource Description
Textbook ML Systems principles and practices
TinyTorch Build your own ML framework from scratch
Discussions Ask questions, share feedback

Contributors

Thanks to these wonderful people who helped build the labs!

Legend: 🪲 Bug Hunter · Code Warrior · 📚 Documentation Hero · 🎨 Design Artist · 🧠 Idea Generator · 🔎 Code Reviewer · 🧪 Test Engineer · 🛠️ Tool Builder

Vijay Janapa Reddi
Vijay Janapa Reddi

🧑‍💻 🎨 ✍️

Recognize a contributor: Comment on any issue or PR:

@all-contributors please add @username for code, tutorial, test, or doc

Read. Explore. Build. (Labs coming soon)