Aila: A High-Performance LLM Inference Engine Based on SYCL and oneDNN

Aila is a large language model inference engine developed by Blackwood416, built on SYCL (an open heterogeneous programming standard) and oneDNN (Intel's deep learning performance library). Its core goal is to solve the problem of mainstream inference frameworks being tied to proprietary hardware, enabling high-performance inference across multiple hardware backends such as CPU, GPU, FPGA, etc., and pursuing open standards and hardware independence.

Optimizing the inference performance of large language models is a core challenge in the AI engineering field. The growth of model scale intensifies the pressure on hardware resources, and most mainstream inference frameworks are tied to specific vendors' proprietary technologies, limiting deployment flexibility. Aila chooses the SYCL and oneDNN path, aiming to build a cross-platform, high-performance inference engine, reflecting its pursuit of open standards and hardware independence.

• SYCL: A C++ heterogeneous programming standard launched by the Khronos Group. It supports adapting a single codebase to multiple hardware backends such as CPU, GPU, FPGA, etc. Based on open standards, it has strong portability and can run on hardware supporting OpenCL or Level Zero without rewriting core code.
• oneDNN: Intel's open-source deep learning performance library, deeply optimized for Intel architectures. It provides highly optimized primitives for core operations like convolution and matrix multiplication, helping Aila approach performance limits on Intel hardware.

Architecture Design: Adopts a modular layered design. The core layer is responsible for model loading, graph optimization, and execution scheduling, while the underlying computing is delegated to the SYCL runtime and oneDNN. Memory management may use pooled allocation and zero-copy to reduce overhead; attention computation may implement fused kernels to reduce bandwidth bottlenecks. Cross-Platform Advantages: Based on SYCL, the same code can run on NVIDIA/AMD/Intel GPUs and various CPUs, requiring only specifying different backends during compilation. The open SYCL ecosystem (oneAPI DPC++, ComputeCpp, hipSYCL, etc.) reduces the risk of vendor lock-in.

• Operator level: Obtain optimized matrix multiplication and convolution implementations through oneDNN;
• Graph level: May implement compiler technologies such as operator fusion, constant folding, and layout optimization;
• KV cache: May use paged cache, dynamic expansion, and memory reuse to support long sequence generation;
• Batch processing: Supports dynamic batching to merge requests and improve parallel utilization, and continuous batching to reduce waiting latency.

Application Scenarios: Data centers can leverage the computing power of Intel Xeon and data center GPUs; edge devices can adapt to embedded processors and integrated graphics cards; the C++ implementation provides performance tunability and debugging capabilities. Comparison with Mainstream Frameworks: Compared to mature frameworks like vLLM and TensorRT-LLM, Aila is in the early stage and needs to improve functional completeness. However, open standards, cross-platform capabilities, and underlying controllability are its differentiated advantages, making it suitable for teams pursuing hardware flexibility.

Future Directions: Support MoE and multimodal models; integrate INT8/INT4 quantization technologies to reduce memory usage; optimize multi-tenant scheduling strategies; introduce speculative sampling to improve generation speed. Conclusion: Aila explores the possibility of an open technology stack in the LLM inference field. Although it faces competition from mature frameworks, its cross-platform solution is unique, and it is worth the participation of developers who care about hardware neutrality and underlying optimization.