2511.0033 Organization of Self-Controlled Agents for General Matrix Multiplication Optimization v4

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🎓 Meta Review & Human Decision

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Reject

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📋 Summary

This paper introduces TrAgent, a novel tree-based orchestration system designed to manage self-controlled agents while preserving their autonomy. The core idea revolves around using a PUCT-style search to dynamically allocate actions to agents, facilitating inter-agent experience sharing and enabling scalability as the number of agents increases. The orchestrator, which manages this process, is intentionally kept lightweight, intervening minimally in the agents' decision-making processes. Instead, it focuses on selecting actions and backing up experiences, allowing agents to maintain control over their internal states and tool usage. The authors demonstrate the effectiveness of TrAgent through a general matrix multiplication (GEMM) kernel optimization task, achieving 80% of the performance of the highly optimized cuBLAS library. This result is presented as evidence of the system's ability to effectively coordinate agents in a complex optimization problem. The paper also suggests that the system exhibits a scaling phenomenon, where performance improves as the number of agents increases, further highlighting the potential of the proposed approach. The authors emphasize that their method allows for a generalized mechanism for inter-agent experience sharing, which is achieved through the orchestrator's backup process, where the outcomes of agent actions are used to update the tree structure and inform future decisions. The paper's main contribution lies in the novel application of a tree-based search to coordinate self-controlled agents, offering a balance between centralized control and agent autonomy. However, the paper also acknowledges limitations, particularly in the scope of experimental validation and the lack of detailed analysis of computational overhead, which I will discuss in detail in the following sections. The authors position their work as a step towards more flexible and scalable multi-agent systems, where agents can maintain a high degree of autonomy while still benefiting from coordinated exploration and experience sharing. The paper's focus on autonomy-preserving design is a key aspect, aiming to address the limitations of traditional multi-agent systems where a central controller often dictates agent behavior. The authors argue that their approach allows agents to leverage their individual capabilities while still contributing to a collective goal, which is a significant contribution to the field of multi-agent systems.

✅ Strengths

The primary strength of this paper lies in its innovative approach to orchestrating self-controlled agents using a tree-based search mechanism. The introduction of TrAgent, which leverages a PUCT-style search to dynamically allocate actions while preserving agent autonomy, is a significant contribution. This method allows agents to maintain control over their internal states and tool usage, which is a departure from traditional multi-agent systems where a central controller often dictates agent behavior. The autonomy-preserving design is a key innovation, enabling agents to leverage their individual capabilities while still contributing to a collective goal. The paper's emphasis on a lightweight orchestrator, which intervenes minimally in the agents' decision-making processes, is another notable strength. By restricting the orchestrator to selection and backup functions, the authors have created a system that is both flexible and scalable. The use of a PUCT-style search is also a strength, as it provides a well-established framework for decision-making under uncertainty. The authors have effectively adapted this framework to the context of multi-agent coordination, demonstrating its suitability for this task. The empirical results, which show that TrAgent achieves 80% of the performance of the highly optimized cuBLAS library on a GEMM kernel optimization task, are also a significant achievement. This result provides strong evidence of the system's effectiveness in a complex optimization problem. The paper also suggests that the system exhibits a scaling phenomenon, where performance improves as the number of agents increases, which further highlights the potential of the proposed approach. The authors' focus on inter-agent experience sharing is another strength. By using the orchestrator to backup experiences and update the tree structure, the agents are able to learn from each other's successes and failures, which is crucial for efficient exploration. The paper's clear and concise writing style also contributes to its overall strength, making it easy to follow the authors' arguments and understand the proposed system. The authors have effectively communicated their ideas, making the paper accessible to a wide audience. The paper's focus on a practical problem, GEMM kernel optimization, also adds to its strength, as it demonstrates the real-world applicability of the proposed approach. The authors have successfully shown that TrAgent can be used to achieve performance that is close to that of a highly optimized library, which is a significant achievement. Overall, the paper's strengths lie in its innovative approach, its effective use of a PUCT-style search, its autonomy-preserving design, its strong empirical results, and its clear and concise writing style.

❌ Weaknesses

Despite the strengths of the proposed TrAgent system, several weaknesses need to be addressed. The most significant limitation is the narrow scope of the experimental validation. The paper focuses solely on a GEMM kernel optimization task, which, while important, does not provide sufficient evidence to support the claim that TrAgent is generally applicable to other complex optimization problems. As I verified, the "EXPERIMENTS" section explicitly states that the system is evaluated on GEMM kernel optimization, and the "CONCLUSION" section acknowledges this limitation, stating, "Our results are limited to GEMM and do not exhaust all hardware or kernel classes." This lack of diversity in the experimental setup raises concerns about the system's robustness and its ability to generalize to tasks with different computational characteristics, memory access patterns, and communication requirements. The paper does not explore how TrAgent would perform on tasks such as graph processing, machine learning workloads, or computational fluid dynamics, which could expose potential limitations. This narrow focus limits the practical utility of the system in real-world scenarios, where a wide range of tasks with varying characteristics need to be addressed. My analysis confirms that the paper does not include any experiments beyond GEMM, which significantly weakens the claim of general applicability. Another critical weakness is the lack of a detailed analysis of the computational overhead introduced by the tree-based search and how it scales with the number of agents and the complexity of the task. As I verified, the "METHOD" section describes the PUCT-style search process, but it does not provide any explicit formulas or metrics for calculating the computational overhead. The "EXPERIMENTS" section presents results in terms of "normalized_elapsed_time" and "baseline_performance," but it does not isolate and quantify the computational overhead of the TrAgent system itself. The "CONCLUSION" section mentions, "Search overhead may hinder small workloads; adaptive budgeting and early stopping heuristics could improve efciency," which implicitly acknowledges the existence of overhead but does not provide a detailed analysis. This lack of analysis makes it difficult to understand the trade-offs between performance and overhead, and it also makes it challenging to identify potential bottlenecks in the system. The paper does not provide a breakdown of the time spent on different components of the tree-based search, such as node expansion, action selection, and experience sharing, which is crucial for understanding the system's efficiency. Furthermore, the paper does not analyze how the overhead scales with the number of agents and the complexity of the task, which is essential for assessing the system's scalability. My analysis confirms that there is no quantitative assessment of the overhead, which is a significant omission. The autonomy of agents, while emphasized, is not clearly defined, and the mechanism for inter-agent experience sharing is not detailed enough. While the "main_idea" section mentions "full agent autonomy for critical tasks like planning and tool use," and the "method" section describes how the orchestrator minimizes over-control, the specific mechanisms within each agent that ensure their autonomy are not deeply elaborated. As I verified, the paper does not specify how agents decide which tools to use, what their internal memory structures are, or how they reflect on past actions. The inter-agent experience sharing is described in terms of the orchestrator updating the tree based on agent performance, but the direct interaction or information sharing *between* agents is not explicitly detailed. This lack of clarity makes it difficult to understand how agents maintain autonomy while sharing information, and it also raises questions about the effectiveness of the experience sharing mechanism. My analysis confirms that the paper lacks a detailed explanation of the internal workings of the agents and the direct inter-agent experience sharing. Finally, the paper does not provide a clear explanation of how the system handles conflicts or dependencies between agents. As I verified, the "METHOD" section describes the tree-based orchestration, but it does not mention any mechanisms for handling conflicts or dependencies. The focus is on the orchestrator's role in selecting and backing up experiences, not on direct agent-to-agent interaction or conflict resolution. This lack of explanation is a significant weakness, as it raises concerns about the system's robustness in complex scenarios where agents may have conflicting goals or require resources that are not simultaneously available. The paper does not describe how the system would resolve conflicts or manage dependencies, which is crucial for understanding its practical applicability. My analysis confirms that the paper lacks any description of conflict resolution or dependency management mechanisms. These weaknesses, particularly the limited experimental validation, the lack of overhead analysis, the unclear definition of agent autonomy, and the absence of conflict resolution mechanisms, significantly impact the paper's overall contribution and need to be addressed in future work. The confidence level for each of these identified issues is high, as they are directly supported by the paper's content and the lack of specific information.

💡 Suggestions

To address the identified weaknesses, several concrete improvements can be made. First and foremost, the paper needs to significantly expand its experimental validation beyond the GEMM kernel optimization task. As I verified, the current focus on GEMM is insufficient to demonstrate the general applicability of the proposed TrAgent system. To rectify this, the authors should include a diverse set of benchmarks that vary in terms of computational intensity, memory access patterns, and communication requirements. For example, testing on tasks such as graph processing, machine learning workloads (e.g., training a small neural network), or computational fluid dynamics would provide a more comprehensive evaluation. These tasks should be chosen to expose potential limitations of the TrAgent system and to demonstrate its robustness across different problem domains. Furthermore, the experiments should be conducted on a variety of hardware platforms, including different CPU architectures, GPUs, and potentially edge devices, to assess the system's performance under different resource constraints and parallelization capabilities. This broader evaluation will be critical to establish the practical utility of TrAgent in real-world scenarios. The authors should also include a comparison against existing state-of-the-art optimization techniques for each task, not just a single baseline, to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the proposed approach's performance relative to existing methods. This would provide a more robust assessment of the system's capabilities. Second, the paper needs to provide a detailed analysis of the computational overhead introduced by the tree-based search. As I verified, the current analysis lacks a breakdown of the time spent on different components of the system, such as tree construction, node evaluation, and action selection. To address this, the authors should provide a detailed profiling of the system, measuring the time spent on each component. This analysis should include a quantitative assessment of how these costs scale with the number of agents and the complexity of the task. For instance, the authors could measure the time spent on tree traversal versus the time spent on actual task execution. Furthermore, the authors should investigate the impact of different tree search parameters (e.g., exploration constant, maximum tree depth) on both the performance and the overhead. It would also be beneficial to compare the overhead of TrAgent with other multi-agent coordination approaches, if applicable, to provide a relative understanding of its efficiency. This detailed analysis will help to identify potential bottlenecks and guide future optimization efforts. Third, the paper needs to provide a more rigorous definition of agent autonomy within the TrAgent framework. As I verified, the current description of agent autonomy is not detailed enough. The authors should clearly specify the degree of independence each agent possesses in terms of decision-making, planning, and tool usage. For example, are agents able to modify their own internal states or learning parameters? Can they choose to ignore the experience shared by other agents? Furthermore, the mechanism for inter-agent experience sharing needs to be elaborated. The authors should describe the specific data structures used to store and share experience, the format of the shared information, and the process by which agents incorporate this information into their own decision-making processes. For example, is the shared experience a simple best practice, or does it include more complex information such as learned policies or value functions? A clear understanding of these aspects is crucial to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach and its ability to maintain agent autonomy. Fourth, the paper should address how the system handles conflicts or dependencies between agents. As I verified, the current paper lacks any description of such mechanisms. In complex scenarios, agents may have conflicting goals or require resources that are not simultaneously available. The authors should describe the mechanisms used to resolve these conflicts, such as priority-based scheduling, resource allocation algorithms, or negotiation protocols. The paper should also discuss how the system handles dependencies between agents, such as when one agent's output is required as input for another agent. This discussion should include an analysis of the potential for deadlocks or livelocks and the strategies used to prevent them. A clear explanation of these aspects is essential for understanding the robustness and scalability of the TrAgent system in real-world applications. Finally, the paper should include a more thorough discussion of the limitations of the proposed approach. The authors should acknowledge the potential challenges of applying TrAgent to tasks with very large search spaces or tasks that require specialized domain knowledge. They should also discuss the sensitivity of the system to the choice of the reward function and the exploration strategy. A clear understanding of these limitations would help to guide future research and to identify potential areas for improvement. The authors should also consider the practical implications of deploying the TrAgent system in real-world scenarios, such as the need for fault tolerance and scalability. These suggestions, if implemented, would significantly strengthen the paper and address the identified weaknesses.

❓ Questions

Several key questions arise from my analysis of this paper, focusing on the core methodological choices and assumptions. First, how does the system handle situations where agents have conflicting goals or require resources that are not simultaneously available? As I verified, the paper does not provide a clear explanation of how the system manages conflicts or dependencies between agents. This is a critical question, as it directly impacts the system's robustness and scalability in complex scenarios. Understanding the mechanisms used to resolve these conflicts, such as priority-based scheduling, resource allocation algorithms, or negotiation protocols, is essential. Second, can the authors provide more details on the specific implementation of the PUCT-style search within the TrAgent system? While the paper describes the use of a PUCT-style search, it lacks specific details on how it is adapted to the context of multi-agent coordination. For example, how are the exploration parameters tuned? How is the tree represented in memory? How are the agent proposals incorporated into the tree search? These details are crucial for understanding the system's behavior and for reproducing the results. Third, what are the limitations of the current approach in terms of scalability and computational overhead? As I verified, the paper lacks a detailed analysis of the computational overhead and how it scales with the number of agents and the complexity of the task. Understanding these limitations is crucial for assessing the system's practical applicability. What are the bottlenecks in the system? How does the overhead of the tree-based search compare to other multi-agent coordination approaches? These are important questions that need to be addressed. Fourth, how do the agents maintain their autonomy while sharing information? As I verified, the paper does not provide a clear explanation of the specific mechanisms within each agent that ensure their autonomy. While the paper emphasizes that agents maintain control over their internal states and tool usage, it does not detail how this is achieved. How do agents decide which tools to use? What are their internal memory structures? How do they reflect on past actions? These questions are crucial for understanding the system's ability to maintain agent autonomy. Finally, what is the format of the shared experience between agents? As I verified, the paper describes the inter-agent experience sharing in terms of the orchestrator updating the tree based on agent performance, but it does not detail the specific information that is shared. Is the shared experience a simple best practice, or does it include more complex information such as learned policies or value functions? Understanding the format of the shared experience is crucial for evaluating the effectiveness of the experience sharing mechanism. These questions target the core methodological choices and assumptions of the paper, and addressing them would significantly enhance the understanding and credibility of the proposed approach.

📊 Scores

Soundness:2.0
Presentation:2.5
Contribution:2.0
Rating: 4.0

AI Review from ZGCA

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📋 Summary

The paper proposes TrAgent, a tree-based orchestration framework for self-controlled LLM agents that uses a PUCT-style search to coordinate exploration while preserving per-agent autonomy in planning and tool use. The key technical element is a parent-level experience sharing mechanism that shapes the PUCT prior over actions using exponentially smoothed success signals from child edges, gradually blending static priors P(s,a) with evidence terms based on visit counts and EXP(s,a) (Eq. 5–6). The orchestrator only decides what to explore (selection and backup), and individual agents decide how to act (tools, memory, reflection). The method is instantiated on general matrix multiplication (GEMM) kernel optimization under a specification-driven development (SDD) protocol with correctness checks and Nsight Compute metrics, comparing TrAgent to a single self-controlled agent and a random search baseline. Results suggest large gains in elapsed time over baselines, approaching a vendor library across representative settings.

✅ Strengths

  • Timely problem and motivation: organizing increasingly autonomous, tool-using agents without suppressing autonomy (Introduction; autonomy-preserving design).
  • Clear algorithmic core: PUCT selection with shaped priors (Eq. 1–2), leaf evaluation with normalized value V based on measured time (Eq. 3), backup and experience smoothing (Eq. 4–6), and executable pseudocode (Algorithm 1).
  • Conceptual novelty: parent-level experience shaping (EXP(s,a), P̃(s,a)) as a general mechanism for inter-agent experience sharing, distinct from fixed policy priors in vanilla PUCT.
  • Well-chosen, realistic task: GEMM kernel optimization is challenging and impactful; the SDD protocol specifies constraints (no vendor libraries), correctness thresholds (abs/rel error ≤1e−2), and metrics (Nsight Compute Elapsed Cycles) (Section 4.1).
  • Empirical indication of effectiveness: under identical tool access, TrAgent improves substantially over a single self-controlled agent and random search on GEMM (Section 4.2), with a clear trajectory of performance across PUCT iterations.
  • Attention to autonomy: the orchestrator avoids micromanaging internal agent reasoning and tool use, aligning with current MCP-driven ecosystems (Sections 1–3).

❌ Weaknesses

  • Narrow empirical scope: evaluation is limited to GEMM on a single hardware context; no additional operators, devices, or domains are considered (Section 5 notes this as a limitation).
  • Missing competitive baselines: no direct comparisons against other contemporary multi-agent orchestration frameworks or controllers (e.g., AutoGen-style orchestration, Tree-of-Thought/LATS-like search, simple beam/MCTS variants, evolutionary pipelines like AlphaEvolve) to contextualize the gain from the autonomy-preserving PUCT approach (Section 2 cites related work but does not compare empirically).
  • Ablations not shown: while the paper claims ablations for exploration constant c, tree depth/width, and autonomy features (reflection and memory toggles) (Sections 3 and 4), the main text does not present these results, making it hard to attribute gains to specific components.
  • Insufficient experimental detail for reproducibility: key setup details are omitted, including hardware (GPU model, CUDA version), matrix size regimes, compilation flags beyond a brief mention, model identities/sizes ("codex-style" vs. "claude-code-style" is vague), number of agents, token/tool budgets, and actual hyperparameter values (m, k, r/ρ, ε, c, depth/width, T).
  • Overhead and scaling unquantified: the paper does not report orchestration overheads (LLM tokens, compilation/profiling cost) relative to achieved speedups or provide detailed scaling curves as the number of agents increases, despite claiming a "scaling phenomenon".
  • Limited analysis: no sensitivity analysis of the experience shaping (choice of g(V), smoothing factor m, ρ vs. r notation), no study of failure modes, and no theoretical insight into stability or convergence properties.
  • Clarity issues: minor notation inconsistencies (ρ in text vs. r in pseudocode; Eq. 6 vs. Algorithm line 31), and a few typographical errors reduce polish; the description of how priors P(s,a) are obtained from agents is under-specified.

❓ Questions

  • Please provide full details of the agents: exact model names/sizes, context length, prompting, tool stack (MCP servers, search utilities), memory/reflection mechanisms, and the number of agents used in each configuration.
  • How are priors P(s,a) obtained at expansion? Are they explicit probabilities elicited from agents over proposed actions, heuristic scores normalized post hoc, or derived from a model head? How do you handle calibration across heterogeneous agents?
  • What are the exact values (and ranges explored) for hyperparameters c, m, k, r/ρ, ε, tree depth/width, and budget T? Please include random seeds and any progressive widening or rollout policies if applicable.
  • Can you show the ablations you mention: (i) exploration constant c, (ii) maximum depth/width, and (iii) autonomy toggles (reflection and memory)? Specifically, quantify each component’s contribution to the final performance on GEMM.
  • Please detail the hardware and compilation setup: GPU model, CUDA toolkit/driver versions, Nsight Compute configuration, compiler flags, and the specific matrix shapes used to produce Figure 2. How many compilations/evaluations per round?
  • How is the normalized value V (Eq. 3) instantiated in practice? What is the reference "baseline" time used in normalization? Is it constant across runs or task-dependent? How sensitive are results to this normalization choice?
  • What is the wall-clock budget per experiment, and how is orchestration overhead (LLM tokens, tool invocations, compile/profile time) amortized? Please report absolute wall-clock speedups/slowdowns including orchestration, not only kernel cycles.
  • Can you provide quantitative results on scaling with the number of agents (e.g., 1, 2, 4, 8 agents), including both performance and cost? Do you observe diminishing returns or interference?
  • Please add empirical comparisons against alternative controllers: (a) a multi-agent conversational orchestrator (e.g., AutoGen-style), (b) ToT/LATS/MCTS variants without your prior shaping, (c) simple beam or best-first search, and (d) evolutionary pipelines. How much does your experience-shaped prior contribute over vanilla PUCT?
  • How do you ensure correctness under aggressive optimizations (cp.async, wmma)? Do you have a fuzzing or stress-testing regime for edge cases beyond the stated error thresholds?

⚠️ Limitations

  • Domain generality: Results are limited to GEMM on a single hardware context; applicability to other kernels/operators and heterogeneous devices is untested.
  • Overhead vs. gain: The orchestration and evaluation overhead (LLM inference, compilation, profiling) may dominate for small problems; the paper notes this qualitatively but does not quantify it.
  • Reproducibility: Missing experimental details (hardware, hyperparameters, agent configs) and unavailable code/evaluation harness impede replication.
  • Credit assignment and stability: The proposed experience shaping (EXP smoothing and prior blending) lacks sensitivity analysis; inappropriate settings could cause premature exploitation or overfit to noisy measurements.
  • Potential societal impacts: While low-risk in terms of direct harms, increased compute for auto-tuning by LLM agents can have environmental costs; safeguards like early stopping and adaptive budgeting are suggested.
  • Safety of generated code: Autonomous low-level kernel generation risks undefined behaviors or rare correctness failures; robust verification and sandboxing are necessary in deployment.

🖼️ Image Evaluation

Cross‑Modal Consistency: [22]/50

Textual Logical Soundness: [18]/30

Visual Aesthetics & Clarity: [16]/20

Overall Score: [56]/100

Detailed Evaluation (≤500 words):

1. Cross‑Modal Consistency

• Major 1: Performance claim conflicts with Fig. 2 (≤cuBLAS vs 80% of cuBLAS). Evidence: “achieving 80% of the performance of the cuBLAS code.” (Abstract) vs “decreases … to 0.015 … converging to the cuBLAS … (2% of baseline)” (Sec 4.2) and green curve below the brown “cublas (≈2%)” line in Fig. 2.

• Major 2: Fig. 2 caption units mismatch the plotted metric. Evidence: “Figure 2: … elapsed time (ms, y-axis)” (caption) while axis reads “Normalized Elapsed Time (baseline = 1)” in Fig. 2.

• Major 3: Claimed scaling with number of agents lacks any visual/table support. Evidence: “exhibits a scaling phenomenon as the number of agents increases.” (Abstract); no agent-count ablation shown.

• Minor 1: Random baseline mentioned but not plotted in Fig. 2. Evidence: “comparing against … a random search baseline” (Sec 4) vs Fig. 2 legend lacking this series.

• Minor 2: Standard deviations claimed, but Fig. 2 has no error bars. Evidence: “averaging results over five runs with standard deviations” (Sec 4).

• Minor 3: Symbol inconsistency between text and pseudocode. Evidence: Eq. 6 uses ρ, ε; Algorithm 1 lists r, e (Lines 31–32).

• Minor 4: Objective defined in cycles while reporting time in figures may confuse. Evidence: “minimizes … Elapsed Cycles” (Sec 4.1) vs “Normalized Elapsed Time” in Fig. 2.

2. Text Logic

• Major 1: Flagship performance/generalization claim insufficiently supported by provided evidence. Evidence: “approaching roughly 80% of a strong vendor library across representative settings.” (Intro/Abstract); only one curve, no multi‑shape/hardware results.

• Minor 1: Missing key experimental details (GPU/CPU model, CUDA version, matrix sizes). Evidence: No hardware or size specification in §4.1/§4.2.

• Minor 2: Several formatting artifacts reduce clarity. Evidence: “operatorname {c l i p} … t i m e (c a n d i d a t e)” (Eq. 3) and “Equation equation 6” phrasing.

3. Figure Quality

• No Major issues found.

• Minor 1: Fig. 1 small labels/icons risk illegibility at print size. Evidence: Fig. 1 contains multiple icon labels (“Character/Function/Workflow”, “TrAgent”) in compact layout.

• Minor 2: Fig. 2 lacks uncertainty depiction and gridlines, hindering quick reading. Evidence: Visual inspection of Fig. 2.

• Minor 3: Blue/green series may be hard for some CVD readers without markers. Evidence: Legend shows “single agent” (blue) and “system codex” (green) lines only.

Key strengths:

  • Clear method description with PUCT and parent‑level shaping; concise pseudocode.
  • Well‑motivated application (GEMM) with a reproducible SDD contract.

Key weaknesses:

  • Conflicting performance claims vs figure; missing ablations (agent count, random baseline).
  • Metric/reporting inconsistencies (cycles vs normalized time; caption vs axis).
  • Limited experimental detail (hardware/sizes) and no uncertainty visualization.

Recommendations:

  • Resolve cuBLAS comparative claim; align caption/metric/axis terminology.
  • Add agent‑count scaling plots, random baseline curve, and error bars.
  • Provide hardware, compiler settings, matrix sizes; ensure symbol consistency (ρ/r, ε/e).

📊 Scores

Originality:3
Quality:2
Clarity:3
Significance:2
Soundness:2
Presentation:3
Contribution:2
Rating: 4

AI Review from SafeReviewer

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📋 Summary

This paper introduces TrAgent, a novel tree-based orchestration system designed to coordinate self-controlled agents, drawing inspiration from the PUCT algorithm used in AlphaGo. The core idea is to leverage a tree search mechanism to explore the vast design space of matrix multiplication (GEMM) kernels, a critical component in high-performance computing and deep learning. Unlike traditional approaches that rely on explicit role assignments and context passing, TrAgent allows multiple autonomous agents to propose actions, which are then evaluated and selected through a PUCT-style search. This approach aims to preserve agent autonomy while enabling efficient exploration of the optimization space. The paper focuses on optimizing GEMM kernels, a well-studied problem with significant practical implications. The authors demonstrate that TrAgent can achieve performance close to that of highly optimized vendor libraries like cuBLAS, showcasing the potential of this approach for automating the generation of high-performance kernels. The experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms single-agent baselines and random search, indicating the effectiveness of the multi-agent coordination and the PUCT-based search strategy. The paper's contribution lies in the novel application of a tree search algorithm to a multi-agent system for code generation and optimization, offering a new perspective on how to tackle complex tasks in high-performance computing. The authors also provide a detailed specification for the GEMM optimization task, which promotes reproducibility and further research in this area. The paper's findings suggest that the proposed method can be a valuable tool for developers, enabling them to generate optimized kernels without requiring extensive expertise in low-level programming. However, the paper also acknowledges limitations, such as the focus on a single task and the need for further evaluation on a broader range of problems and hardware platforms. The paper's overall significance lies in its demonstration of how multi-agent systems and tree search algorithms can be combined to address complex optimization challenges in a way that is both effective and scalable.

✅ Strengths

I find several aspects of this paper to be particularly compelling. The core idea of using a tree-based search, inspired by PUCT, to coordinate self-controlled agents for code generation is a novel and promising approach. The application of this method to the optimization of GEMM kernels is also well-motivated, given the significant practical impact of these kernels in high-performance computing and deep learning. The paper clearly articulates the limitations of existing multi-agent systems, which often rely on explicit role assignments and context passing, and presents TrAgent as a solution that preserves agent autonomy while enabling efficient exploration of the optimization space. The experimental results, although limited in scope, demonstrate that TrAgent can achieve performance close to that of highly optimized vendor libraries like cuBLAS, which is a significant achievement. The authors also provide a detailed specification for the GEMM optimization task, which promotes reproducibility and further research in this area. The use of multiple agents, each contributing to the exploration of the design space, is a key strength of the proposed approach. The paper also clearly describes the PUCT-style search mechanism and how it is adapted to the context of self-controlled agents. The authors' focus on preserving agent autonomy is also a valuable contribution, as it allows the agents to leverage their individual capabilities and expertise. The paper's clear articulation of the problem, the proposed solution, and the experimental results makes it easy to follow and understand. The authors also acknowledge the limitations of their work and suggest directions for future research, which is a sign of intellectual honesty and rigor. Overall, I believe that this paper makes a valuable contribution to the field of automated code generation and optimization, and I am excited to see how this line of research will evolve in the future.

❌ Weaknesses

While I find the core idea of this paper to be promising, several weaknesses need to be addressed to strengthen its claims and impact. First, the paper lacks a clear and detailed explanation of how the proposed method differs from existing tree search-based approaches, particularly those used in LLM agents. While the paper cites relevant works on LLM-MCTS and related algorithms, the specific differences in how TrAgent adapts the PUCT algorithm for coordinating self-controlled agents versus using it as a general reasoning tool in LLMs are not sufficiently highlighted. The paper mentions that TrAgent emphasizes 'autonomy-preserving orchestration,' but the technical details of how this is achieved are not fully elaborated. This lack of clarity makes it difficult to assess the novelty of the proposed approach. Second, the paper's experimental evaluation is limited in scope. The experiments focus solely on GEMM kernel optimization, and the results are presented without error bars, making it difficult to assess the statistical significance of the findings. The paper mentions that the results are averaged over five runs, but the absence of error bars makes it hard to determine if the observed performance differences are statistically significant or due to random variation. Furthermore, the paper does not provide a detailed analysis of the performance of the proposed method across different matrix sizes, which is crucial for understanding its practical applicability. The paper also lacks a comparison with other state-of-the-art methods for GEMM kernel optimization, such as AutoTVM, which makes it difficult to assess the relative performance of TrAgent. The paper mentions AutoTVM in the related work section, but it is not used as a baseline in the experiments. Third, the paper's description of the agent design is insufficient. The paper states that the system uses 'codex-style' and 'claude-code-style' agents, but it does not provide details on the specific prompts, tools, or internal architectures of these agents. The paper also does not explain how the agents propose actions or how their autonomy is preserved during the tree search process. This lack of detail makes it difficult to understand the inner workings of the proposed method and to reproduce the results. Fourth, the paper's discussion of the computational overhead of the tree search is limited. While the paper mentions that search overhead may hinder small workloads, it does not provide a detailed analysis of the computational cost of the tree search itself. The paper does not specify the computational resources used for the experiments, such as the GPU model, which makes it difficult to assess the practical feasibility of the proposed method. Fifth, the paper's writing could be improved. There are some typos and inconsistencies in the use of symbols, which detract from the overall clarity of the paper. For example, the paper uses 'equation equation' instead of 'Equation' and has inconsistencies in symbol usage. Sixth, the paper's claim of 'full agent autonomy' is not fully supported by the evidence. While the paper states that the orchestrator does not dictate how agents reason or which tools to use, the evaluation metric is based on performance, which implicitly guides agent behavior. This creates a tension between the claim of full autonomy and the performance-based evaluation. Finally, the paper does not provide a clear explanation of how the agents interact with each other or how they coordinate their actions. The paper mentions that the agents are self-controlled, but it is not clear how they avoid conflicts or how they share information. The paper also does not explain how the agents are initialized or how they are configured. These weaknesses, taken together, significantly limit the paper's impact and make it difficult to assess the true potential of the proposed method.

💡 Suggestions

To address the identified weaknesses, I recommend several concrete improvements. First, the paper should provide a more detailed explanation of how the proposed method differs from existing tree search-based approaches, particularly those used in LLM agents. The authors should clearly articulate the specific adaptations made to the PUCT algorithm and how these adaptations enable the coordination of self-controlled agents. This should include a detailed comparison of the proposed method with existing approaches, highlighting the unique contributions of this work. Second, the paper should expand its experimental evaluation to include a wider range of tasks and datasets. While the GEMM kernel optimization task is a good starting point, the authors should also evaluate the proposed method on other optimization problems to demonstrate its generalizability. The paper should also include error bars in all plots to provide a better understanding of the variability in performance. Furthermore, the paper should compare the performance of the proposed method with other state-of-the-art methods for GEMM kernel optimization, such as AutoTVM, to provide a more comprehensive evaluation. Third, the paper should provide a more detailed description of the agent design, including the specific prompts, tools, and internal architectures of the agents. The paper should also explain how the agents propose actions and how their autonomy is preserved during the tree search process. This should include a discussion of the specific algorithms and heuristics used by the agents. Fourth, the paper should provide a more detailed analysis of the computational overhead of the tree search, including the computational resources used for the experiments. The paper should also discuss the scalability of the proposed method and its applicability to larger and more complex problems. Fifth, the paper should carefully proofread and correct all typos and inconsistencies in the use of symbols. The authors should also ensure that the writing is clear and concise. Sixth, the paper should clarify the extent to which agents are truly autonomous, given the performance-based evaluation. The authors should discuss the potential trade-offs between autonomy and performance and how these trade-offs are addressed in the proposed method. Finally, the paper should provide a more detailed explanation of how the agents interact with each other and how they coordinate their actions. The authors should also explain how the agents are initialized and configured. By addressing these weaknesses, the paper can significantly improve its clarity, rigor, and impact.

❓ Questions

Several questions arise from my analysis of this paper. First, how exactly are the prior probabilities P(s, a) calculated, and how do these priors influence the exploration-exploitation trade-off in the PUCT search? The paper mentions that the priors are based on agent judgments, but it does not provide details on how these judgments are translated into probabilities. Second, how are the agents initialized, and what specific tools and capabilities are they provided with? The paper mentions 'codex-style' and 'claude-code-style' agents, but it does not provide details on their internal architectures or the specific prompts used to guide their behavior. Third, how does the system handle situations where multiple agents propose conflicting actions, and how is the final action selected? The paper does not provide a clear explanation of the action selection process. Fourth, what is the computational cost of the tree search, and how does this cost scale with the complexity of the optimization problem? The paper does not provide a detailed analysis of the computational overhead of the proposed method. Fifth, how does the proposed method compare to other state-of-the-art methods for GEMM kernel optimization, such as AutoTVM, in terms of both performance and computational cost? The paper does not provide a direct comparison with these methods. Sixth, how does the performance of the proposed method vary across different matrix sizes, and what are the limitations of the proposed method for very large matrices? The paper does not provide a detailed analysis of the performance across different matrix sizes. Finally, what are the limitations of the proposed method, and what are the potential directions for future research? The paper mentions some limitations, but it does not provide a comprehensive discussion of the challenges and opportunities for future work. Addressing these questions would help to clarify the strengths and weaknesses of the proposed method and to guide future research in this area.

📊 Scores

Soundness:2.25
Presentation:2.25
Contribution:2.5
Rating: 4.0

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