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The bit of code at the center of an operating system that mediates access between userspace code and the hardware.

Whereas in CUDA programming, a kernel is just the code running on the device. When I first heard kernel in relation to CUDA programming, I expected it to be a) the actual OS kernel, and then b) something akin to a GPU driver.

I can see how NVIDIA got there, but it's not immediately obvious if you're coming from a SWE context.

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> Whereas in CUDA programming, a kernel is just the code running on the device. When I first heard kernel in relation to CUDA programming, I expected it to be a) the actual OS kernel, and then b) something akin to a GPU driver.

I think this is still not the machine learning 'kernel' being talked about. While you'd inevitably need to know about this for tooling in the space, looks like kernel is also a mathematical term.

Kernel is also used in convolutions... Ugh

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