On Feb 2d 2026, In Brussels we got together at AI Plumbers FOSDEM fringe event, second edition, where Felix LeClair, Platform Engineer at Ainekko sits down with Ben Burtenshaw from Hugging Face to discuss how the Hugging Face Kernels ecosystem makes high-performance kernels easier to build, share, and run.
They cover agent-assisted kernel development, benchmarking results across model families, and why reproducible kernel infrastructure is key for broader hardware support.
Key moments from the talk:
0:00 Intro and guest welcome
0:28 What Hugging Face Kernels solves
1:53 Can LLMs help write kernels?
2:06 Using Claude Code + skills to generate kernels
3:21 Benchmarking different models for kernel generation
4:30 Agentic workflows and performance engineering
5:16 Supporting older and affordable hardware
6:55 Why infrastructure matters beyond generated code
7:46How Kernels Hub helps developers learn and contribute
9:20 How to get involved with Hugging Face Kernels 10:00 Wrap-up
