DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18292934
title: Massive Scale Tactical Drone Swarm: Real-time Control of 500k UAVs on Tesla T4 (Subtitle: 110x Speedup & 5.5 TFLOPS with Custom CUDA Kernels)

description: HDGMP NanoRNN + OM: High-Performance Tactical Swarm EngineThis project implements a production-grade Tactical Swarm Engine capable of controlling over 524,000 autonomous drones in real-time. By integrating the Observation Module (OM) and replacing standard PyTorch operations with a custom-written CUDA kernel (tnet_ironrain), the simulation achieves fluid dynamics for complex tactical maneuvers while processing observation data with sub-millisecond latency.The engine operates as a PyTorch C++ extension, enabling high-level Python control while executing heavy kinematic and observational calculations on the GPU.🚀 Key Highlights (Updated) * Extreme Performance (3.32ms Latency):   * Achieved a 110.70x speedup compared to the PyTorch Baseline (367.44ms).   * Faster than previous iterations: Despite adding the Observation Module (OM) logic, absolute latency improved from 3.65ms to 3.32ms. * Massive Throughput (157.9 GUpdates/s):   * Delivers 157.9 billion state updates per second.   * Reaches 5.528 Effective TFLOPS on a single Tesla T4 GPU, maximizing hardware efficiency. * OM (Observation Module) Integration:   * Operates in ent_mode: REAL with weight_mode: om, processing not just kinematics but also tactical observation data (e.g., weapon radius, swarm alignment) in real-time. * CUDA Optimization:   * Utilized float4 vectorization, read-only cache (__ldg), and register tiling.   * Memory alignment (align=1024) ensures maximum memory bandwidth utilization.📊 Benchmark AnalysisAnalysis based on the latest HDGMP NanoRNN + OM production logs.Test Environment * Device: Tesla T4 * Particles: 524,288 (Batch) * Time Steps: 1,000 * Config: B128_I8_FM1 (align=1024) * FLOPs/update: 35.00 (excluding transcendental functions like sin/cos)Performance Data| Implementation | Latency (ms) | Effective TFLOPS | Speedup ||---|---|---|---|| PyTorch Baseline | 367.44 ms | 0.050 TFLOPS | 1.00x || HDGMP NanoRNN + OM | 3.32 ms | 5.528 TFLOPS | 110.70x |> 📝 Performance Note:> While the baseline PyTorch implementation also improved (lowering the relative speedup multiplier to 110x), the Custom CUDA Kernel's absolute performance reached a new peak of 3.32ms, proving its efficiency even with the added computational load of the OM.> 🧮 "Why 5.53 TFLOPS?" (Verification)Validating the log data (157.954 GUpdates/s, 5.528 TFLOPS) through calculation: * Total Updates:    * Throughput (Updates per Second):    * Effective TFLOPS:   With 35 FLOPs per update (matrix multiplications/accumulations):   🛠 System Architecture & OM DataTech Stack: C++17, CUDA, PyTorch (CppExtension/Ninja Build)OM (Observation Module) Status:The logs indicate the system is running in a fully operational mode (REAL), maintaining precise swarm formation. * ent_mode: REAL: Active physical/tactical simulation mode. * wpn_R_mean: 2.00: Maintained average weapon engagement radius. * su2_angle_mean: 3.142 rad: The swarm alignment angle converges to \pi (approx. 3.14159), indicating highly coherent directional control across 524,000 units.💡 Summary> "Achieving 3.32ms latency with full Observation Module integration."> The HDGMP NanoRNN + OM Engine demonstrates a breakthrough in large-scale swarm control. By offloading 524,000 autonomous agents to a highly optimized CUDA kernel, the system achieves 157.9 GUpdates/s and 5.53 TFLOPS on a standard Tesla T4. This architecture successfully decouples the Python control logic from the heavy kinematic computations, ensuring ultra-low latency for critical tactical operations.