Discovery Is Easy, Composition Is Hard
Why LLM Optimizers Find the Right Answers But Can't Assemble Them
Case Study I: The Certus Cold-Read Path
This is the first in a series of case studies applying AI-driven optimization to Certus, a hyper-specialized storage system for LLM inference and KV-cache workloads. We gave six LLM-driven code optimization frameworks and one coding agent the same task: speed up Certus's cold-read path, the performance-critical path for retrieving cached KV blocks from NVMe storage to GPU memory.