A practical framework for test planning, hardware scheduling, artifact traceability, failure classification, and evidence-based quality gates
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are my own. The architecture, examples, terminology, and code snippets are generalized for educational purposes and do not describe or disclose any employer’s proprietary systems, confidential information, or internal implementation details.
A software change can compile successfully, pass unit tests, and still introduce a serious GPU regression.
The failure may appear only on one GPU generation. It may depend on a particular driver, firmware revision, operating system, graphics API, or workload. A change may preserve functional correctness while quietly reducing performance. It may also cause an intermittent failure that disappears when the test is rerun.
This is why GPU validation cannot be treated as conventional CI/CD with a GPU runner attached to the end of the pipeline.
