Composable Kernel
AMDComposable Kernel provides a programming model and template library for performance-critical machine learning kernels, decomposing GEMM, convolution and attention operations into tile-level pieces that recombine and fuse. It targets AMD GPUs through ROCm and includes a code generator for instance selection. AMD develops it in the ROCm/rocm-libraries monorepo, with the standalone ROCm/composable_kernel repository kept as a read-only mirror.
The rocm-libraries repository holds many AMD libraries, so any figure read from it measures the whole monorepo unless it is scoped to the composable_kernel path.
Openness
5 high confidence- license
- MIT(OSI)
- source
- public
- core features withheld
- no
The LICENSE file contains the MIT text. The repository is public and the README describes no paid tier, enterprise edition or license-gated build, so the core is ungated.
- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ROCm/composable_kernel/develop/README.md recorded 2026-09-30
README of the standalone mirror says "CK is released under the **[MIT license](/LICENSE)**." and "We recommend building CK inside Docker containers, which include all necessary packages." Searched the body for enterprise, license key, paid, proprietary, commercial and closed: none.
- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ROCm/rocm-libraries/develop/projects/composablekernel/LICENSE recorded 2026-09-30
LICENSE body carries an AMD copyright header and then the MIT text, with "Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy" and "WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND".
- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ROCm/rocm-libraries/develop/projects/composablekernel/README.md recorded 2026-09-30
README says "CK is released under the **[MIT license](/LICENSE)**." and "As with all ROCm projects, the documentation is open source." Searched the body for enterprise, license key, paid, proprietary, commercial and closed: none.
Adoption
1 low confidenceGitHub stars are the only usable adoption signal, since Composable Kernel is vendored into ROCm libraries and built from source rather than distributed as its own package. The count comes from the now-frozen ROCm/composable_kernel repository, not the ROCm/rocm-libraries monorepo it moved into, which bundles many AMD libraries under one star count.
- https://api.github.com/repos/ROCm/composable_kernel recorded 2026-08-18
Repo metadata - stargazers_count = 543 - for ROCm/composable_kernel.
Capability
4 medium confidenceComposable Kernel is vendored as a git submodule by PyTorch and FlashAttention on their AMD paths. It covers one layer of the kernel stack rather than the full framework-to-target compilation path, which keeps it one step below Apache TVM.
- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Dao-AILab/flash-attention/main/.gitmodules recorded 2026-09-30
FlashAttention .gitmodules declares a csrc/composable_kernel submodule with "url = https://github.com/ROCm/composable_kernel.git" and "branch = amd-master", alongside "csrc/cutlass".
- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pytorch/pytorch/main/.gitmodules recorded 2026-09-30
PyTorch .gitmodules declares a third_party/composable_kernel submodule with "url = https://github.com/ROCm/composable_kernel.git" and "branch = develop", alongside "third_party/cutlass".
- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ROCm/rocm-libraries/develop/projects/composablekernel/README.md recorded 2026-09-30
README says "The Composable Kernel (CK) library provides a programming model for writing performance-critical" kernels for ML across GPUs and CPUs, structured into "Templated Tile Operators", "Instantiated Kernel and Invoker" and "Client API" layers, with a "CK codegen" link and gemm instance options such as "DISABLE_DL_KERNELS".
Verified 2026-09-27