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    "story_id": "mp-2026-09-20-005",
    "source_story_id": "tmp-story-autoturing-architecture-meaning",
    "edition_id": "mp-2026-09-20-morning-0073",
    "edition_url": "https://themachinepress.com/edition/2026-09-20",
    "position": 5,
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    "section": "chips-infrastructure",
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    "headline": "Hardware Knob Names Cut the Agent’s Search by 70%",
    "slug": "hardware-knob-names-cut-the-agent-s-search-by-70",
    "dek": "The same accelerator space became easier when its variables carried architectural meaning.",
    "summary": "The same accelerator space became easier when its variables carried architectural meaning.",
    "body_text": "AutoTuring gave the same agent the same 15-dimensional accelerator-design space twice: once with named architectural controls and simulator counters, and once as anonymous values between zero and one. On nine FP16 matrix-multiplication kernels, the architecture-aware agent beat its blind counterpart by 12.3% on average and used 70.1% fewer simulator calls. A critic loop recovered most of the gap for the blind agent but added nothing for the architecture-aware one. The authors call the result preliminary because each condition has only five or six runs on one modeled accelerator.",
    "why_it_matters": "The same accelerator space became easier when its variables carried architectural meaning.",
    "limitations": [
      "The authors call the result preliminary because each condition has only five or six runs on one modeled accelerator."
    ],
    "importance": 8,
    "canonical_url": "https://themachinepress.com/story/mp-2026-09-20-005/hardware-knob-names-cut-the-agent-s-search-by-70",
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    "first_published_at": "2026-09-20T09:00:00.000-04:00",
    "modified_at": "2026-09-20T09:00:00.000-04:00",
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        "text": "The same accelerator space became easier when its variables carried architectural meaning.",
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        "qualification": "The authors call the result preliminary because each condition has only five or six runs on one modeled accelerator."
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    "source_ids": [
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    "tags": [
      "hardware design",
      "AI agents",
      "accelerators"
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    "corrections": []
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  "sources": [
    {
      "source_id": "source-2026-09-20-005",
      "title": "arXiv preprint 2609.19387",
      "publisher": "arXiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.19387",
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      "published_at": "2026-09-16T16:10:28.000-04:00",
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  "publisher": {
    "name": "The Machine Press",
    "url": "https://themachinepress.com",
    "description": "A daily newspaper for the age of artificial intelligence."
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  "cite_this_report": {
    "title": "Hardware Knob Names Cut the Agent’s Search by 70%",
    "publisher": "The Machine Press",
    "published_at": "2026-09-20T09:00:00.000-04:00",
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