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URL: https://www.coursera.org/learn/optimize-ai-inference-speed--accuracy

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Optimize AI Inference Speed & Accuracy

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Optimize AI Inference Speed & Accuracy

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Intermediate level

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4 hours to complete
Flexible schedule
Learn at your own pace

Gain insight into a topic and learn the fundamentals.
Intermediate level

Recommended experience

4 hours to complete
Flexible schedule
Learn at your own pace

What you'll learn

  • Analyze inference bottlenecks to identify optimization opportunities in production ML systems.

  • Implement model pruning techniques to reduce computational complexity while maintaining acceptable accuracy.

  • Apply quantization methods and benchmark trade-offs for secure and efficient model deployment.

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Assessments

1 assignment

Taught in English

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This course is part of the AI Security: Security in the Age of Artificial Intelligence Specialization
When you enroll in this course, you'll also be enrolled in this Specialization.
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  • Gain a foundational understanding of a subject or tool
  • Develop job-relevant skills with hands-on projects
  • Earn a shareable career certificate

There are 3 modules in this course

Production ML models failing your latency targets? Learn how to make them run 3-5x faster without losing accuracy. This course helps ML engineers and data scientists optimize neural network inference for real-world deployment—across mobile, edge, and cloud environments. If you face slow model inference, high infrastructure costs, or deployment constraints, this course provides practical solutions. You'll master profiling techniques to identify performance bottlenecks, apply quantization to cut precision requirements, and make smart trade-offs between speed, accuracy, and resource constraints. You'll learn to benchmark optimization techniques and select the right approach for deployment scenarios. You'll explore inference profiling and metrics, pruning strategies, and quantization methods. You'll practice with real-world cases—from streaming platforms to autonomous vehicles—using industry-standard tools like PyTorch Profiler, TensorRT, and pruning utilities.

This course is ideal for machine learning engineers, data scientists, and AI practitioners who are deploying or optimizing models in production. It’s also valuable for MLOps professionals and system engineers responsible for performance tuning in resource-constrained environments (e.g., mobile, embedded, or cloud inference systems). Learners should have a good grasp of Python and basic experience with PyTorch or TensorFlow. Familiarity with machine learning concepts, such as model training and evaluation, is expected. Understanding how neural networks work and basic performance metrics like latency and accuracy will help you get the most from this course. By the end of this course, you’ll confidently optimize production models, cut inference costs, meet latency goals, and deploy ML systems that scale efficiently.

In this module, learners will master profiling techniques to identify bottlenecks and understand the fundamental trade-offs in model inference optimization. You'll use industry-standard tools like PyTorch Profiler to diagnose where models waste time—whether in computation, memory bandwidth, or data transfer. By the end, you'll confidently analyze profiling data, prioritize optimization efforts, and establish performance baselines for production ML systems.

What's included

4 videos2 readings1 peer review

4 videosTotal 34 minutes
  • Course Intro: Optimize AI Inference Speed & Accuracy4 minutes
  • Understanding Inference Bottlenecks7 minutes
  • Profiling Tools in Action11 minutes
  • Evaluating ML Inference Performance in Production12 minutes
2 readingsTotal 10 minutes
  • Welcome to the Course: Course Overview5 minutes
  • NVIDIA Deep Learning Performance Guide5 minutes
1 peer reviewTotal 20 minutes
  • Hands-On-Learning: Profile and Optimize Real-Time Fraud Detection System20 minutes

In this module, learners will master pruning techniques to reduce neural network complexity without sacrificing accuracy. You'll explore both structured and unstructured pruning approaches, implement them using PyTorch pruning utilities, and discover how to recover accuracy through fine-tuning and knowledge distillation. By the end, you'll confidently apply pruning to optimize models for resource-constrained environments like mobile devices and edge hardware.

What's included

3 videos1 reading1 peer review

3 videosTotal 32 minutes
  • Pruning Theory and Techniques8 minutes
  • Implementing Pruning in PyTorch12 minutes
  • Fine-tuning and Recovery Strategies12 minutes
1 readingTotal 5 minutes
  • The Lottery Ticket Hypothesis: Finding Sparse, Trainable Neural Networks5 minutes
1 peer reviewTotal 20 minutes
  • Hands-On-Learning: Prune and Deploy Mobile Image Classifier Under Size Constraints20 minutes

In this module, learners will master quantization techniques to reduce numerical precision while maintaining model accuracy. You'll implement both post-training quantization and quantization-aware training using PyTorch, then compare quantization against pruning across speed, accuracy, and security dimensions. By the end, you'll understand how optimization choices affect adversarial robustness and confidently select the right technique for secure, high-performance deployments in mission-critical applications.

What's included

4 videos1 reading1 assignment2 peer reviews

4 videosTotal 41 minutes
  • Quantization Fundamentals11 minutes
  • Implementing Quantization Workflows12 minutes
  • Benchmarking: Pruning vs Quantization13 minutes
  • Your Optimization Mastery5 minutes
1 readingTotal 5 minutes
  • Adversarial Robustness in Model Compression5 minutes
1 assignmentTotal 20 minutes
  • Optimize AI Inference Speed & Accuracy20 minutes
2 peer reviewsTotal 80 minutes
  • Hands-On-Learning: Optimize and Deploy Real-Time Video Analytics with Quantization20 minutes
  • Project: Enterprise AI Inference Optimization: Production Deployment Under Constraints60 minutes

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Frequently asked questions

Inference optimization in this course means improving how a trained AI model runs at prediction time so it is faster and more efficient without giving up acceptable accuracy. The emphasis is on finding what slows inference down and choosing practical fixes for production use under latency and resource constraints.

You would use inference optimization when a model performs well in development but is too slow, too heavy, or too expensive to run in its target environment. The course focuses on these situations in mobile, edge, and cloud deployment, where speed, memory, and accuracy have to be balanced.

Inference optimization fits after you already have a working model and before or during production deployment. In this course, it serves as the stage where you profile performance, set a baseline, and decide which changes will best meet runtime constraints.

Model training is about learning a model's parameters, while inference optimization is about making that trained model run efficiently when it is used. Here, the focus shifts from improving training results to improving runtime behavior, resource use, and the speed-accuracy trade-off.

A basic understanding of Python, neural networks, and model training and evaluation is helpful before learning inference optimization. It also helps to be comfortable with basic performance ideas such as latency and accuracy, since the course assumes you are improving a model that already exists.

The course uses PyTorch-based tooling for profiling and optimization, along with production-oriented deployment tools. Method-wise, it focuses on profiling bottlenecks and model compression through pruning and quantization.

You practice profiling and interpreting inference performance, applying pruning or quantization, and benchmarking speed-accuracy trade-offs on trained models. You also validate the optimized model and turn your findings into a practical optimization plan for production deployment.

Financial aid available,