How to pronounce FlashAttention

FlashAttention is most commonly pronounced "flash uh ten shun" (/ˌflæʃ əˈtɛnʃən/). This is the widely-used reading among engineers, though edge cases exist.

IO-aware exact-attention GPU kernel (Dao-AILab; FlashAttention-2/3) baked into vLLM, TGI, TensorRT-LLM, PyTorch SDPA. Spoken as the two English words "flash" + "attention" run together, one word in writing. STRESS: secondary on FLASH, primary on -TEN- (flash-uh-TEN-shun). Non-native speakers hesitate on the flash+attention compound; pronunciation is just the plain English words.

Source: arXiv 2205.14135 — FlashAttention: Fast and Memory-Efficient Exact Attention with IO-Awareness (Dao et al.)

Pronouncing project and product names correctly avoids the small but persistent friction of being gently corrected during standups, conference Q&As, and team calls. Hearing the word a few times locks in the right reading better than reading IPA ever will. Pronounce is a community-maintained dictionary — every entry tagged with a confidence level and (where possible) a citable source.