问HN：对于在博士学习中感到失败的建议？
我在美国的一所R1公立大学攻读计算机工程博士学位。这是我一直想做的事情，因为它让我能够深入研究各种课题。然而，事实证明我最初的想法并不是全部真相。
我即将进入博士生涯的第二年末。我的导师专注于高性能计算（HPC），但并没有进行前沿研究，而我想从事高效硬件人工智能研究（例如更快的内核、机器学习系统等）。每当我阅读论文，看到作者及其成就，以及他们背后的团队和那些著名学校/实验室时，而我却深陷于某个cuBLAS函数中，希望能将寄存器分块的优化提高到纳秒级别，我就感到自己像个失败者。我不知道该研究什么问题。我开始怀疑我想做的事情是否真的需要博士学位。
我在想，是否有可能像麻省理工学院或斯坦福大学的实验室那样，能做出任何可发表的成果，毕竟他们的团队中有那么多杰出的人才？外面的知识太多了，我所不知道的事情也越来越多。我越是觉得自己了解，就越会有新的问题出现。我原以为自己终于理解了大语言模型（LLMs）的细节，但新的注意力机制变种又不断涌现。我不确定自己是否能阅读到足够的资料，以便进行研究。我希望在博士毕业后能在美国找到工作（回国让我感到恐惧），而且我还是国际学生，所以放弃并不是一个选项。
我在寻找任何建议，如果你有类似的经历，任何帮助都将不胜感激。谢谢。
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I am doing a PhD in R1 public uni on Computer Engineering in the USA. PhD is something I really wanted to do because it allows me to dive deep into stuff. Turns out what I thought initially was not the whole story.<p>I am nearing the end of second year of my PhD. My advisor is in HPC but doesn't do hot research and I want to do efficient hardware AI research (faster kernels, ML systems etc). But whenever I read papers and see the authors and what they have accomplished and the team behind them and the prestigious schools/labs doing them while I am deep in some cuBLAS function hoping to optimize register tiling to be a nanosecond faster, I feel like a failure. I don't know what problems to work on. I wonder if what I want to do even requires a PhD.<p>I question if I will ever be able to do anything publishable as the labs in MIT/Stanford, their cohort of brilliant minds basically alone? There's so much out there that I don't know. The more I think I know the more stuffs keep popping up. I thought I had finally understood LLMs to their nitty gritty details but then there's even more new variants of attentions popping up. I am not sure if I will be able to read everything needed to be able to research. I want to be able to get a job in the US after my PhD(home is terrifying) and I am an international so quiting is not an option.<p>I am looking for any advice or if you were in a similar boat anything would be helpful. Thank you.