Rules & Compliance

A plain-language summary of the rules that apply to you. These pages don't copy the policy text — each requirement is summarised and linked to the clause it comes from.

The policy repository wins

This page summarises policy in submitter language. It does not restate it. Where this page and mlcommons/endpoints_policies disagree, the policy repository is correct and this page is a bug. Please report it.

Page	Covers
Requirements you must meet	The binding constraints, by category, with how to tell whether you comply
Model equivalence	Standardized-division rules on weights, quantization, speculation, KV cache and sparsity
Publication status	Available, Preview and RDI — the availability tests and the clocks attached to each
Why submissions get rejected	Failure modes, as symptom → cause → fix

The source documents

Document	Governs
endpoints_rules.md	Technical: divisions, metrics, power normalization, Pareto methodology and the Offline point, run requirements, package contents, compliance checks
endpoints_submission_rules.md	Process: registration, review, cohorts, publication modes, objections, publication status, disputes, audits
MLPerf_Endpoints_Audit_Guidelines.md	What an auditor checks, and what you provide during an audit

These links go to the v1.0_rules_dev branch, which is where v1.0 is being written. The repository's main branch still carries the v0.7 text.

The two rules documents build on the MLPerf General Submission Rules, and Endpoints wins where they conflict (Submission Rules §1).

These rules are a working draft

MLPerf Endpoints v1.0 rules are on an active development branch. Sections marked [TENTATIVE], [WIP], [WG Open Item] or [WG Decision Required] upstream can still change. Before committing hardware time to a submission, read Open questions and WIP rules.

Last verified against: mlcommons/endpoints_policies@v1.0_rules_dev (6b0b1ef), 2026-09-24.