- Replace per-.cu-file static cached tensors with workspace-managed pre-allocated buffers
- InferenceWorkspace now owns decode_o_part / decode_ml_part (mirrors FlashInfer's workspace pattern)
- KVCache carries the buffers through the backend -> C++ kernel chain
- C++ kernels accept optional pre-allocated buffers; fallback to alloc_split_partials for backward compat
- Pre-allocates once at Executor init, zero allocation in the decode hot loop
- Prerequisite for CUDA-graph capture (all kernel addresses are stable)
- Preload V into shared memory alongside K to eliminate per-element KV address lookups in the inner softmax/accum loop (doubles smem)
- Cache split-KV partial tensors (o_part, ml_part) with static tensors instead of per-call allocation in both decode and paged-decode paths
- Force is_causal=True in CUDA decode backend (decode is always causal)
- add FlashAttnBackend (ATTN_BACKEND.FLASH) using flash_attn_func with KV-cache gather + GQA, mirroring TorchNativeBackend
- add flash_attn_available() probe gated on compute capability plus a real-kernel smoke test, cached at first use
- lazy-import flash-attn via importlib so it stays an optional dependency, raising clear errors when unusable
- add 'flash' optional extra (flash-attn>=2.6) and export the new backend
- hoist prefill qo_indptr into the workspace so CudaBackend.fwd_prefill does not rebuild it per layer
- cache has_freq in SamplingBatchInfo to drop the per-step GPU any() sync
- drop pin_memory host staging for input_ids; sync copy suffices for a small batch
- bind_tasks builds kv_indptr (prefix sum of seq_lens) a single time
- fwd_decode/fwd_prefill reuse it instead of rebuilding per layer
- Removes 24 cumsum launches per decode step (was ~1ms/step at B=4)
- Decode B=4: 9.60 -> 7.82 ms/step (-18.5%), +22.8% tok/s
- CudaBackend.fwd_decode passes attn_mask directly instead of kv_cache.decode_mask
- TorchNativeBackend derives pos_mask from attn_mask[:,0,0] on decode
- Drop decode_mask and page_table fields from KVCache and bind_tasks
- alloc_split_partials now uses torch::empty: the split kernel writes every slot it owns, so the per-call zeros/full memset was pure overhead (2 kernels per layer per step)
- decode split-KV MMA kernels now run a true multi-stage cp.async pipeline (wait_group<STAGES-1> instead of wait_group<0>), keeping STAGES-1 tile loads in flight; the old wait_group<0> serialized load and compute so deeper STAGES made no difference
- add a fallback path when ntiles < STAGES to avoid a race on the last tile
- apply_rotary_emb now checks torch.is_grad_enabled() before dispatching to CUDA kernel
- Training (grad enabled) uses torch complex multiply path which supports autograd backward
- Inference (inference_mode/no_grad) uses CUDA kernel as before
- Without this fix, training backward would crash — the CUDA kernel has no autograd backward()
- CUDAExtension module names changed from astrai.extension.<name> to astrai.extension.lib.<name>
- Compiled .so files now land in astrai/extension/lib/ instead of alongside Python source
- loader.py imports from .lib.<name> subpackage
- Add astrai/extension/lib/__init__.py to make lib a proper package
- Separates compiled artifacts from Python source for cleaner directory structure
- Precompute page_table and decode_mask on KVCache once per step in PagePool.bind_tasks, instead of per-layer in CudaBackend/TorchNativeBackend
- Skip frequency penalty history tensor construction when all penalties are 0 in Executor.execute_decode
- Omit FrequencyPenaltyStrategy from sampling pipeline when penalty is 0
- Deduplicate get_active_tasks calls in scheduler loop (3 to 1), remove redundant sorted() on decode tasks
- Benchmark (L20, bf16, CUDA backend): B=1 9.48->9.40ms (+1%), B=4 10.73->9.89ms (+8.6%), B=8 10.77->10.13ms (+6.4%)
- CudaBackend: paged decode via attn_paged_decode, prefill via attn_prefill
- Decode uses req_to_token as page_table with page_size=1
- Falls back to TorchNativeBackend when kernel unavailable
- Rename forward_decode/forward_extend to fwd_decode/fwd_prefill
- Register ATTN_BACKEND.CUDA in _BACKEND_REGISTRY
- Replace is_causal + causal_offset with unified causal_offset (-1 = off, >=0 = first Q pos)
- Causal and mask can now coexist (was mutually exclusive)
- Add stride-based addressing for Q/KV/O (layout-agnostic, zero-copy)
- Add layout param ("bhld"/"blhd") parsed in Python, passed as int to C++
- Support 2D [batch, kv_len] and 3D [batch, q_len, kv_len] mask
- Vectorize paged KV gather in Python fallback (was per-token Python loop)
- Extract shared helpers: compute_num_splits, alloc_split_partials, dispatch_head_dim
- Unify paged_decode entry via attn_pack_paged_params
- Update mma_softmax_tile for 3D mask with per-row qrow indexing
- Add attn_paged_decode wrapper in ops.py with gather fallback
- Register kernel in loader.py and export from __init__.py
- Extract test_utils.cuh shared by all attention unit tests
- Rename attn_paged_vs_contiguous.cu to attn_paged_decode_test.cu
- Refactor decode/prefill tests to use common bf16 helpers and cpu ref
- Fix k_cache dim check in attn_paged_decode.cu
- Rename all csrc/kernels/gqa_*.cuh/cu to attn_*, with _split_q / _split_kv
strategy suffix and optional _mma compute suffix
- Remove non-split MMA decode kernel, keep only split-KV path
- Convert scalar decode fallback to split-KV (o_part/ml_part + combine)
- Move combine kernel to attn_decode_split_kv.cuh (shared by both paths)
- Rename GQAParams to AttentionParams
- Update all C++ #include, PYBIND11, and Python extension references
- add case 32 to decode/prefill dispatch switch
- fix swiz_col out-of-bounds for HEAD_DIM=32: XOR mask now limited to chunk count (3 for 32, 7 for >=64) instead of always 7, which produced column offsets >= LD=32 and corrupted shared memory
- restructure decode dispatch to #ifndef/#else/#endif matching prefill
- split astrai/extension/__init__.py into loader.py (kernel .so discovery) and ops.py (wrapper functions + torch SDPA fallback); __init__.py now re-exports the public API
- Add gqa_decode_attn/gqa_prefill_attn dispatch functions
- Internal _available/__modules with underscore prefix
- CUDA kernel path with F.scaled_dot_product_attention fallback
- GQA head expansion in fallback path