- replace the per-request python loop in the torch-native 3-d inference path with a single F.scaled_dot_product_attention call over [B, max_q, max_kv] padded tensors
- fold the per-request causal offset (seq_len - q_len) and kv padding into one bool mask [B, 1, max_q, max_kv]; padded q rows gather row 0 and are dropped by the [q_valid] unpack, which restores the flat qo_indptr order
- decode drops from B sdpa launches plus ~3B host syncs (int() on qo_indptr/seq_lens per request) to one call with two syncs
- masked lanes contribute exact-zero weights, so prefill logits stay bitwise identical and test_prefill_with_kv_cache_matches_torch still passes its diff == 0.0 requirement
Benchmark: NVIDIA L20, CUDA 12.8, torch 2.11.0+cu128, bf16 decode microbench (GQA 32/8 heads, head_dim 128, batch 32, seq_lens 200-2000), 20 trials
- per-layer decode attention: 117.5 -> 9.5 ms (~12x)
- max abs diff vs the per-request loop: 0.002 (bf16 noise; the decode invariant tolerates 0.05)
- tests: extension + inference suites 350 passed
- delete csrc/kernels/gemm.cu and swiglu.cu and drop their CMake and setup.py registration
- remove the ops wrappers plus backend/linear.py and backend/swiglu.py so Linear and MLP call F.linear directly
- drop the four gemm and swiglu kernel test files and prune the stale cuda_kernels.md sections
- add csrc/bench benchmarks for the remaining kernels: attention decode prefill paged decode paged prefill versus single-launch SDPA references, rotary versus the torch fallback, fp8 quantize and mm_fp8 versus torch baselines
- attention, rotary_emb, and fp8_ops kernels are unchanged
- split-K removed entirely: tiled kernel walks K in one pass, no partials/semas workspace, no memset, single launch per call
- skinny GEMM (M<=8) dispatch table replaces the hand-written switch
- shape-driven four-family table replaces plan_gemm: wide-N (n>=4096) default {16,64,64,3,128} with BM=32 at M>16; narrow-N deep-K rings {16,32,256,2,64} while the grid fits one wave, {16,32,128,2,64} past it
- narrow-N is K-serial: widening the grid measurably does nothing (BN 64->32 ties, doubled m_tiles tie, kv at 4 blocks ties q/o at 24); deeper K chunks win until 72KB smem forces one CTA per SM and past one wave the 2-wave quantization loses to BK=128
- launch-check macros in common/launch.cuh; smem opt-in for the 72KB/60KB rings
- rename kernels/bf16_*.cu to gemm.cu/swiglu.cu; module names unchanged
- Python gate: lm_head (N>32768) falls back to cuBLAS, band narrows to M<=32
- drop the stale per-op benchmark narratives; fold the live numbers into cuda_kernels.md
Benchmark: NVIDIA L20 (sm_89, 92 SMs), CUDA 12.8, bf16, L2-thrash weight rotation, per-call medians at M=16: q/o 9.5us, kv 8.6us, gate/up 33.3us, down 33.7us (down -29% vs prior default). End-to-end 1B decode (gen 128, 3 trials, tokens/s vs cuBLAS): B=1 260 vs 252, B=8 1660 vs 1446, B=16 2464 vs 2437, B=32 3620 vs 3690. Prior split-K dispatch measured B=16 2243 / B=32 3393.
- split KVCache into phase-specific PrefillKVCache/DecodeKVCache types selected by start_pos
- unify steady-state detection in TaskCacheManager
- guard decode steady-state reuse with the cached task signature so recycled req slots cannot replay a prior generation's tokens and positions
- collapse attention backend fwd_decode/fwd_prefill into a single subclass-owned forward with a shared _check_fwd guard
- fix thread-safety gap in weight update and validate prefill inputs before KV allocation
- centralize magic constants in InferenceConfig and align docs with behavior
- re-register the linear family with the operator dispatcher (ASTR_OPS / op_backend / resolve)
- fix bf16 gemv misaligned-address faults and element mispairing for offset weights
- reject misaligned bf16_swiglu inputs with a clear error and fall back in the backend gate
- make the rollout reuse decision, validation, and return atomic under one policy snapshot
- add the documented post-scoring rollout version check
- derive live+1 under the scheduler lock in optimizer_step via apply_weight_update(None, ...)
- reject rollout_max_policy_lag below rollout_interval - 1 at config time
- sync gemv stream-test inputs before switching streams; drop dead loader imports
- replace the per-shape auto tables in the linear backend with an M-banded rule (M in [2,4] on compute capability 8.0+) that measured at the HBM bandwidth floor across every family, and fold the capability check into the capable guard
- drop the unreachable swiglu auto shape-table machinery so both backends share one env-mode ladder via the new dispatch.env_mode helper
- add __all__ across extension modules, name the rotary registration records, and unify typing to the typing-module style
- rewrite test_linear_dispatch.py around behavioral routing assertions and document the M-banded policy in the developer docs
- Benchmark: L20 SM89, Python dispatch overhead 2.9us to 1.5us, auto now covers every projection shape at M in [2,4].
- deepen common-shape BF16 GEMV tuning with warp-row tiling for LLaMA/Qwen2/GPT-NeoX/OPT decode projections
- add fused BF16 up/gate SwiGLU CUDA primitive with ASTRAI_SWIGLU=0/1/auto dispatch
- keep the unfused linear backend as the default path; auto enables no shape until per-architecture checkpoint gates pass
- fall back to the linear/torch chain when kernels are absent, on CPU, in training, or outside supported M/K/dtype shapes
- add gemv/swiglu benchmark scripts, dispatch and parity tests, and kernel documentation
Benchmark: NVIDIA L20 (sm_89), CUDA 12.8, PyTorch 2.11.0+cu128, idle GPU. AstrAI 1B config (24 layers, hidden 1536, vocab 100000), BF16, prompt 128, 32 greedy decode tokens, CUDA graphs enabled, A/B in separate interleaved processes (3 rounds, 8 trials each, medians). Default vs ASTRAI_SWIGLU=1 per generate call: batch 1 134.8->129.1 ms (+4.44%), batch 2 136.2->130.9 ms (+4.06%), batch 4 145.5->140.3 ms (+3.66%). Greedy output identical at batch 1, differs at batch 2/4, so auto stays unfused by default; kernelless fallback verified bit-identical greedy.
- Drop the K % 2 entry rejection and the per-K if/else load-width branch: the weight stream now anchors uint4 loads at each row's first 16-byte-aligned address, with scalar head/tail sweeps covering at most 14 remainder elements, so any positive K and any storage offset is correct
- Keep one pure-uint4 loop (no branching inside the loop) for the production case where every x row base is 16-byte aligned (K % 8 == 0 with allocator-aligned tensors) and a scalar-x pairing loop only for unaligned K, where per-row uint4 loads are not addressable; measured cost of scalar x everywhere was up to 2.5x on multi-row shapes (down M=4 28.4us vs 11.3us)
- Remove the now-obsolete k_aligned axis and K divisibility gate from the linear dispatch spec since the primitive no longer rejects any K
- Add test coverage for unaligned K (7, 12, 100, 1534) at M=1 and M=3
Benchmark: 8x L20 (sm_89, CUDA 12.8), L2-resident microbench, 300 iters; hot path unchanged within noise vs the pure-uint4 kernel (q M=2 5.8us, down M=4 11.3us, lm M=1 391us); full gate green
- Replace per-element loads with 128-bit uint4 vectorized loads (8 halves per access), improving every measured shape: q/k/v at M=2 from 6.0us to 5.4us, q_proj speedup 2.28-2.45x, mlp_down at M=4 2.76x, lm_head at M=1 +6-8%
- Extend kernel M support from {1,2,4,8} to all M in 1-8 via new BLOCK_M cases 3,5,6,7, since cuBLAS wmma templates pad small M to 8/16 rows and waste compute
- Keep the auto-dispatch allowlist unchanged: a 64-step greedy-walk probe on the real decode path showed mlp_down (K=6912) divergence at step 1 and argmax flips for every candidate odd-M band, the same noise class already present in the merged M=2/4 entries, so no entry has the stability evidence the gate requires
- Rejected alternatives with measurements: split-K accumulation (k/v shapes regress 6.0us to 9.2us, code removed) and MMA tiles (small M is DRAM-bound at ~1 FLOP/byte vs the ~138 needed)
- Update test_gemv M-rejection case to M=9 and test_linear_dispatch multirow fallback to M=9 for the widened range
Benchmark: 8x L20 (sm_89, CUDA 12.8), single-GPU microbench, 200 iters after 20 warmup, weights L2-resident; q(1536x1536) M=3 8.9->5.3us, kv(256x1536) M=3 8.7->3.0us, down(1536x6912) M=3 53.5->10.3us; full gate 691 passed, test_bf16_gemv_uses_current_stream passes in isolation after GPU contention rerun
- add decode-shape benchmark harness
- add bf16 GEMV CUDA primitive with head-dim generic kernel
- dispatch decode-time linear layers to gemv for M=1
- extend gemv coverage to small decode batches
- add astrai/extension/dispatch.py: per-family decision tables over composable Specs with explicit-strict / implicit-loose resolution, ASTR_OPS env overrides, profile presets, and explain traces
- make the axis schema family-owned: register_family takes an axes extractor that snapshots whatever decision axes that family needs from the call, and the core only supplies the axis() predicate vocabulary plus a tensor_axes helper
- drop the central CallContext dataclass; resolve and explain take the raw call arguments, so unregistered handles are probed through supports_call on the same args
- migrate attention and rotary onto family-owned axes with behavior-preserving specs and spec-vs-supports_call mirror tests
- replace the non-ASCII member-of glyph in spec descriptions with plain ASCII " in "
- Move task_alloc/task_free/task_extend/task_cached/task_record_hashes and bind from the PagePool card to a new TaskCacheManager card matching pool.py
- Drop the nonexistent Executor tokenizer attribute and association, add task_cache instead
- Add AllocationStrategy/ContiguousStrategy/PagedStrategy cards and point Allocator/RadixCache composition at PagedStrategy
- Add TaskCacheManager and the allocation strategies to the module overview, add _task_cache to InferenceScheduler
- Fix the design-pattern count in the table of contents (15 -> 16)
- Rewrite the FlashAttnBackend class docstring: packed decode gathers flat K/V via req_to_token and calls flash_attn_varlen_func; dense prefill uses flash_attn_func (no flash_attn_with_kvcache exists)
- Apply the same correction to the backend bullets in internals.md and cuda_kernels.md
- Rename the stale fp8_mma_test.cu reference to fp8_test.cu in cuda_kernels.md