- register online_ppo train type backed by PPOStrategy: token-level clipped surrogate over GAE advantages plus masked value regression against rollout-pinned returns, with explained-variance metrics
- fold the reference-KL penalty (k3 estimator) into per-token rewards before GAE and pin advantages/returns on RolloutResult so replayed gradient steps optimize fixed targets
- add self-contained ValueModel critic with a zero-initialized value head and backbone warm-started from policy weights; AutoRegressiveLM stays untouched and trunk parity is pinned by tests
- step the critic's own optimizer outside the policy-version lock with the same max_grad_norm clipping as the policy
- persist critic state as value_model.pt/value_optimizer.pt checkpoint extras; resume restores it, fails loudly when missing, and the train.sh completeness check requires the extras for online_ppo configs
- extract shared rollout sequence/logprob helpers from GRPO (behavior unchanged) and add ppo_gamma/ppo_gae_lambda/ppo_vf_coef CLI options
- 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
- Move benchmark_gemv.py, benchmark_swiglu.py, and benchmark_gemv_common.py from scripts/tools/ to csrc/bench/ so kernel benchmarks live next to the kernels they measure
- Update reproduction commands in decode_linear_benchmark.md, swiglu_benchmark.md, and cuda_kernels.md
- Codify the placement convention in AGENTS.md: kernel benchmarks in csrc/bench/, pure-CUDA harnesses in csrc/tests/*.cu, engine and evaluation benchmarks in scripts/
- 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].
- delete the warp-per-row kernel and the (6912,1536) M=2/4/8 dispatch table; under rotated cold weights the warp path is 2-6% slower than CTA reuse at M=2/4, and the table had been tuned against L2-resident timing
- a single CTA-reuse kernel now serves all M in [1, 8]; block size is 256 threads for M in [1, 7] and 128 for M=8, where the shorter shared-memory reduction tree wins
- document in docs/developer/swiglu_benchmark.md that the earlier operator numbers were L2-resident: the fused kernel sits at the dual-stream cold-read floor (702 vs 699 GB/s at (6912,1536); 369 vs 370 GB/s at (11008,4096)) and wide matrices cap at ~370-400 GB/s even for pure reads, so the reported M=8 -23% regression does not survive the cold regime
- update docs/developer/cuda_kernels.md accordingly
Benchmark: L20 (sm_89), PyTorch 2.11.0+cu128, rotated weight copies >= 240 MB to defeat the 96 MB L2; end-to-end through the built module at (6912,1536) reaches 738-752 GB/s for M in [1, 4] and 702 GB/s at M=8, about +8% at M=2/4 and +6% at M=8 over the removed warp path
- delete the warp-tiled kernel and both per-shape (N,K) selector tables; block size is 256 threads everywhere except M=8 with N*K <= 12 MiB, which keeps a 128-thread CTA
- HBM-streaming measurements (weight copies rotated through L2, the real decode regime) show the variants within ~3% on L20 because the kernel is bandwidth-bound; the retired tables were tuned against an L2-resident loop and sometimes picked the slowest variant ((2048,8192) M=8: coop128 6% slower than coop256)
- a shape no longer switches kernels (and accumulation order) with M, removing one shape-dependent nondeterminism source
- remove the stale split-K launcher comment
- move bf16_gemv.cu and bf16_swiglu.cu from csrc/kernels/gemv/ to csrc/kernels/ beside rotary_emb.cu; the family keeps no shared headers
- rename test_bf16_gemv_matches_half_cta_edge_bands to test_bf16_gemv_matches_m8_edge_bands and update docs/developer/cuda_kernels.md
Benchmark: L20 (sm_89), PyTorch 2.11.0+cu128, interleaved CUDA-event timing with rotated weight copies exceeding the 96MB L2; variant spread <=3% across 14 shapes x M in {1,2,4,8}, and the retained rule wins 5-9% at M=8 small weights ((512,3584), (1536,1536), (6912,1536))
- 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.
Feed sampler-aligned behavior log-probabilities directly into online GRPO instead of allocating, synchronizing, and forwarding a duplicate old-policy model. Keep the old-model path as an offline compatibility fallback and validate supplied rollout tensors before loss computation.
Track a monotonic policy version across optimizer steps, scheduler updates, and rollout results. Serialize synchronous generation with weight acknowledgements and invalidate reusable prefix KV entries so cached samples remain attributable to the behavior policy that generated them.
- Write checkpoint payloads to a hidden sibling staging directory, add a versioned checksum manifest, fsync the completed payload, and publish it with an atomic rename
- Republishing an existing step retires the old payload under a hidden sibling name before the atomic rename, so re-runs into the same output directory replace the previous checkpoint instead of raising FileExistsError
- Keep legacy checkpoints loadable, add optional checksum verification, and align metric flushing with checkpoint publication
Co-authored-by: 0z5a <dezhen.lu@student.uni-tuebingen.de>
- Pack prompts with a shared prefix start and attention backend into one forward.
- Select per-request final logits from cumulative query lengths.
- Cover ragged tokens, logprobs, scheduling, and documentation.
- 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
- 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
- walk exact 2-pair chunks (8B x access, 16B cos/sin float4) and decompose the flat index per chunk instead of per pair, halving integer div/mod work
- enforce head_dim % 4 == 0 at the binding instead of carrying a scalar fallback path
- raise the grid-stride block cap from 1024 to 2048 for full SM coverage on streaming shapes
- hoist kernels/rotary/rotary_emb.cu to kernels/rotary_emb.cu (single-file directory)
Benchmark: NVIDIA L20 (sm_89, shared GPU), interleaved A/B of old and new module, 500-iter means
- (32768 tokens, 8 heads, D=64): 72.7 -> 37.5 us (1.94x)
- (32768 tokens, 32 heads, D=256): 4420 -> 3630 us (1.22x)
- (32768 tokens, 32 heads, D=128): 2120 -> 1824 us (1.16x)
- (32 tokens, 32 heads, D=128) decode size: unchanged at ~1.9 us
- add the kernels directory to CMake target include paths and drop all ../-relative includes in kernel sources
- reference shared primitives as common/*.cuh and the fp8 type header as fp8/common.h
- update standalone test nvcc commands in file headers and cuda_kernels.md to -I csrc/kernels
- rename on_optimizer_step to before_optimizer_step across the callback protocol, built-in callbacks, and trainer call site
- rename on_after_optimizer_step to after_optimizer_step for the symmetric post-step hook
- document the hook pair and the checkpoint save location in developer and training guides
- 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
- Add a Per-Job Environment section explaining that runtime.environment reaches only the GPUs declared in the same job YAML, with one-YAML-per-GPU-group examples for local, cross-PCIe workaround, and NVSwitch NVLink tuning setups
- Replace the NCCL workaround pair in the runtime schema example with ASTR_LOG_LEVEL and ASTR_BACKEND and document value semantics (str() rendering, null exports empty, no host-shell passthrough)
- Comment out the blanket NCCL exports in the get-started multi-GPU example so they are opt-in per docs/guides/distributed.md
- Add a hard rule against copying NCCL workarounds into every training config
- pack HB = min(G, WARPS) q heads per block; K/V tiles stream once per block instead of once per q head
- G=1 keeps the old grid; paged path splits 64-row host Q tiles into HB blocks along grid.x (host maps unchanged)
Benchmark: NVIDIA RTX 6000D, short-q/long-kv prefill 1.4-3.4x (G=8 B=16 q=16 kv=16k 4.22 -> 1.26 ms); full prefill/MHA/paged unchanged (compute-bound); verified vs SDPA G in {1,2,3,4,8,32}, 99 tests pass
- split gemm.cuh into gemm/{policy,load,scheduler,mainloop,epilogue}.cuh (humming/CUTLASS-style layering, files 28-336 lines); the umbrella keeps the kernel orchestrator, host planning and the gemm<> entry so ops.cu and the C tests build unchanged
- move the measured design essays (swizzle derivation, ring-depth barrier invariant, launch crossovers, NN swap) into an FP8 design-notes section in docs/developer/cuda_kernels.md, leaving one-line constraints at each symbol
- refresh the doc's FP8 file table and layout tree (fix stale mm.cu / fp8_mma_test.cu names)
- structure-only change: extension rebuilds identical, C tests all pass, tests/extension 65 passed, quantize layouts byte-exact, NT routing torch.equal, e2e M=8192 530.6ms / 1.26x unchanged
Kernel restructured CUTLASS-style: Fp8GemmPolicy as the kernel's single template parameter (traits + operand layouts + scheduling knobs), the body split into Fp8GemmTileScheduler / Fp8CollectiveMainloop / Fp8CollectiveEpilogue collectives, and the entry split into canonicalize_gemm -> plan_gemm -> launch_plan behind fp8::gemm.
- NN (dual-N-contiguous) problems run as their transpose: the swap in canonicalize_gemm plus an out-transposed epilogue removes one kernel instantiation per (format, tile config)
- new 128x64 narrow CTA (8 warps of 32x32) serves the sub-wave band once its grid passes ~3/8 of a wave: +7..77% there (128x4096x4096 116->131T, 1024^3 131->174T, 4096x384x4096 147->242T, 8192x128x4096 131->233T); decode, the padding band and multi-wave shapes unchanged
- launch_with_smem no longer swallows cudaFuncSetAttribute failures
- fp8_test: GPU-side fp32 reference (O(m*n) compare instead of O(m*n*k) host loop), production-dispatch cases for the NN swap and the plan selection; dead transpose_layout trait removed
Device: NVIDIA RTX 6000D (sm_120, 156 SMs), CUDA 13.1, torch 2.11.0+cu130. Kernel-only bench vs CUTLASS 4.8.0 sm120 dense fp8: ahead up to 1.68x below one wave (512^3 44 vs 26T, 64x4096x4096 95 vs 62T), within ~7% in the DRAM-streaming regime (8192^3 248 vs 266T).
- serve_runtime.py and train_runtime.py are host-side Docker helpers, so they join train-entrypoint.sh and lib/ under scripts/docker/
- scripts/tools/ now contains only in-container CLIs
- update wrapper call sites, test import, and docker guide references
- serve.sh/train.sh no longer pass --build on up/run; the build subcommand is the only path that rebuilds
- compose services pin image: astrai:latest so run reuses the existing image instead of triggering a rebuild
- runtime parsers leave CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES unset for gpu.devices: all; an empty string hid every GPU inside the container
- server service reserves count: all GPUs so CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES performs the only filtering, matching the trainer
- wrapper compose() strips an empty host CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES before invoking docker compose
- keep the separate fp8/quantize.cuh row (quantize kernel lives there, not in gemm.cuh)
- gemm.cuh now dispatches 64x64/128x128 CTAs at runtime via prefer_small_cta
- quantize takes the quantization multiplier (strategy passes scale.reciprocal())
- python primitives are fp8_quantize/fp8_gemm plus quantize/mm_fp8 wrappers
- cmake builds the five base targets plus fp8_ops on sm89+
- mm_fp8 accepts 3D operands through the same signature: grid.z slices by batch strides, size-1 batches broadcast (stride 0), inner .t() views fold into the layout tag at zero copy
- fix _LinearFp8 backward crash on 3D [B,L,d] training inputs (flatten before mm_fp8, reduce grad_b over leading dims)
- expose kRasterGroup/kStreamOut as template knobs; drop the 64x128 mid CTA and staged crosswise-B path from dispatch (direct wins everywhere re-measured, including DRAM-streamed B)
- dispatch thresholds grounded in fresh sweeps: m<=64 -> 64x64 CTA (+27% at 64x8192x2048), small-CTA crossover at SM*14/3 total tiles (+13% at 96 tiles), threshold counts batch x per-matrix tiles (+31% at 64x512^3 bmm, +25% at 8x1024x2048)
- remove scripts/tools/bench_fp8_gemm.py (superseded by csrc/tests/fp8_sweep.cu for kernel-level tuning)
Benchmark: NVIDIA L20, E4M3, NT pre-quantized, median of 100-200 iters
- 64x8192x2048: 29.1 -> 22.8 us (94 TF/s)
- 1024x1536x2048: 67.4 -> 59.6 us (108 TF/s)
- bmm 64x512^3: 139.8 -> 106.7 us; bmm 8x1024x2048: 186 TF/s
- regression-free: 4096^3 192 TF/s, 8192^3 200 TF/s, 512^3 unchanged
- split quantize into quantize.cuh, templated on input type (bf16/fp16/fp32)
- rename pybind entry quantize_bf16 to quantize; validate the fmt enum
- fix fp8x2 packing: one 32-bit word packs two pairs (halves were dropped)
- drop the dead OutFp8 template param; GEMM output is always bf16
- fp8_state.reset() restores recipe/format defaults too (test state leak)
- rewrite tests for the two-primitive API with fp32-domain amax references
- Add server.py --config serve.yaml; explicit CLI flags override YAML
- Add scripts/serve.sh and serve_runtime.py for the Compose lifecycle
- Template server/cpu ports and param mounts in docker-compose.yml
- Document schema in docs/developer/docker-serving.md and params guide
- Add tests for runtime parsing and server CLI merge logic
- Add astrai.serialization.hf_adapter mapping LLaMA-style HF keys to AstrAI names (input_layernorm, gate_proj, MoE experts/shared_experts) with config aliases for dense and MoE (Mixtral/DeepSeek-V3) layouts; reject biased projections, mismatched head_dim and MLA
- Give AutoModel.from_pretrained weights_format=auto|astrai|hf with auto-detection; read sharded safetensors via model.safetensors.index.json
- Adapt preloaded weights/config in train_context and benchmark CLI
- scripts/train.sh load_infra() parses the top-level infra: section of TRAIN_CONFIG_FILE
- exports TRAIN_JOB_NAME/DATA/MODEL/CHECKPOINT_DIR/TRAIN_GPU_COUNT/CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES
- infra overrides .env.train via compose interpolation precedence; keys absent fall back
- train.yaml is now the single per-job config: host mounts, GPU filter, and hyperparameters
- requires host python3 with PyYAML when TRAIN_CONFIG_FILE is set; errors fail fast
- docs: docker-training.md documents the infra overrides and precedence
- register yaml 1.2 float resolver so scientific notation (2e-5) becomes float, not str
- replaces the decimal-point workaround in train configs
- add containerized training doc under docs/developer
- merge AttentionParams and PagedAttentionParams into one struct
- add attn_kv_source.cuh with ContigKV/PagedKV addressing policies
- template prefill/decode kernels (MMA + scalar) on the KV policy, deleting the four duplicated attn_paged_*.cuh variants
- template dispatcher launchers on KV; single combine kernel
- verify: all correctness tests pass and SASS matches baseline (no perf regression)
- Fix rotary docs to describe cos/sin freqs_cis table, not complex buffer
- Replace attn_prefill with attn_paged_prefill for the CudaBackend path
- Register attn_paged_prefill in kernel overview, layout, and module list
- Add qo_indptr and InferenceWorkspace to architecture class diagram
- Add FrequencyPenaltyStrategy to sampling design patterns
- Thread a cudaStream_t through attn dispatchers onto torch's current stream
- Scope the device guard to the entry function so kernels run on tensor device
- DISPATCH_HEAD_DIM now forwards varargs so stream reaches each dispatch
- Parallelize CPU reference kernels with OpenMP (paged test 31s -> 7s)
- Merge decode/prefill standalone tests into attn_test.cu with correctness tables
- Drop bench error column (CPU ref too slow at large sizes)
- Update cuda_kernels.md for the merged test layout