- _LinearFp8.backward computed g2.sum(0) unconditionally and dropped it when needs_input_grad[2] was false; now the column-sum only runs when the bias actually requires grad
- saves ~327 reduce kernels per train step on bias-free LLMs (215M GQA: end-to-end 1.08x -> 1.13x vs bf16)
- re-enable kFastLoop on the 128x128 CTA for congruous layouts: the base-pair fragment addressing freed the registers the old offset tables spilled, and the predication-free interior loop now wins across the band (fast body 142 SASS instr with zero predicated fallback vs 719/136 generic; 128 regs, no spill)
- move the big/small CTA dispatch boundary from 3/4 to 5/8 wave: with the fast big-CTA loop the crossover sits between 49 and 63 tiles (63-tile rect +8%, 1024^3 now takes the big CTA)
- fuse the linear bias into the GEMM epilogue: FP8Params.bias_ptr adds in fp32 before the single bf16 rounding, replacing the separate out + bias elementwise pass; guarded loads keep N tails exact and batch broadcast falls out of the row-major layout
- resolve Python None bias in the pybind layer (py::object + cast) so ops/fp8.py and fp8.py pass the argument through untouched; drop the _empty_bias sentinel machinery
- add fused-bias tests covering odd N tails, no-bias parity and batched broadcast
Benchmark: L20 (sm_89), CUDA-graph e2e. Big-CTA fast loop + dispatch: 1024^3 102.6->106.3T, 1152^3 128.5->133.3T, 2048^3 173.8->178.2T, 3072^3 180.2->185.3T, 8192^3 196.2->197.7T. Bias fusion (with-bias GEMM vs unfused out + bias): 1024^3 90.5->106.1T (+17%), 2048^3 162.2->178.3T (+10%), 4096^3 178.2->191.1T (+7%). Fused bias differs from the split path by <=1 bf16 ulp and is closer to the fp64 reference. 596 tests pass.
- 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- remove scripts/tools/bench_fp8_gemm.py (superseded by csrc/tests/fp8_sweep.cu for kernel-level tuning)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
- g/x/w may each be bf16 or pre-quantized fp8 matching fmt; a pre-quantized operand skips its quantize kernel
- snapshot sx/sw/sg before the ring finalize overwrites the aliased scale slot so the gemm dequantizes with the quantize scale
- forward carries its scale to backward so gradients reuse the forward's scale
- grad_input/grad_weight forced bf16; a pre-quantized g dequantizes before the bias-sum
- regression test: two delayed steps with a changing amax must not leak the scale ratio
- Finalize scale rings inside the quantize kernels: a last-block epilogue (threadfence + counter elect) folds amax into hist, reduces the window and publishes the next scale on device, zero extra launches; _ScaleRing packs [hist | scale | counter] into one CUDA buffer.
- Split FP8QuantizeParams out of FP8Params so each operator owns its fields; linear_forward/backward_fp8 take optional ring arguments.
- Drop the inference weight-quantization cache; the optimizer bumps the weight version every step, so a cache would miss anyway.
- Zero amax scratch via empty + cudaMemsetAsync instead of torch::zeros, cutting a ~50us fill_ dispatch per quantize.
- Stage crosswise-B operands K-major with cp.async (contract >= 8192) and PRMT-transpose per k_seg region in smem, interleaved with the MMAs; the sync LDG + byte-scatter path it replaces was long-scoreboard bound (ncu 4.6 vs 0.4 stalls/issue).
- Load crosswise-A direct with an in-register PRMT transpose; its operands are typically L2-resident and the staging round trip measured as a net loss.
- Enable grouped rasterization for the congruous NT forward (shared B stripe keeps the weight operand hot in L2) and make the smem budget layout-aware (Fp8GemmSmem) while holding two CTAs per SM.
- Annotate ops/fp8.py return types; drop weight-cache and decorator tests, hoist their imports to module level.
e2e 12L/dim1024/B4xT512 fused AdamW: fp8 137.8ms/step vs bf16 210.3ms, 1.53x. Kernel vs cuBLASLt _scaled_mm: fwd 1.03-1.09x, dX 1.33-1.47x, dW 1.30-1.39x (from 1.10/1.42-1.49/1.52-1.56x), before the pre-transposed copies cuBLASLt needs for dX/dW. fp8 train step vs bf16: 1.34x at 2048 tokens (was 1.25x), 1.08x at 512.
- last-block epilogue (threadfence + counter elect) folds amax into hist[idx], reduces the window and publishes the next scale on device — zero extra launches per linear layer
- _ScaleRing packs [hist | scale | counter] into one CUDA buffer; the eager hist-write / max / scale-copy chain and update() are gone
- split FP8QuantizeParams out of FP8Params so each operator owns its fields; linear_forward/backward_fp8 take optional ring arguments
- e2e 12L/dim1024/B4xT512 (fused AdamW): fp8 137.8ms/step vs bf16 210.3ms, 1.53x; fwd 1.82x, bwd 1.50x
- collapse FP8TensorMeta's 12 slots + 6 copy-paste methods into three _ScaleRing objects (hist/idx/scale/initialized + update/seed)
- skip meta allocation entirely on the DynamicScaling path (zero rings, scales measured inline)
- drop write-only FP8State._last_device and unused E4M3_MAX alias
- backward used to read the global fp8 flag at loss.backward() time, so calling it outside fp8_autocast silently fell back to bf16 mm (953 ms cublas per step, 49.9% of the model step)
- _LinearFp8(torch.autograd.Function) now owns the fwd/bwd pair: forward captures fmt/recipe/meta on ctx inside the autocast region, backward reads only ctx (scales from the meta rings, masks from ctx.needs_input_grad), so backward is fp8 wherever it runs
- register the aten::linear impl on AutogradCUDA (replaces torch's generated linear formula that calls aten::linear_backward into the bf16 fallback) and keep the CUDA key for inference_mode
- drop the aten::linear_backward override and fp8_linear_backward (dead paths)
- regression test asserts the fp8 backward fires outside the autocast region and grads match the bf16 reference by direction/norm (E5M2 noise)
- model step (0.67B, CE loss, batch 4x1024): backward GEMMs 953 -> 618 ms (1.54x), full step ~1.2x
- amax for delayed scale was the quantized max (always ~448), so scale collapsed to 1
- this made fp8 gradients diverge (cosine 0.05) and training stall
- stop w/x transpose-quantize amax from polluting the grad scale
- fp8_ops is the only module touching the pybind (kernel interface)
- fp8.py keeps scaling state, delayed amax and aten::linear dispatch
- remove circular imports between old fp8_ops/fp8_state/fp8_dispatch
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