frank-primary: shape E — --expert-precise-memory (arena 6,496->7,522 slots), GPU_MAX_HW_QUEUES=2, and a mounted /root/.cache

Measured by boot probe on the shape-D base (production stopped, candidate
booted AS the service), plan numbers read off the engine's own log:

  runtime overhead   7.60 -> 5.25 GiB (precise gfx1201 TP2 registry)
  expert cache      14.87 -> 17.22 GiB
  slots              6,496 -> 7,522 (+1,026, +16%)
  swap region                13.7 GiB / 5,986 slots
  boot                       healthy in 420 s, no OOM

'--expert-precise-memory': True also appears in non-default args, so a silent
argparse drop is visible. The pool is NOT cut (option A) because the pool is
not an arena lever: 3.15e9/rank keeps shape D's measured 1.99x concurrency,
and a 2.2e9 arm probed in the same window (277,686 tokens, 1.38x) is recorded
as the conservative fallback.

Boot-cost bug found while diffing Frank's 3xR9700 recipe: the image ships no
/root/.cache at all, our boot writes 1.1 GB of vLLM AOT/torch_compile
artifacts (4,665 files) plus 229 MB of comgr JIT kernels into the ephemeral
layer, and podman rm -f discards them — so every deploy/restart/reboot re-pays
'torch.compile took 181.20 s in total' (173.19 s of it one graph). Mounting
FRANK_PRIMARY_CACHE_DIR at /root/.cache persists both and hides nothing.

GPU_MAX_HW_QUEUES=2 added at Frank's direction (real HSA knob); not A/B
measured. Retracted my own recipe-diff claim that cudagraph_capture_sizes
needed pinning: capture is 3 PIECEWISE + 2 FULL graphs, 3 s, 0.31 GiB.

Tests: 367/367.

serverAppConfigs-docs/LLM/index.md

@@ -4,11 +4,14 @@ Documentation for the LLM inference fleet on the two hosts (2026-10-02):
 **Dankserver runs the tcclaviger RDNA4 vLLM fork on frank-primary** (the
 digest-pinned `tcclaviger/vllm` image driving `podman run` directly, serving
 orcarouter/Qwen3.8-Flash-Next-Uncensored-FP8 across both Radeon AI PRO R9700s
-on :7770, TP=2 with automatic tiered-expert offload, **shape D since
+on :7770, TP=2 with automatic tiered-expert offload, **shape E since
 2026-10-02: 3 slots x 200704 ctx** with the KV pool sized for **~2 full-length
 conversations** — measured 398,658 tokens = 1.99x — fp8 KV, no speculative
 decode, MNBT 1024, MoE gather 32x64, util 0.98, reasoning/tool parsers wired
-(qwen3 / qwen3_xml) with preserve_thinking on. `--max-num-seqs` must stay 3:
+(qwen3 / qwen3_xml) with preserve_thinking on, plus **`--expert-precise-memory`
+(the arena grows to 17.22 GiB / 7,522 slots, +16%), `GPU_MAX_HW_QUEUES=2`, and a
+mounted cache dir** (the image ships no `/root/.cache` at all; unmounted, every boot re-pays
+`torch.compile took 181.20 s`). `--max-num-seqs` must stay 3:
 SEQS 2 cannot compile this model. Rollback frank-primary-fp8-mtp-20261001),
 and Dankclaw
 runs two endpoints — **ROCmFPX llama.cpp (frank-large, port 7770:
@@ -34,7 +37,8 @@ gfx1201, 32 GiB each]
 podman run, frank-primary, port 7770]
         C[Qwen3.8-Flash-Next FP8, no spec decode
 TP=2, expert offload automatic, 3 x 200704 ctx,
-fp8 KV pool ~2 full-length, MNBT 1024, gather 32x64, qwen3 parsers]
+fp8 KV pool ~2 full-length, MNBT 1024, gather 32x64, qwen3 parsers,
+expert-precise-memory arena 7,522 slots, /root/.cache mounted]
     end
 
     subgraph Dankclaw[AMD Strix Halo - Ubuntu 26.04]
@@ -81,13 +85,15 @@ frank-small, port 7771]
   mmproj for vision, ~100 tok/s decode, ~2.7 GiB of the card left free.
   The KV arithmetic, the flash-attn dependency, rollback to Q6_K
 - [[dankserver-qwen38-fp8-expert-offload-tuning]] — **ACTIVE since
-  2026-10-02 (shape D)** (root systemd unit, port 7770): the tcclaviger RDNA4
+  2026-10-02 (shape E)** (root systemd unit, port 7770): the tcclaviger RDNA4
   vLLM fork serving orcarouter/Qwen3.8-Flash-Next-Uncensored-FP8 across both
   R9700s, TP=2 with automatic expert offload — `--max-model-len 200704` x 3
   slots, fp8 KV, pool 3,150,000,000 B/rank (measured 398,658 tokens = 1.99x),
-  MNBT 1024, gather 32x64, no spec decode, prefetch off. Why `--max-num-seqs`
-  must stay 3 (SEQS 2 cannot compile this model), why the arena lever is
-  `max_model_len` rather than the KV pool, and the measured envelope
+  MNBT 1024, gather 32x64, no spec decode, prefetch off, plus
+  `--expert-precise-memory` (arena 17.22 GiB / 7,522 slots), GPU_MAX_HW_QUEUES=2
+  and a mounted compile cache. Why `--max-num-seqs`
+  must stay 3 (SEQS 2 cannot compile this model), why the arena's levers are
+  `max_model_len` and the overhead term rather than the KV pool, and the measured envelope
 - [[frank-primary-glm53-flash-w4a16]] — RETIRED 2026-09-30 → 10-01 (the
   failed GLM experiment; frank-primary runs Qwen FP8 again, see the intro):
   the tcclaviger RDNA4 vLLM fork