docs: add DFlash/DSpark speculative decoding research + quantization-by-hardware guide
- DFlash DSpark Speculative Decoding.md: verified method details (DFlash block diffusion from Z Lab arXiv:2602.06036; DSpark semi-autoregressive from DeepSeek arXiv:2607.05147), runtime support matrix (vLLM/llama.cpp/SGLang), exact vLLM --speculative-config recipes (incl. dflash/dspark), llama.cpp --spec-type recipes with sidecar auto-discovery, draft model table (z-lab Qwen3.6-27B-DFlash 2B, Qwen3.6-35B-A3B-DFlash 0.4B), deployment guidance for RTX 3090 (AWQ+Dflash) and Strix Halo (ROCmFPX MTP), measured 45-50 t/s MTP decode on Strix Halo - Quantization by Hardware Architecture.md: FP8/INT8/INT4/GPTQ/AWQ/GGUF/FP4/ ROCmFP4 support per NVIDIA (Turing/Ampere/Ada/Hopper/Blackwell), AMD (CDNA MI250/MI300/MI350, RDNA 3/3.5/4), and CPU; recommended picks per Dankserver (AWQ/GPTQ 4-bit) and Dankclaw (ROCmFP4/Q4_K_M) - index.md: link both new pages under Speculative Decoding & Quantization
This commit is contained in:
1 parent
90c4883f89
commit
993b6af576
3 files changed
+317
No files matched your search
@@ -0,0 +1,181 @@
|
||||
# DFlash and DSpark Speculative Decoding
|
||||
|
||||
## Overview
|
||||
|
||||
DFlash and DSpark are the two newest speculative decoding methods. They draft many tokens in one parallel pass instead of one token at a time. This reduces decode latency on memory-bound workloads.
|
||||
|
||||
DFlash comes from Z Lab at UC Berkeley. DSpark comes from DeepSeek. Both work with vLLM and llama.cpp. Both have draft models for the Qwen3.6 models that Dankserver and Dankclaw run.
|
||||
|
||||
## How DFlash Works
|
||||
|
||||
DFlash is a lightweight block diffusion model. It predicts a block of tokens in a single forward pass. Key design points:
|
||||
|
||||
- The draft model reuses the embedding and LM head from the target model.
|
||||
- Only the intermediate layers are trained.
|
||||
- It fuses target-model hidden features into the KV projections of every draft layer.
|
||||
- A 16-token DFlash drafter has lower latency than a 1-layer EAGLE-3 drafter producing 8 tokens.
|
||||
|
||||
Results from the DFlash paper (arXiv:2602.06036):
|
||||
|
||||
- Over 6x lossless speedup on Qwen3-8B.
|
||||
- Up to 2.5x higher speedup than EAGLE-3.
|
||||
- Diffusion drafting cost is flat, so block size does not increase cost.
|
||||
|
||||
## How DSpark Works
|
||||
|
||||
DSpark is a semi-autoregressive extension of DFlash from DeepSeek (arXiv:2607.05147). It keeps the DFlash parallel diffusion backbone and adds a lightweight sequential Markov head. This models inter-token dependencies inside each block. It also uses confidence-scheduled verification, which stops verifying tokens that have a high rejection risk.
|
||||
|
||||
Results from the DSpark paper:
|
||||
|
||||
- 60-85% faster per-user generation than MTP-1 on DeepSeek-V4 production traffic.
|
||||
- Useful when parallel drafts decay in acceptance rate.
|
||||
|
||||
Both DFlash and DSpark are lossless under rejection sampling. Use the strict rejection sampler.
|
||||
|
||||
## Runtime Support
|
||||
|
||||
| Runtime | DFlash | DSpark | MTP |
|
||||
|---------|--------|--------|-----|
|
||||
| vLLM | yes (v0.20.1+) | yes | yes |
|
||||
| llama.cpp | yes | yes | yes |
|
||||
| SGLang | yes | no | yes |
|
||||
|
||||
### vLLM
|
||||
|
||||
vLLM v0.20.1+ has core DFlash support. Use the `--speculative-config` JSON object.
|
||||
|
||||
DFlash on vLLM:
|
||||
|
||||
```
|
||||
vllm serve Qwen/Qwen3.6-35B-A3B \
|
||||
--speculative-config '{"method": "dflash", "model": "z-lab/Qwen3.6-35B-A3B-DFlash", "num_speculative_tokens": 15}' \
|
||||
--attention-backend flash_attn \
|
||||
--max-num-batched-tokens 32768
|
||||
```
|
||||
|
||||
Legacy flags also work:
|
||||
|
||||
```
|
||||
vllm serve Qwen/Qwen3.6-35B-A3B \
|
||||
--spec-method dflash \
|
||||
--spec-model z-lab/Qwen3.6-35B-A3B-DFlash \
|
||||
--spec-tokens 8
|
||||
```
|
||||
|
||||
DFlash requires a non-causal attention backend. Set `"attention_backend": "flash_attn"` in the speculative config if needed. On ROCm, check that the flash_attn backend is available before using DFlash.
|
||||
|
||||
DSpark on vLLM:
|
||||
|
||||
```
|
||||
vllm serve <target-model> \
|
||||
--speculative-config '{"method": "dspark", "model": "<dspark-draft>", "num_speculative_tokens": 15}'
|
||||
```
|
||||
|
||||
### llama.cpp
|
||||
|
||||
llama.cpp supports DFlash, DSpark, and MTP through `--spec-type`. When you pass `--spec-draft-hf`, llama.cpp auto-discovers the sidecar files and infers the type. The priority order is DSpark, DFlash, EAGLE-3, MTP.
|
||||
|
||||
DFlash on llama.cpp:
|
||||
|
||||
```
|
||||
llama-server --hf-repo <target-GGUF> \
|
||||
--spec-draft-hf <draft-GGUF> \
|
||||
--spec-type draft-dflash \
|
||||
--spec-draft-n-max 16
|
||||
```
|
||||
|
||||
DSpark on llama.cpp:
|
||||
|
||||
```
|
||||
llama-server --hf-repo <target-GGUF> \
|
||||
--spec-draft-hf <draft-GGUF> \
|
||||
--spec-type draft-dspark
|
||||
```
|
||||
|
||||
MTP on llama.cpp:
|
||||
|
||||
```
|
||||
llama-server --hf-repo <target-with-MTP> \
|
||||
--spec-type draft-mtp \
|
||||
--spec-draft-n-max 2
|
||||
```
|
||||
|
||||
## Draft Models
|
||||
|
||||
DFlash draft model sizes for the models on these servers:
|
||||
|
||||
| Target model | DFlash draft | Draft size |
|
||||
|--------------|--------------|------------|
|
||||
| Qwen3.6-35B-A3B | z-lab/Qwen3.6-35B-A3B-DFlash | 0.4B |
|
||||
| Qwen3.6-27B | z-lab/Qwen3.6-27B-DFlash | 2B |
|
||||
| Qwen3.5-35B-A3B | z-lab/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-DFlash | 0.4B |
|
||||
| Qwen3.5-27B | z-lab/Qwen3.5-27B-DFlash | 2B |
|
||||
|
||||
The DFlash draft is not a standalone model. It must pair with its target model. The model cards recommend block size 8 for higher concurrency and 16 for single-stream throughput.
|
||||
|
||||
## Deployment on Dankserver (NVIDIA RTX 3090)
|
||||
|
||||
Dankserver runs vLLM in a Podman container with the RTX 3090. The RTX 3090 is Ampere (compute capability 8.6). Use these conditions:
|
||||
|
||||
- FP8 KV cache is valid on CUDA 12.
|
||||
- FP8 weights compute through a fallback path; no native FP8 tensor cores.
|
||||
- The DFlash draft model (0.4B) fits easily in 24 GB VRAM alongside the target.
|
||||
|
||||
Working DFlash flags for this server:
|
||||
|
||||
```
|
||||
--spec-method dflash
|
||||
--spec-model z-lab/Qwen3.6-35B-A3B-DFlash
|
||||
--spec-tokens 8
|
||||
--kv-cache-dtype fp8
|
||||
```
|
||||
|
||||
Example DFlash + AWQ on the RTX 3090:
|
||||
|
||||
```
|
||||
docker run --rm --name vllm-qwen36-dflash \
|
||||
--gpus all --ipc=host \
|
||||
-p 8000:8000 \
|
||||
-v ~/.cache/huggingface:/root/.cache/huggingface \
|
||||
docker.io/vllm/vllm-openai:latest \
|
||||
cyankiwi/Qwen3.6-35B-A3B-AWQ-4bit \
|
||||
--speculative-config '{"method": "dflash", "model": "z-lab/Qwen3.6-35B-A3B-DFlash", "num_speculative_tokens": 8}' \
|
||||
--attention-backend flash_attn \
|
||||
--gpu-memory-utilization 0.95
|
||||
```
|
||||
|
||||
## Deployment on Dankclaw (AMD Strix Halo gfx1151)
|
||||
|
||||
Dankclaw runs the ROCmFPX llama.cpp runtime as its primary service. The active service uses the Ling-3.0-flash ROCmFP4 MTP model with `--spec-type draft-mtp`. This gives measured results:
|
||||
|
||||
- 45-50 t/s decode with MTP speculation.
|
||||
- ~37 t/s plain decode.
|
||||
- ~95% draft acceptance with `--spec-draft-n-max 2`.
|
||||
|
||||
ROCmFPX is a llama.cpp fork by charlie12345. It adds ROCmFP4 and ROCmFP2 GGUF weight formats with HIP/ROCm and Vulkan kernels. It is not merged into upstream llama.cpp.
|
||||
|
||||
Ling-3.0-flash-related facts:
|
||||
|
||||
- Base model: inclusionAI/Ling-3.0-flash, 124B total / 5.1B active.
|
||||
- The MTP (NextN) head is preserved in the GGUF conversion.
|
||||
- The raulvidis GGUF repo targets Strix Halo (gfx1151).
|
||||
|
||||
If you want DFlash on Dankclaw, use a DFlash GGUF draft. Community conversions exist, for example Alittlehammmer/Qwen3.6-27B-DFlash-GGUF-llama.cpp. The ROCm path for DFlash is newer than the MTP path and less proven on gfx1151.
|
||||
|
||||
## Notes
|
||||
|
||||
- Speculative decoding helps low-QPS, memory-bound, latency-focused workloads. It helps less at high QPS.
|
||||
- DFlash needs a non-causal attention backend; the ROCm flash_attn backend must be validated before production use.
|
||||
- The old `--swap-space` flag no longer exists in current vLLM. Use `--kv-offloading-size`.
|
||||
- `--speculative-config` is the preferred CLI. Legacy `--spec-method`, `--spec-model`, and `--spec-tokens` flags still exist.
|
||||
- Use `rejection_sample_method` default `strict` for lossless output.
|
||||
|
||||
## See Also
|
||||
|
||||
- [[Quantization by Hardware Architecture]]
|
||||
- [[Running Qwen3.6 35B A3B FP8 on Dankserver]]
|
||||
- [[Running Qwen3.6 27B FP8 on Dankclaw]]
|
||||
- [[Dankclaw System Specs]]
|
||||
- [[Dankserver System Specs]]
|
||||
- [[VLLM Overview]]
|
||||
- [[deployment]]
|
||||
Reference in new issue
Block a user