- scripts: serve-pp-head/worker, envs, systemd units, pp-test.sh orchestrator, pp-bench.py
- head design verified in b10433 source + live 4B smoke test:
* no --device with --rpc (RPC device silently dropped otherwise)
* default device selection = [RPC0, ROCm0] (HIP registers before Vulkan)
* default split proportional to reported free mem = ~20/80 here, pin 1,1
* -dio required for large model over RPC
- docs: qwen3.8-strix-optimizations (ranked no-quant-downgrade levers,
quant landscape, 2026-08-16 test matrix), PP deployment runbook,
index updates, Dankclaw Improvements corrections (Vulkan0, no power_profile sysfs)
- worker built at 9b05354ec in /home/dank/llama-cpp-rpc worktree (CUDA+RPC)
- second head build build-vulkan-rpc (HIP off) for backend A/B
Recording the 54-config matrix, the realistic-prompt correction (n_max=5 not
10), the ubatch findings (256 is the safe/fast point), and the premature-stop
sampling-variance investigation.
Realistic-prompt tuning: n_max=5 peaks ~13.3 t/s (baseline 7.2). matrix used a
repetitive prompt that inflated MTP. n_max=10 is only ~8.6 t/s on real writing.
The f16/f16 KV pool costs 15640 MiB at 800768 cells. At full 800K the
3090 idled at 23966/24576 MiB and the 1472x1472 image warmup graph
failed cudaMalloc (needed +248 MiB). 700416 cells (175104/slot, 4 slots)
leaves ~2.3 GiB free after warmup. Parallel stays 4.
F16 K removes the flash-attn F16-conversion workspace (MMA_F16 prefill
kernel needs no copy when K is already f16). Trades static KV pool size
for the context-proportional workspace growth implicated in the
cublasSgemm_v2 crash class. VERBOSITY=4 run logs real allocation sizes;
refit CTX_SIZE if the pool does not fit on the 24 GiB 3090.
Fix a live crash: cuBLAS cudaErrorInvalidValue in ggml_cuda_mul_mat_cublas
killed the service during a 145k-token prefill burst at ncmoe35/ub3072.
ncmoe 36 moves one more expert layer to CPU: frees ~0.75 GiB peak VRAM
(grid: peak 8606 vs 9360 MiB at ub3072) for -2% prefill / -2% decode.
Keeps prefill priority (top ubatch tier). Docs synced; noted fallback
GGML_CUDA_FORCE_MMQ=1 if pressure persists.
Prefill is the priority for this workload. Switch from decode-max
(ncmoe 32 / ubatch 1024) to prefill-max:
- n-cpu-moe 35, ubatch 3072: prefill ~1458 t/s (top tier), gen ~45.4 t/s,
~1.2 GiB headroom at the 800k pool.
- Gen is independent of ubatch; ub 3072 reaches best prefill with no
decode cost. Docs synced (benchmark Chosen State, deployment, specs).
Retest MTP at n_max 2 (vs 3) for the acceptance/speed tradeoff, keeping
MTP-alone + ubatch 8192. Re-benches gen t/s and re-runs the strict
parallel-safety test.
MTP+ngram benched 12.0-13.6 t/s (vs MTP alone 15.3-19.5) and is
parallel-safe, but slower - layering does not pay off. Back to MTP
alone. Test ubatch 8192 (== batch) using the VRAM headroom; watch for
OOM during load.
Test the MTP+ngram layering (ngram re-drafts on top of the MTP draft) at
ubatch 4096. Must clear the strict parallel-safety test and beat MTP
alone (15.3-19.5 t/s) to stay.
MTP (draft-mtp, n_max 3, a4lg MTP-ONLY-Q8_0) benches 15.3-19.5 t/s vs
ngram-mod 6.7-8.7 t/s and passes the strict LCP-reuse parallel test
(sim 0.996 / f_keep 0.994 launch while another slot generates - the
pattern that killed DFlash). ubatch 4096 to use the ~33 GiB VRAM
headroom; watch peak during load.
ngram-mod benchmark + parallel-safety test passed (A and B both survive
the LCP-reuse launch that killed DFlash). Now benching MTP sidecar
(a4lg/Qwen3.6-27B-MTP-ONLY-Q8_0.gguf, draft-mtp, n_max 3).
DFlash causes premature EOS on a generating slot when another task lands
with high LCP prompt reuse (shared draft ctx corruption, reproduced
2026-08-14 3x). Benching ngram-mod vs MTP sidecar to pick the
replacement. serve script now passes --spec-draft-model only for
draft-* spec types.
Cold loads after the cache drop measured 17 minutes on 2026-08-13, longer
than the previous 600s wait. HEALTH_WAIT[dankclaw]=600 iterations (20 min),
dankserver stays at 300 (10 min). AGENTS.md: update cold-load figure.
The helper scripts (/usr/local/sbin/frank-restart-<large|small>.sh)
cover unit symlink, cache drop (dankclaw), daemon-reload, and restart
in one root-owned script, run via sudoers NOPASSWD. deploy.sh now uses
the helper when present and falls back to inline sudo commands.
- N_CPU_MOE 34→35: 5 expert layers on GPU instead of 6. Frees ~0.4-0.8 GiB
VRAM for OOM safety after high-load sessions OOM'd at 32 and 33.
- Sync stale doc references (deployment.md, Dankserver System Specs.md)
that still claimed 32/8; specs now estimate ~1.8 GiB headroom at 35.
Deterministic deployment instead of agent ritual:
- DROP_CACHES per target (dankclaw=1): runs 'sync; echo 3 >
/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches' before systemctl restart. Without it the
model load stalls at 28 GiB VRAM when the model pages are cached.
- FRANK_SUDO_PW env var: remote sudo pipes it via 'sudo -S' so the
script runs headless. Falls back to plain sudo otherwise.
- Health check runs curl on the target over ssh (127.0.0.1:7770 was
previously checked from the workstation, which can never see it).
Empirically verified on 2026-08-13 (caches dropped): batch 8192 / ubatch
2048 loads and serves at ctx 602100 with 61 GiB VRAM peak. The benchmark
doc's 'ubatch 2048 OOMs' results were confounded by page-cache pressure -
with the model's pages fully cached the KV/graph allocation stalls at
28 GiB VRAM. Drop caches (sync; echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches) before
starting a load to make restarts reliable.
The ROCm HIP runtime (libamdhip64) reads the TEMP environment variable as
its JIT kernel-cache temp directory. Commit db3eb01 added TEMP=1.0 to the
env files as a sampling default; the serve scripts export it via set -a.
HIP then used the path "1.0" for its cache, failed, and segfaulted with a
NULL-refcount unref (offset 0x446153 in libamdhip64) during model tensor
upload (ggml_backend_cuda_buffer_set_tensor). This crashed frank-default-
large on every restart from Aug 13 16:22 onward; the earlier c984a3e
"fix" (KV/batch changes) was unrelated.
Rename the sampling variable TEMP -> TEMPERATURE in both env files and
serve scripts. llama-server still receives --temp from the renamed var, so
sampling defaults are unchanged. The HIP runtime no longer sees a bogus
TEMP value. Affects frank-default-large (dankclaw) and frank-default-small
(dankserver).
The Aug 13 change crashed frank-default-large in a restart loop. The service
segfaulted ~15s into model load (SIGSEGV in hipMalloc during load). The
benchmark (frank-default-large-benchmark.md) already proved ubatch 2048 OOMs
(40.9GB prefill buffer) and batch 2048 / ubatch 512 is the fits-and-loads
config on the 96GiB UMA budget. Restore q8_0/q8_0 KV cache (FA pairing) and
batch 2048 / ubatch 512.
Also fix deployment.md: KV is q8_0 K / q8_0 V (not f16 V) since 334b6af.
- Remove CACHE_TYPE_K/CACHE_TYPE_V (fp16 default on GPU)
- Increase BATCH_SIZE from 2048 to 8192
- Increase UBATCH_SIZE from 512 to 2048
- Remove --cache-type-k and --cache-type-v from llama-server flags
Frank