Replace the FreeToken PR587 endpoint (single-GPU: its TP=2 dies in the
pynccl.cu ROCm JIT) with the radiance engine on both R9700s, TP=2 via
libr4d's fused one-shot all-reduce. Official Qwen/Qwen3.8-Flash-Next-FP8
payload at native block-FP8 precision:
- scripts/build-frank-primary-rad.sh: staging (quantization_config drop =
plugin SELECTION law) -> checkpoint reshape -> rad-convert with ONE
--quant rule (PLE rtn fixed-scale); plan-only first.
- scripts/stack-qwen38-official-fp8.py: the two value-preserving reshapes
(experts byte-stacked into the plugin's stacked layout; PLE's 128
scaleless fp8 shards decoded to one bf16 shard with the checkpoint's own
scale; the rtn rule re-encodes at that same scale - codes round-trip
exactly and land the one-element scale plane the plugin declares).
- scripts/hfget.sh + verified download (131/131 shards sha256-match).
- froggeric v22.5 chat template vendored (--override-chat-template).
- serve script (pinned ledger: 2x40 GiB pools + 47.7 GiB PLE + prefix host),
TTM preflight fixed for kernels with pages_limit only (no pages_max -
an absent knob is skipped, not read as zero); pages_limit raised to
52,428,800 pages = 200 GiB on the host pre-cutover.
- root unit, relinked; deployer gates image digest + .rad floor 158,000 MiB
+ health; prometheus re-adds the /metrics job.
- rollback: tag frank-primary-freetoken-pr587-20261005 (FreeToken trio +
Dockerfile); payload + image stay on disk until the window closes.
deploy-remote.sh also carries the parallel session's frank-small payload
gates (swift15) - committed here per Frank's direction to commit the tree.
Replaces the tcclaviger vLLM fork with FreeToken at PR #587 head 77a7201
built on dankserver into localhost/frank-primary-freetoken:pr587-77a7201
(scripts/docker/frank-primary-freetoken.Dockerfile: digest-pinned
rocm/pytorch rocm7.14 torch-2.11.0 base, libhiprtc dev symlink, curated
--no-deps install per docs/install_amd.md).
Shape (first-boot conservative): ONE R9700 (second card idle;
--tensor-parallel-size exists for future 2-card tuning), KV pool
--num-tokens 300000 (7.2 GiB at 24 KiB/token; clears the 177,356-token
harness worst case and one native 262,144 conversation), MoE LRU
--moe-cache-rate 0.10, --max-running-requests 2, --max-output-tokens
36864. Parsers AUTO: thinking -> reasoning_content natively (models.yml
flips reasoningContentField on the harness side). Experts + PLE pin
~170 GiB host RAM — root unit keeps LimitMEMLOCK=infinity.
Container identity renamed to the unit name (Frank's call): frank-primary;
vLLM-era frank-primary-qwen joins the legacy cleanup list. Deployer image
gate becomes podman image exists (a local build carries no RepoDigests;
the old digest grep refused exactly this shape). Rollback tag:
frank-primary-vllm-shapeG-20261003.
Re-applies the desired shape incrementally on the proven-good fp8 3x262144
base, after bisecting why the first attempt (30904ba) crash-looped.
Root cause: `--max-num-seqs 2` cannot compile on this model. AOT
build_guards(strict_error=True) inside profile_run -> _dummy_run specializes
`query_start_loc`'s width to SEQS + 1 (3 at SEQS 2, 4 at SEQS 3) and the
ConstraintViolationError kills engine init ~7 min in. MNBT is orthogonal:
SEQS 2 failed at MNBT 1024 AND 2048; SEQS 3 passed at both. KV dtype was a
red herring. Measured by four single-variable boot probes.
Arena lever measured: the expert arena is sized from `max_model_len` via the
registry-priced KV reserve (9190 B/token x max_model_len), NOT from
--kv-cache-memory-bytes. 262144 -> 14.30 GiB / 6,248 slots; 200704 ->
14.87 GiB / 6,496 slots. The 6.1e9 -> 3.15e9 pool cut bought zero arena and
is a runtime-headroom lever.
Shape: MAXLEN 200704, SEQS 3 (unchanged - the only slot count that compiles),
KV_BYTES 3.15e9/rank = 2.04x full-length concurrency at 7,701 B/token fp8,
MNBT 1024, gather 32x64, no spec decode, no prefetch, no precise-memory.
ExecStop runs 'podman stop -t 120' but the unit never set TimeoutStopSec, so
systemd's 90 s default cut the graceful stop short: journal shows 'Stopping
timed out. Terminating.' then 'Failed with result timeout' on 2026-10-01
13:27:17 — every stop of this unit was logging a failed stop. 180 s covers the
engine's drain with margin, and the seam now guards the RELATIONSHIP
(TimeoutStopSec > the podman grace) rather than a literal.
StartLimitIntervalSec is a [Unit] directive; the copy in [Service] made systemd
log 'Unknown key StartLimitIntervalSec in section Service' on every load. Seam
asserts it appears exactly once and not in [Service].
Five 262144-token contexts passed every boot gate (KV 1,350,182 / 5.15x) but
left 0 bytes free at runtime: a real client request (995-token prompt,
max_tokens=261149, sampling params straight from models.yml) killed Worker_TP1
with torch.OutOfMemoryError 'Tried to allocate 50.00 MiB ... 0 bytes free'.
Boot is not proof of runtime survivability.
Four slots x 262144 fp8 (KV_BYTES 8,311,013,376/rank) returns ~1.93 GiB per
rank for activations/graph capture.
Unit: Restart=always instead of on-failure — a runtime worker fault makes
vLLM's API server exit clean, so ExecStart returned 0 and on-failure never
fired, leaving the endpoint down until a human noticed. Also
StartLimitIntervalSec=0 and OOMScoreAdjust=-500.
DFlash2 experiment declared failed 2026-10-01: the drafter serves and
drafts (12.8 tok/s proposed) but acceptance is pinned at 1.0-1.38 on ALL
text classes including verbatim repetition — the aux-hidden-state capture
semantics are wrong (single-stream entering-state vs post-layer/comb is
the untested alternative). At ~1.2 acceptance the 8-token verify tax makes
decode 5x SLOWER than the 9.9-10.0 baseline (1.6-1.8 tok/s measured).
Restores the verified 37-40 tok/s shape: qwen3.8-flash-next FP8, MTP4,
prefetch off, 200k x 3 seqs, fp8 KV.
Payload: Intel/GLM-5.3-Flash-W4A16-AutoRound (AutoRound symmetric int4 group
128, auto_round:auto_gptq, 34 shards + 2 extras, 113,074 tensors, ~170 GiB).
It is the only W4A16 checkpoint this fork can serve with expert offload: its
quant_method "auto-round" is overridden to "inc", which routes the MoE to
libr4d's grouped W4A16 GEMM (R4dW4a16MoEMethod). A compressed-tensors W4A16
build of the same model resolves to TritonWNA16Experts, which has no offload
recipe, and refuses to serve at all (170 GiB of experts cannot fit 64 GiB of
VRAM, so offload is mandatory).
Shape: tcclaviger RDNA4 vLLM fork (same digest-pinned image as the 2026-09-29
qwen cutover), TP=2, 131,072 ctx x 2 seqs, bf16 KV (fp8 is ILLEGAL here — it
disables the sparse MLA backend's rope-free Triton path, the only MLA decode
gfx12 has), util 0.98, NBATCH 2048, --enable-expert-offload
--expert-precise-memory, prefix caching, glm47 tool + reasoning parsers,
MTP and expert prefetch absent by measurement.
Measured: decode 9.9-10.0 tok/s, prefill 918 tok/s (warm), arena 14.51 GiB =
2,383 slots/rank over 12,096 host-backed experts (73.64 GiB pinned/rank).
THE 35 tok/s TARGET IS NOT MET and the shortfall is measured: live telemetry
(R4D_LRU_TELEMETRY=1) gives a 0.53-0.66 per-layer hit rate, a step moves
0.82 GiB of misses in ~100 ms = 8.2 GB/s effective against a link measured at
22.74 GB/s — the same structural gather-path gap the qwen campaign found.
Growing the arena 13.08 -> 14.51 GiB changed decode by nothing.
Rejected by measurement: MTP4 (head loads, acceptance 3.76-4.90, but decode
unchanged and prefill collapses 918 -> 255 — a verification forward gathers the
union of the batch's experts), NBATCH 8192 (identical prefill).
Also: scripts/patches/gpu_worker-kv-cap.patch (fork-local fix for a KV-reserve
model that under-counts GLM's per-sequence KDA state; not needed by this shape),
runbook, AGENTS.md row + section, both indexes, work log.
Rollback: 2339fae (qwen FP8 + MTP4).
Replace the R9V radiance fork with the tcclaviger RDNA4 vLLM stack (the
digest-pinned image the 2026-09-29 tuning campaign measured), serving
orcarouter/Qwen3.8-Flash-Next-Uncensored-FP8 (131 shards, 172.8 GiB,
already on disk) with MTP4 spec decode.
Qualified by boot probe on 2026-09-29:
- MAXLEN=200000 x SEQS=3 (600k total) at --kv-cache-dtype fp8 (q8/q8 KV):
'GPU KV cache size: 729,545 tokens; Maximum concurrency for 200,000
tokens per request: 3.65x' at KV_BYTES 7.2 GiB PER RANK.
- KV_BYTES is per-rank: global 16G and 9G both OOM (worker tried to
allocate the full size; ~7.5 GiB/rank is the ceiling with the arena).
- prefetch OFF by law (telemetry: 36% precision, ~50% wasted traffic);
TunableOp off (corrupts numerics).
- decode at this shape: 42.94/34.55/36.09 tok/s; arena 6,032 slots.
Trio: frank-primary.env (all FRANK_PRIMARY_* keys), serve-frank-primary.sh
(direct podman run; entrypoint execs vllm serve; waits on the container),
frank-primary.service (root unit, same ExecStop law, new container name
frank-primary-qwen). Deployer gates rewritten (image digest + shard count
+ weight-map index). download-frank-primary.sh is now inventory/verify
(repo is GATED — 401 anonymous, masked LFS hashes; payload already on
disk). Seam rewritten for the new contract. Pre-cutover tag:
frank-primary-r9v-q8-20260929.
Replace the vLLM 0.30 UVA-offload wiring (never deployed; llama.cpp
b11030 endpoint replaced by Frank's order, downtime window open) with
the R9V radiance-vLLM shape on the same root unit:
- serve-frank-primary.sh: layer the on-host qualified setup state
(104 tuned R9V_* keys, /home/dank/r9v-state/uncensored/setup.json)
under repo production overrides, then exec the fork's own launcher
through the docker->podman shim and block on docker wait so a crashed
engine is a nonzero ExecStart (launch.sh --detach alone would fake
green). Gates: pinned image by OCI manifest digest in RepoDigests,
PLE at pinned byte count (stat -c %s), all GGUF shards + mmproj.
- frank-primary.env: thin production overrides only (LAN bind 0.0.0.0,
:7770, alias frank-primary, container frank-primary-r9v, GPU BDFs);
tuned engine shape stays in the setup state by design.
- frank-primary.service: same root-unit shape (User=dank,
LimitMEMLOCK=infinity for the tiered-expert pin), plus ExecStop
podman stop — docker wait cannot stop the container child.
- deploy-remote.sh deploy_llm_primary: state-driven gates (state ready,
image digest present in rootless storage, PLE bytes, shard files)
replace the fp030 shard-index gate; false-green MainPID check kept.
- tests/frank_primary_unit.bats: seam rewritten for the R9V shape.
The llama.cpp b11030 trio becomes the vLLM 0.30 trio ahead of the
FP8 cutover on :7770 — same port, same alias, no client moves.
Serve shape: locally built ROCm gfx1201 image
(localhost/frank-primary:vllm030) execs via podman as dank from the
root unit (LimitMEMLOCK=infinity legalizes the pin). UVA offload:
--offload-backend uva pins the PLE family (47.75 GiB, 138 tensors:
131 n-gram table shards + 7 per-layer conv/proj) + routed experts
(114.86 GiB, 150,528 tensors) in host RAM — 162.60 GiB combined,
~81.3 GiB per rank under TP=2, hence --cpu-offload-gb 82 (80/card
strands 2.6 GiB of experts on the cards). Parsers per the host's
own Ornith-era precedent: qwen3_xml tools + qwen3 reasoning (vLLM
0.30 emits the channel as `reasoning` — reasoning_content is
renamed server-side) + enable_thinking/preserve_thinking template
kwargs. Spec decode stays env-wired and OFF at bring-up.
Deployer deploy_llm_primary rewritten: image gate, index-driven
shard-count gate (131), stale-container cleanup, port wait, and the
false-green hardening — health is only green when the unit's own
MainPID is live behind the answer (2026-09-26 lesson).
Seam tests rewritten to the vLLM contract (15 gates): offload
arithmetic, parser wiring, no-llama.cpp-ism, deployer gates. Suite
349/349 green.
The 2026-09-26 same-day cutover that ended the Lucebox DS4.1 detour:
Dankserver's :7770 endpoint is now unsloth llama.cpp (the b11030-mix
prebuilt, ROCm gfx120X, bundled runtime) serving
unsloth/Qwen3.8-Flash-Next-GGUF at Q8_0 — 175.30 GiB across six sha256-
verified split parts — on both Radeon AI PRO R9700s, as a ROOT unit (the
frank-large shape: no container, no generated unit).
The deployed contract:
- Placement law: layer split -ts 1,1 with -ngl 999; the routed experts
and the 51B-param n-gram (PLE) table are COMPUTED in host RAM via
-ot exps=CPU,ngram_embeddings=CPU (the x4-pair measurement: streaming
over PCIe loses at 3.7 t/s, computing in RAM does not care).
per_layer_token_embd.weight=CPU is required by the shared MTP head's
borrow path (a GPU-resident borrow crashes the draft load).
mmap stays on; --cache-ram 16384.
- Spec chain draft-mtp,ngram-mod: the shared Q8_0 MTP head
(mtp-...-shared-Q8_0.gguf, 2,786,568,256 B) at depth 2, with the
draftless ngram-mod matcher chained behind it — the only legal way to
layer two spec implementations in one process.
- Vision explicit: --mmproj names the BF16 projector (this build never
autoloads; a server without it comes up healthy and text-only).
- Reasoning: --reasoning-format deepseek → reasoning_content; the
Qwen3.8 template's {xhigh, medium, low} reasoning_effort gate folded
by reasoningEffortMap in models.yml.
- One stream, the model's full 262,144 context; greedy server default
with Qwen-recommended sampling riding compat.extraBody.
The deployer's deploy_llm_primary is rewritten for the root unit: it
gates every artifact at its declared byte count (stat -c %s, never wc -c
— which read the whole 377 GiB lucebox file for minutes on 2026-09-26),
retires the lucebox user quadlet to dated home trash, waits out port
7770, relinks/enables/restarts the root unit and waits up to 1800 s for
/health. The quadlet-era tree under dankserver/frank-primary/ is
archived (dankserver/.AGENTTRASH/20260926-llamacpp-cutover/ on this
box; git history everywhere else) and its planner mapping replaced by
the scripts/ trio.
Observability flips back to the llamacpp namespace: a frank-primary
Prometheus job at 192.168.0.235:7770 (cross-host LAN — the netavark
published-port quirk that forces host.containers.internal for the two
Dankclaw endpoints is same-host only), the LlmEndpointDown runbook
text, and the dashboard description for three llama.cpp endpoints.
Docs: the new runbook (frank-primary-llamacpp-qwen38-flash-next-q8.md),
RETIRED banners on the lucebox and radiance runbooks and their index
entries, the AGENTS.md fleet section rewritten for the root-unit shape,
and the homepage frank-medium card renamed to frank-primary with the
Q8_0 Flash-Next spec (docs.html #models and the modality note updated:
images on frank-primary and frank-small, audio on frank-small only).
models.yml: the dankserver provider is "llamacpp (dankserver)" serving
frank-primary, contextWindow 262144, maxTokens 65536 (compaction-gap
law: 183,501 + 65,536 <= 262,144), input [text, image].
Suite: 346 green (frank_primary_unit.bats rewritten for the root unit —
16 tests pinning the placement law, the shared-head requirement, the
explicit projector, HIP env hygiene (BIND_HOST, never bare HOST), and
the deployer's byte-count gates; the quadlet-era planner and
changed-tests mappings rewritten for the trio; the observability scrape
test asserts three llamacpp jobs again).
Rollback: the lucebox image (localhost/lucebox-rocm:gfx1201) and the
378 GiB payload stay on the host; the Qwen payload stays fetched, so a
re-swap in either direction is a redeploy, not a refetch.
Frank