Mechanical identity rename across the knowledge base, AGENTS.md, README, the
hermes config example, and homepage services.json. No behavior change; served
aliases on the LLM endpoints change with the deploy of commit 69f87c8.
7.7 KiB
type, title, description, tags, timestamp
| type | title | description | tags | timestamp | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| reference | caf-eemin Qwen3.8-27B ROCmI4 embedded MTP on Dankclaw | caf-eemin/Qwen3.8-27B-ROCmI4-MTP-GGUF (Q4_0_ROCMI4, embedded NextN/MTP head) served by the charlie12345/ROCmFPX llama.cpp runtime (ROCmI4 W4A4) on the Strix Halo iGPU. frank-large. |
|
2026-08-25 |
caf-eemin Qwen3.8-27B ROCmI4 embedded MTP on Dankclaw
Active 2026-08-25.
frank-largeserves this model. It replaced the kingjones777 ROCmFP4 STRIX MTP payload on the same port and the same Strix Halo iGPU, running the new charlie12345/ROCmFPX ROCmI4 W4A4 build. See kingjones-strix-mtp for the retired page.
frank-large (port 7770) serves
cafonz/Qwen3.8-27B-ROCmI4-MTP-GGUF (published under the public
eemin namespace) from the charlie12345/ROCmFPX llama.cpp fork built with
the opt-in ROCmI4 W4A4 path. The model is Q4_0_ROCMI4: signed four-bit
weights packed two per byte, quantized from the BF16 Qwen3.8-27B and carrying
its embedded NextN/MTP head in the main GGUF — so there is no separate
draft file. The native gfx1151 v_wmma_i32_16x16x16_iu4 matrix instruction
batch-verifies the MTP proposals for higher decode throughput.
What This Is
ROCmI4 is the GGUF weight format (signed 4-bit codes). IU4 is the AMD WMMA instruction spelling that consumes them. W4A4 means four-bit weights and four-bit activations during the accelerated matrix multiply. Ordinary one-token decode stays memory-bandwidth-bound (MMVQ); batched prompt processing and batched MTP target verification use the IU4 MMQ path. W4A4 is a lossy activation-quant speed path — treat it as a speed/quality tradeoff.
The model is a conversion/quantization of Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B (Unsloth lineage,
Apache-2.0), not a retrained model. It reports architecture qwen35
(M-RoPE), ~27.32B params, native 262144 context, 866 tensors, ftype 108.
Model Files
| File | Size | SHA-256 |
|---|---|---|
Qwen3.8-27B-Q4_0_ROCMI4.gguf |
13.50 GiB (14,534,384,384 B) | ad51ecbee55930ababc629c377943a7bbe50f8aafcf32340c7cdae6fa6b7bb3c |
mmproj-BF16.gguf (vision, optional) |
0.87 GiB (931,146,432 B) | 83ee4f4f205fa514161778c41df1ea14144faa0f713510893b63c2395f5c2d53 |
Store under /home/dank/models/eemin-Qwen3.8-27B-ROCMI4-MTP/. The vision
projector is optional for text-only use.
Runtime Build
The stock llama.cpp build does not understand Q4_0_ROCMI4 or the qualified
IU4/MTP path. Use charlie12345/ROCmFPX at the pinned commit, built HIP-only
(so the combined HIP/Vulkan scheduler cannot route the ROCmI4 tensors to
Vulkan, which has no shader for this type) with the W4A4 option on.
| Artifact | Path |
|---|---|
| Fork + pinned commit | /home/dank/rocmi4-qwen38/ROCmFPX @ c49ebdbd5c9f01ec242369f9e7f7967855f80cba |
| Build | cmake -S . -B build-rocmi4-w4a4 -G Ninja -DGGML_HIP=ON -DGGML_VULKAN=OFF -DCMAKE_HIP_ARCHITECTURES=gfx1151 -DGGML_HIP_ROCMI4_W4A4=ON -DLLAMA_BUILD_SERVER=ON -DLLAMA_BUILD_WEBUI=OFF |
| Binary | /home/dank/rocmi4-qwen38/ROCmFPX/build-rocmi4-w4a4/bin/llama-server (version 257, c49ebdb) |
| ROCm | system /opt/rocm-7.2.4, amdclang 22 |
Build a separate directory so the exact-int8 path (the default branch) stays
available. Rollback: disable -DGGML_HIP_ROCMI4_W4A4=ON and rebuild — no model
conversion or data change needed. The build prints
ROCmI4 W4A4: enabled for device 0 when the accelerated path is active.
Model Download
Downloaded from the public
eemin/Qwen3.8-27B-ROCmI4-MTP-GGUF repo (the card's download section still
names the still-private cafonz/…; use eemin). Verify against the repo's
checksums.sha256 after download:
cd /home/dank/models/eemin-Qwen3.8-27B-ROCMI4-MTP
sha256sum -c checksums.sha256
Launch Profile
The qualified MTP profile (from the model card and PR #94, verified on the
live service): strict Qwen MTP, backend sampling, n_max 4, p_min 0.60.
graph TD
A[llama-server charlie12345 ROCmFPX c49ebdb<br/>ROCmI4 W4A4 enabled] --> B[load Q4_0_ROCMI4 GGUF + mmproj<br/>-ngl 999 -dev ROCm0]
B --> C[draft-mtp on ROCm0<br/>--spec-draft-ngl all]
C --> D[strict Qwen MTP<br/>n_max 4 / p_min 0.60<br/>backend sampling]
D --> E[Sharp chat template<br/>reasoning deepseek]
Key flags (see scripts/serve-frank-large.sh):
--spec-type draft-mtp --spec-mtp-strict-qwen
--spec-draft-device ROCm0 --spec-draft-ngl all
--spec-draft-type-k f16 --spec-draft-type-v f16
--spec-draft-n-max 4 --spec-draft-n-min 0
--spec-draft-p-min 0.60 --spec-draft-backend-sampling
Because the MTP head is embedded, no --model-draft is passed and the
draft uses all layers on ROCm0. --spec-mtp-strict-qwen preserves the target
path's greedy decisions; it does not remove the W4A4 activation approximation.
Serving settings
- 65536 context (192K below the native 262144 maximum), 1 slot, f16 KV, context checkpoints, prompt cache. The lower limit leaves headroom for the model plus KV cache in the host's unified-memory budget. Concurrent requests queue; the server never preempts a running generation.
-t 16 -tb 32, batch 512 / ubatch 256 (the qualified W4A4 profile).--temp 0.7 --top-p 0.95, reasoning on (deepseekputs<think>intomessage.reasoning_content).- Qwen-Sharp chat template (
--chat-template-file),enable_thinking+preserve_thinkingon, preserving the peg-native + deepseek shape the Pi agent expects. - Strix Halo unified memory + native gfx1151 detection:
HSA_OVERRIDE_GFX_VERSION=11.5.1,GGML_HIP_ENABLE_UNIFIED_MEMORY=1.
Service
- Unit:
frank-large.service, port 7770 - Script:
scripts/serve-frank-large.sh, envscripts/frank-large.env
Tuning MTP
MTP gains are content-dependent: predictable code, structured data, and lists
accept longer drafts than creative prose. The active conservative profile is
n4 / p0.60; the previously qualified starting point was n16 / p0.60.
ubatch Benchmark
Decode throughput depends on the ubatch (per-eval token batch). Run the sweep on 8k contexts, 512 → 4096 in steps of 512, with a fixed batch:
sudo systemctl stop frank-large
./scripts/bench-ubatch.sh
sudo systemctl start frank-large
The script stops frank-large for a clean GPU, boots one server
instance per ubatch on a scratch port, reads authoritative print_timing tok/s,
and restarts the service. See frank-large-benchmark.
Known Issues
- gfx1151 only for the W4A4 path. Other GPUs fall back to exact int8 MMQ.
- Memory pressure: the model is 13.5 GiB. Under
--no-mmapwith full offload it needs the whole tensor set at once; leave room in the 64 GiB unified pool (rocm-smi figure). Do not run a bench with the live service up or it OOMs at load. Q4_0_ROCMI4+ MTP flags need the ROCmFPX fork; stock llama.cpp may reject the file or drop the optimized path.- W4A4 is lossy (+~5.4% perplexity vs exact int8). Opt-in speed path.
Measured Results (qualification)
From the model card, gfx1151, pinned build, W4A4 + strict MTP-16:
| Result | Value |
|---|---|
| HumanEval pilot, W4A4 IU4 (mean) | 49.40 tok/s |
| Full HumanEval, W4A4 (mean / median) | 44.39 / 45.23 tok/s |
| HumanEval / HumanEval+ pass@1 | 94.5% / 91.5% |
| Non-speculative tg128 | ~13.8 tok/s |
Local smoke test 2026-08-25 on the iGPU: model loaded, strict-MTP active, draft acceptance 0.74 (mean 7.67), generation ~25 tok/s at a small output. The ubatch sweep above gives the production ubatch choice.
See Also
- deployment — deploy and update process
- kingjones-strix-mtp — the retired ROCmFP4 predecessor on this slot
- ciru-activefpx-promptforge — the retired v3 CIRU PromptForge page
- Dankclaw System Specs — the box
- frank-large-benchmark — backend/spec benchmark history