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serverAppConfigs/docs/frank-default-small-benchmark.md
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Frank 01eb957f90 frank-default-small: prefill-max ncmoe 35 / ubatch 3072
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).
2026-08-13 23:07:30 -07:00

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---
type: reference
title: frank-default-small Benchmark — ncmoe and Batch Tuning
description: llama-bench sweep of MoE CPU offload (ncmoe) and batch/ubatch on the RTX 3090 for Qwen3.6-35B-A3B Q6_K_P.
tags:
- benchmark
- llamacpp
- ncmoe
- ubatch
- dankserver
---
# frank-default-small Benchmark — ncmoe and Batch/Ubatch Tuning
This page records a llama-bench sweep on Dankserver (RTX 3090, 24 GiB) for
the HauhauCS Qwen3.6-35B-A3B Q6_K_P model. The sweep decided the final
`--n-cpu-moe` and `--ubatch-size` values for `frank-default-small`.
Run date: 2026-08-13. Build: llama.cpp `555881ebc` (10121). CUDA, 7 threads,
`--cache-type-k q8_0 --cache-type-v f16`, `--fit-target 0` (KV auto-sized to
fill VRAM). Prompt 16384 tokens, generation 512 tokens, 2 repetitions.
## Headline Findings
### Generation does not depend on batch or ubatch
For every `ncmoe` value, generation throughput stayed flat across all
`ubatch` values from 256 to 4096. The delta between the lowest and highest
was under one token per second. Generation depends only on how many MoE
expert layers stay on the GPU as `ncmoe` gets smaller.
| `ncmoe` | Expert layers on GPU | Generation (t/s) |
| ------- | -------------------- | ---------------- |
| 40 | 0 | 40.9 |
| 38 | 2 | 42.6 |
| 36 | 4 | 44.4 |
| 35 | 5 | 45.5 |
| 34 | 6 | 46.4 |
| 32 | 8 | 48.7 |
| 30 | 10 | 51.1 |
Each pair of expert layers moved to the GPU adds roughly 1.1-2.0 t/s of
generation. Moving from `ncmoe 35` to `ncmoe 32` adds about 3.2 t/s, or 7
percent.
### Prefill and graph memory scale with ubatch
Prefill throughput climbs with `ubatch` because a prompt splits into
`prompt / ubatch` micro-batches. For `ncmoe 35` at 16384 prompt tokens:
| `ubatch` | Prefill (t/s) | Peak graph VRAM (MiB) |
| -------- | ------------- | --------------------- |
| 256 | 245 | 6838 |
| 512 | 416 | 6852 |
| 768 | 556 | 7074 |
| 1024 | 710 | 7330 |
| 1536 | 895 | 7846 |
| 2048 | 1188 | 8574 |
The logical `--batch-size` does not matter. At a fixed `ubatch`, `batch`
values of 2048, 4096, and 8192 gave identical prefill speed and peak VRAM.
## Peak VRAM by ncmoe and ubatch
Peak VRAM (llama-bench, single context) rises both when `ncmoe` drops
(more experts on GPU) and when `ubatch` rises (bigger compute graph):
| `ncmoe` | ub 512 | ub 1024 | ub 1536 | ub 2048 |
| ------- | ------ | ------- | ------- | ------- |
| 38 | 4590 | 5068 | 5584 | 6086 |
| 36 | 6098 | 6576 | 7092 | 7594 |
| 35 | 6852 | 7330 | 7846 | 8574 |
| 34 | 7606 | 8084 | 8600 | 9102 |
| 32 | 9114 | 9592 | 10108 | 10610 |
| 30 | 10622 | 11100 | 11616 | 12118 |
## VRAM Budget Model
The live service holds a fixed 800000-token KV pool plus the mmproj vision
tower plus CUDA overhead. The model below fits llama-bench peak VRAM into a
24 GiB budget:
```
service VRAM = llama-bench peak + KV pool (11.44 GiB) + overhead (2.2 GiB)
```
This model reproduces the historical OOMs. Configurations whose sum exceeds
24 GiB fail. For example, `ncmoe 32 - ubatch 2048` sums to about 24.4 GiB
and fails, which matches the recorded OOMs at `ncmoe 32` and `33`.
## Candidate Configurations
| Configuration | Gen (t/s) | Prefill (t/s) | Headroom (MiB) | Fit |
| ------------------ | --------- | ------------- | -------------- | --- |
| ncmoe 35, ub 2048 | 45.5 | 1188 | 2035 | OK |
| ncmoe 34, ub 2048 | 46.4 | 1221 | 1507 | OK |
| ncmoe 34, ub 1536 | 46.5 | 914 | 2009 | OK |
| ncmoe 32, ub 1024 | 48.7 | 766 | 1017 | OK |
| ncmoe 32, ub 768 | 48.8 | 600 | 1273 | OK |
| ncmoe 30, ub 1536 | 51.2 | 1009 | under | OOM |
## Chosen State
Prefill speed is the priority for this workload, so the final state takes
the top prefill tier while keeping a safe headroom margin:
```
--n-cpu-moe 35 # 5 expert layers on GPU
--batch-size 8192
--ubatch-size 3072
```
This gives prefill about 1458 t/s at 16384 prompt tokens, generation about
45.4 t/s, and about 1.2 GiB of headroom at the 800000-token pool. Both are
chosen because generation does not depend on `ubatch`: `ubatch 3072` reaches
the best prefill speed with no cost to decode.
If decode speed matters more than prefill, swap to `ncmoe 32 - ubatch 1024`
(generation about 48.7 t/s, prefill about 766 t/s, about 1.0 GiB headroom).
If stability headroom matters most, use `ncmoe 34 - ubatch 1536` (about 2.0
GiB headroom).
## Limitations
llama-bench measures raw decode and prefill. It does not run speculative
decoding, parallel slots, or the mmproj vision tower. The live service adds
those on top. The VRAM model uses a fixed 2.2 GiB overhead estimate; the
real overhead varies a little with load.
## See Also
- [[Dankserver System Specs]]
- [[deployment]]
- [[DFlash DSpark Speculative Decoding]]