torch.utils.cpp_extension.load creates a 'lock' file in the build
directory during compilation. If the compiling process is killed
(OOM, timeout, user interrupt), the lock file is never removed and
subsequent processes spin forever polling it (clock_nanosleep(100ms)
→ stat(lock) → repeat).
Fix: _cleanup_stale_lock() removes lock files older than 10 minutes
before any compilation attempt. This is the correct threshold — CUDA
kernel compilation should never take more than a few minutes, so a
10-minute-old lock is guaranteed stale.
DSV4 is a reasoning model. The standard prompt format is:
BOS <|User|> prompt <|Assistant|> ◇
Without the ◇ priming, the model is out-of-distribution — it expects to
be inside a thinking block but never received the sentinel. This causes
degenerate output from step 0 (France instead of Paris, looping on
newlines/repeated tokens).
With ◇, the model will:
1. Generate thinking content (reasoning)
2. Emit ◇ (think_end=128822) to close the thinking block
3. Produce the actual answer
4. Emit EOS (token 1)
This matches the pattern described in the Kimi K2 accuracy blog:
https://vllm.ai/blog/2025-10-28-kimi-k2-accuracy — malformed
prompt formatting is the #1 cause of degenerate output in chat-tuned
reasoning models.
Previously only stopped on tokenizer.eos_token_id. DSV4 uses special
turn-end tokens (<|end_of_sentence|>, USER_TOKEN=128803) that indicate
the assistant turn is complete. Missing these caused decode to continue
past the model's natural stopping point, producing degenerate output.
Also increased diagnostic logging (every step for first 20 steps) to
catch turn-end token emissions.
1. score_topk.py: Fix docstring — K^IComp[s] is shared (MQA), not per-head K^IComp[s,h]
Matches the .cu kernel and production Indexer.forward() einsum.
2. score_topk.py: Add WARNING about valid_lens broadcast being wrong for batched prefill
3. csa_indexer.py: Replace random weights with RuntimeError — CSAIndexer has no
checkpoint loading. Production uses the Indexer class in single_shot_inference.py.
4. csa_indexer.py: Document RoPE assumption — indexer queries/keys have no RoPE.
NEEDS VERIFICATION against HF reference.
The CUDA loader (dsv4/kernels/cuda/loader.py) resolves all .cu
files relative to dsv4/kernels/cuda/. The indexer/ subfolder copies
were never loaded — they were dead code that could silently diverge
from the canonical copies in cuda/.
- Added --ab-compare flag to run both fused and unfused paths for first 3 layers
- Compares x_normed, gsa values, FP4 data, and GEMM outputs (q_a, kv)
- Added --no-fused-rmsnorm to disable P4 and use unfused path
- This will help diagnose the correctness regression introduced by P4
CRITICAL BUG: The old kernel had __syncthreads() and a spinlock INSIDE
the strided loop over num_valid entries. When num_valid % n_threads != 0
(i.e. essentially always at production context lengths), threads that
exit the loop early deadlock on the barrier while others wait forever.
Fix: per-thread local top-k in registers (LOCAL_K=8), block-level merge
after the loop completes. No in-loop barriers, no spinlocks.
Architecture:
- Each thread maintains a private min-heap of LOCAL_K best scores
- After the strided loop (no __syncthreads inside), threads write their
local top-k to shared memory
- Thread 0 builds the final top-k from all n_threads*LOCAL_K candidates
- For top_k=1024, n_threads=128, LOCAL_K=8: 1024 candidates = exact merge
- SMEM budget: w_h + merge heap + per-thread staging = ~30KB (well under 232KB)
Also updated the copy in dsv4/kernels/cuda/ (the one actually loaded
by the Python bridge).
Future optimization (separate from this fix):
- The dot products are scalar FP32 per thread. At 1M context this is slow.
Production path should use FP4 tcgen05 MMA (Stage F).
- The block-level merge is single-threaded. Could use warp-reduce or
bitonic sort for top_k > 256.
- Use half_step_to_e2m1 for E2M1 FP4 quantization (not LUT search)
- Use __nv_fp8_e4m3 + memcpy for block scale (not reinterpret_cast)
- Pack nibbles as (nibbles[2*i+1] << 4) | nibbles[2*i] (same as prod)
- Output uint8 buffers, then .view() to FP4/FP8 dtypes
- Handle near-zero block scale same as quantize_nvfp4.cu
Root cause: float row_max[n] is a VLA — not allowed in CUDA device code.
Fix: use shared memory with MHC_MAX_N=16 fixed-size slots.
Also: REMOVED the Python fallback in sinkhorn_knopp().
If the CUDA kernel fails, the pipeline DIES. No soft landing.
This is the correct behavior — silent fallback to broken precision
is worse than a loud crash.
The residual growth |X|→500-700 at L60 was likely caused by the Python
fallback running a DIFFERENT numerical path (BF16 accumulation in torch
ops vs FP32 in the CUDA kernel). With the fixed kernel, Sinkhorn should
produce properly doubly-stochastic B_l, bounding the residual.
We tried NVFP4 (Blackwell native FP4→MMA). Three approaches.
cos=0.995 round-trip seems fine in isolation but 4.5 effective bits
compounds fatally across 61 layers of mHC. FP8_E4M3's 5.3 effective
bits gives cos=0.9997 — that 0.4% difference is the margin between
working and broken. Kernels exist, path is proven, precision isn't.
block_reduce_sum/max write to smem[0..n_warps-1] but we passed &s_amax
(single float). For 128 threads / 4 warps, this wrote 4 floats starting
at &s_amax, corrupting adjacent shared variables (s_inv_rms, s_vals).
Fix: use s_scratch[8] array (4 for sum, 4 for max) with proper sizing.
CRITICAL: quantize must use the FP8-round-tripped block scale, not the raw
pre-FP8 value. The dequant reads the FP8 bytes back, so the quantize must
match exactly. Same pattern as quantize_nvfp4.cu. This was the root cause
of cos=0.925 (should be ~0.995).
Previous version used __shfl_down_sync for group-level amax reduction,
but shuffles operate at warp level and crossed group boundaries.
Fix: each thread independently quantizes its assigned 16-element blocks
from shared memory. Simpler and correct.
_apply_rope now uses dsv4.ops.rope_cuda (1 CUDA kernel per call)
instead of PyTorch ops (5-6 kernels per call).
Total: 183 RoPE calls × (5-1) = 732 launches saved per token.
With fallback to PyTorch if CUDA kernel fails.
