Exports one Spark decode step with the KV cache as explicit tensors, sized
per layer type: the 21 sliding layers hold a fixed 512 entries at any
context, the 7 full-attention layers grow. That asymmetry is the whole
reason the architecture is interesting on a phone, so the two types get
separately sized caches, masks and rotary angles.
Verified against the HF reference at 1024 context: 138.5 dB logits SNR,
identical top-1 and top-5.
Profiled on a real Galaxy S25 (Snapdragon 8 Elite) through AI Hub, QNN
context binary on the NPU, ms per layer:
sliding (512 KV, any ctx) fp16 1.689 w8a16 0.912 w4a16 0.917
full @ 1k fp16 1.559 w8a16 1.129 w4a16 1.127
full @ 4k fp16 2.964 w8a16 1.681 w4a16 1.662
Composed into a step (21 sliding + 7 full), w4a16 gives 27.2 ms at 1k and
30.9 ms at 4k, against 31.6 and 46.5 ms for the same model with every layer
full-attention -- 1.16x and 1.51x. Worth noting the hybrid is 0.94x at 1k in
fp16: sliding layers rotate all 256 head dims where full layers rotate 64,
and below roughly 2k that RoPE cost outweighs the shorter cache.
Also moves the head-wise attention gate off vLLM's CPU linear dispatch. The
gate is [2048, 8], and any linear that narrow is routed to the sgl-kernel
packed GEMM, whose fake-tensor rule assumes the packed weight keeps N in dim
0; VNNI packing does not at that size, so it reports K and torch.compile
fails tracing the gate multiply. A plain parameter with F.linear gains
nothing less -- a 2048x8 matmul has no use for packed AMX tiles -- and it
keeps the model compilable on CPU and GPU alike.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01L1ax5wYLA6XbqEL1i8L9gZ
Spark-X2.5-1.7B is an Apache-2.0 on-device model built for agentic tool
use. vLLM 0.28 has no implementation for it, so it could not be served at
all; llama.cpp already ships one, which made it the only edge engine able
to run the model.
Three traits separate it from a Llama-style decoder:
* Hybrid attention -- layer_types interleaves three 512-token sliding
layers with one full-attention layer, which is what makes the 1M-token
context affordable on a phone.
* Per-layer-type RoPE -- sliding layers rotate all 256 head dims with
theta 1e4, full layers only the first quarter with theta 5e6.
* A head-wise attention output gate -- g_proj reads the same post-norm
input as QKV and scales each head's attention output by a sigmoid.
The checkpoint also stores QKV pre-fused as a single q_k_v_proj, so
load_weights splits it before vLLM's sharded QKVParallelLinear sees it.
Verified against the official remote-code implementation on transformers
4.57.1 (the version config.json targets; it does not import on the 5.x in
our venvs). In fp32 all three scenarios match exactly -- 32/32 greedy
tokens with a max top-20 logprob difference of 2.2e-05. In bf16 the short
and the 2465-token long-context prompts still match 32/32, which is what
exercises the sliding layers; the tool-calling prompt diverges at token 23
on a near-tie, and fp32 confirms that is rounding rather than a defect.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01L1ax5wYLA6XbqEL1i8L9gZ
Noise is drawn eagerly with the request generators (same RNG consumption as the
eager loop) and passed in, so the compiled post-step is generator-free and
shape-static; used on the fp32/torchao CPU path outside stored (top-p) mode.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
In-situ parity against the bf16 model (VLLM_OMNI_PREDICTOR_PARITY_CHECK=1):
fp32 control keeps 93.8 % top-1 / 95 % top-5 / KL 0.0015; torch.ao dynamic
int8 falls to 22 % top-1 (max logit diff 7), so per-tensor activation
quantization is not acceptable as a default. Adds the ao-nohead variant
(int8 transformer body, fp32 lm heads) for measurement.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
torchao's dynamic-activation int8 is numerically wrong under torch.compile on
CPU (cosine 0.02 vs fp32; caused runaway generations), so it is not offered;
weight-only + compile is faithful but slower (78 ms vs 36 ms per frame for the
15 sub-steps), so torch.ao dynamic int8 stays the default. Parity mode now also
records top-5 overlap and KL vs the bf16 model; compiled-step equivalence test.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Measured on a Xeon 8480C (12+4 threads, 0.6B): the 15 residual-codebook sub-steps
re-ran the 5-layer predictor over the whole prefix each time (97 ms per frame of
the 134 ms talker step) and vLLM's stock sampler spent 9 ms per step in its
torch.compile'd random-sample kernel on CPU.
- code predictor: forward_cached (KV cache per layer, 2-token prefill then one
token per sub-step) and a shape-static forward_static_step (tensor position +
boolean mask) that torch.compile handles as one graph; incremental decoding
is the default on CPU (VLLM_OMNI_PREDICTOR_INCREMENTAL), optional compile
(VLLM_OMNI_PREDICTOR_COMPILE=step), optional thread cap.
- CPU fast path: dynamic int8 Linear layers (fp32 activations) for the predictor
and its lm heads (VLLM_OMNI_PREDICTOR_INT8, default on; micro-benchmark 70 ->
36 ms per frame for the 15 sub-steps); VLLM_OMNI_PREDICTOR_PARITY_CHECK=1
records top-1 agreement / max logit diff against the bf16 model in situ.
- Qwen3-TTS talker: prefer_model_sampler on CPU with a sample() that mirrors
vLLM's Sampler (logits processors + penalties, temperature, top-k/top-p,
exponential-noise sampling with per-request generators) without the compiled
kernel (VLLM_OMNI_CPU_FAST_SAMPLER, default on).
- step_stats: sampler phase timers and sample-metadata timers.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Counters model.forward_ms / model.sample_ms / model.talker_mtp_ms and
predictor.substep_ms / predictor.loop_ms (VLLM_OMNI_STEP_STATS_DIR); with
VLLM_OMNI_STEP_STATS_SYNC=1 the accelerator is synchronized around the model
timers so async kernels are attributed (attribution runs only).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01L1ax5wYLA6XbqEL1i8L9gZ
