The paged backend previously built for cublas/cuda, cpu, vulkan, sycl,
hipblas and darwin/metal. On non-CUDA the patchset's wins are inert: the
GDN fusions are gated off (patch 0030) and NVFP4 falls back to dequant,
so the backend is neutral-to-negative there (README section 4c). The
darwin grpc-server link also fails on undefined upstream server symbols,
turning CI red. Both broken and pointless off-CUDA, so ship CUDA-only.
- backend-matrix.yml: drop the hipblas, sycl f32/f16, cpu amd64/arm64,
vulkan amd64/arm64 and metal-darwin rows for this backend; keep the
four cublas rows (cuda-12, cuda-13, nvidia-l4t cuda-12 and cuda-13).
- index.yaml: meta-backend (and -development) capabilities are now
CUDA-only with default pointing at cuda12 (mirrors faster-qwen3-tts);
removed the orphaned cpu/rocm/sycl/vulkan/metal variant entries.
- Removed the now-unused darwin build script and its Makefile target /
.NOTPARALLEL entry / backend_build_darwin.yml step.
- Documented the CUDA-only build coverage in the patch README and plan.
Non-CUDA users should use the stock llama-cpp backend.
Assisted-by: Claude:opus-4.8 [Claude Code]
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
The gated-DeltaNet + SSM_CONV ops have upstream Metal/Vulkan/SYCL kernels, so the
Qwen3.6 hybrids run there (non-fused) - the earlier 'no Vulkan kernel' note was
wrong. The patchset's fusions are gated off off-CUDA, so the backend ships
CUDA-only; non-CUDA users use stock llama-cpp.
Assisted-by: Claude:opus-4.8 [Claude Code]
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
Source-only analysis of what it would take to give the gated-DeltaNet decode
fusions (0018 in-place state write-back, 0019 fused recurrent-state gather,
0021 ssm_conv_update_inplace, 0028 conv-tap gather fusion) native kernels on
the non-CUDA compute backends, so the patch-series decode win extends past
CUDA-family hardware.
Key findings:
- The base GGML_OP_GATED_DELTA_NET and GGML_OP_SSM_CONV kernels ALREADY exist
upstream on Metal, Vulkan AND SYCL (the README's no-Vulkan-kernel line is
stale). The Qwen3.6 hybrids run on all three today via the non-fused path;
Layer-2 is the decode SPEEDUP, not enabling the model to run.
- Per backend the new work is only the FUSION plumbing: redirect the GDN state
write (in-place), add the ids read, write one new conv-update kernel + its
ids variant, two tiny gather kernels, plus supports_op + op-handler + (Vulkan)
pipeline/push-constant/descriptor wiring. Builders, CPU refs, model graph and
test-backend-ops cases are shared and already done.
- Bit-exactness is feasible per backend by construction (the fusions redirect
addresses, not the f32 reduction order); test-backend-ops (backendX-vs-CPU)
is the gate.
- The 0030 name allow-list should become capability-driven (make supports_op
authoritative for the discriminated src slots).
- Ranked: ops-first PR, then Metal (highest value/effort, fixed simdgroup =
simplest bit-exactness), then SYCL (near-verbatim CUDA mirror, cheapest to
author), then Vulkan (widest hardware reach but the shader-gen + variant
matrix + subgroup variance make it the capstone).
Assisted-by: Claude:opus-4.8 [Claude Code]
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
Section 4(c): real Apple M4/Metal numbers (Qwen3-8B Q4_K_M, stock vs patched) -
patchset is neutral-to-slightly-negative on Metal (the in-kernel block-table read
is CUDA-only; NVFP4/GDN-fusions inert), so prefer stock llama-cpp on Apple Silicon.
Vulkan: same picture, worse (no upstream GDN op). Section 6: cross-backend learnings
+ upstream candidates (the GDN decode-plumbing fusions are the portable, bit-exact,
CPU-mirrored win worth upstreaming).
Assisted-by: Claude:opus-4.8 [Claude Code]
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
Move ALL paged-attention content out of the stock backend/cpp/llama-cpp
backend and into backend/cpp/llama-cpp-localai-paged, so the stock backend is
pure upstream llama.cpp and the paged backend owns and applies its own vendored
patch series.
- Delete the dead early-exploration scaffold backend/cpp/llama-cpp/paged/
(kernel/w4a16 Marlin scaffold, standalone paged_kv_manager, bench/loadgen,
its own 0001-0002 patches, dense-era design docs, tests). Zero references
repo-wide.
- Move backend/cpp/llama-cpp/patches/ (the 28-patch paged series + paged/README
+ 3 operational docs, plus the kernel/ scaffold patch and the top-level paged
README/BENCHMARKS) to backend/cpp/llama-cpp-localai-paged/patches/. The stock
backend keeps no patches/ dir; it had no non-paged base patches.
- Purify the stock backend: remove the LLAMA_PAGED make variable, the
patches/paged apply loop, and the LLAMA_PAGED passthrough to prepare.sh;
remove the paged-series handling from prepare.sh. The stock llama.cpp target
now only clones the pin and applies its own (currently empty) base patches/
series. The runtime paged option hooks in the shared grpc-server.cpp are
untouched (inert without the patches).
- The paged backend's Makefile now applies its OWN patches/paged/0*.patch onto
each freshly cloned tree via strict git apply (apply-paged-patches), after the
copied stock infra clones the pin and applies base patches.
- Repoint every reference to the old patches/paged path: the upstream canary
workflow + apply script, bump_deps.yaml, gallery/index.yaml, the docs,
backend/index.yaml, backend-matrix.yml, the top-level Makefile comments, and
the moved PIN_SYNC / README docs. Drop the now-removed LLAMA_PAGED=on
build-toggle from comments.
Verified: the full 28-patch series applies strict-clean (git apply, exit 0) to
a clean ggml-org/llama.cpp checkout at the pinned c299a92c, and the repointed
canary apply script resolves and applies the series end to end.
Assisted-by: Claude:opus-4.8 [Claude Code]
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
