Richard Palethorpe 8e43842175 feat(vllm, distributed): tensor parallel distributed workers (#9612)
* feat(vllm): build vllm from source for Intel XPU

Upstream publishes no XPU wheels for vllm. The Intel profile was
silently picking up a non-XPU wheel that imported but errored at
engine init, and several runtime deps (pillow, charset-normalizer,
chardet) were missing on Intel -- backend.py crashed at import time
before the gRPC server came up.

Switch the Intel profile to upstream's documented from-source
procedure (docs/getting_started/installation/gpu.xpu.inc.md in
vllm-project/vllm):

  - Bump portable Python to 3.12 -- vllm-xpu-kernels ships only a
    cp312 wheel.
  - Source /opt/intel/oneapi/setvars.sh so vllm's CMake build sees
    the dpcpp/sycl compiler from the oneapi-basekit base image.
  - Hide requirements-intel-after.txt during installRequirements
    (it used to 'pip install vllm'); install vllm's deps from a
    fresh git clone of vllm via 'uv pip install -r
    requirements/xpu.txt', swap stock triton for
    triton-xpu==3.7.0, then 'VLLM_TARGET_DEVICE=xpu uv pip install
    --no-deps .'.
  - requirements-intel.txt trimmed to LocalAI's direct deps
    (accelerate / transformers / bitsandbytes); torch-xpu, vllm,
    vllm_xpu_kernels and the rest come from upstream's xpu.txt
    during the source build.
  - requirements.txt: add pillow + charset-normalizer + chardet --
    used by backend.py and missing on the Intel install profile.
  - run.sh: 'set -x' so backend startup is visible in container
    logs (the gRPC startup error path was previously opaque).

Also adds a one-line docs example for engine_args.attention_backend
under the vLLM section, since older XE-HPG GPUs (e.g. Arc A770)
need TRITON_ATTN to bypass the cutlass path in vllm_xpu_kernels.

Tested end-to-end on an Intel Arc A770 with Qwen2.5-0.5B-Instruct
via LocalAI's /v1/chat/completions.

Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-4-7 [Claude Code]
Signed-off-by: Richard Palethorpe <io@richiejp.com>

* feat(vllm): add multi-node data-parallel follower worker

vLLM v1's multi-node story is one process per node sharing a DP
coordinator over ZMQ -- the head runs the API server with
data_parallel_size > 1 and followers run `vllm serve --headless ...`
with matching topology. Today LocalAI can already configure DP on the
head via the engine_args YAML map, but there's no way to bring up the
follower nodes -- so the head sits waiting for ranks that never
handshake.

Add `local-ai p2p-worker vllm`, mirroring MLXDistributed's structural
precedent (operator-launched, static config, no NATS placement). The
worker:

  - Optionally self-registers with the frontend as an agent-type node
    tagged `node.role=vllm-follower` so it's visible in the admin UI
    and operators can scope ordinary models away via inverse
    selectors.
  - Resolves the platform-specific vllm backend via the gallery's
    "vllm" meta-entry (cuda*, intel-vllm, rocm-vllm, ...).
  - Runs vLLM as a child process so the heartbeat goroutine survives
    until vLLM exits; forwards SIGINT/SIGTERM so vLLM can clean up its
    ZMQ sockets before we tear down.
  - Validates --headless + --start-rank 0 is rejected (rank 0 is the
    head and must serve the API).

Backend run.sh dispatches `serve` as the first arg to vllm's own CLI
instead of LocalAI's backend.py gRPC server -- the follower speaks
ZMQ directly to the head, there is no LocalAI gRPC on the follower
side. Single-node usage is unchanged.

Generalises the gallery resolution helper into findBackendPath()
shared by MLX and vLLM workers; extracts ParseNodeLabels for the
comma-separated label parsing both use.

Ships with two compose recipes (`docker-compose.vllm-multinode.yaml`
for NVIDIA, `docker-compose.vllm-multinode.intel.yaml` for Intel
XPU/xccl) plus `tests/e2e/vllm-multinode/smoke.sh`. Both vendors are
supported (NCCL for CUDA/ROCm, xccl for XPU) but mixed-vendor DP is
not -- PyTorch's process group requires every rank to use the same
collective backend, and NCCL/xccl/gloo don't interoperate.

Out of scope (deferred): SmartRouter-driven placement of follower
ranks via NATS backend.install events, follower log streaming through
/api/backend-logs, tensor-parallel across nodes, disaggregated
prefill via KVTransferConfig.

Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-4-7 [Claude Code]
Signed-off-by: Richard Palethorpe <io@richiejp.com>

* test(vllm): CPU-only end-to-end test for multi-node DP

Adds tests/e2e/vllm-multinode/, a Ginkgo + testcontainers-go suite
that brings up a head + headless follower from the locally-built
local-ai:tests image, bind-mounts the cpu-vllm backend extracted by
make extract-backend-vllm so it's seen as a system backend (no gallery
fetch, no registry server), and asserts a chat completion across both
DP ranks. New `make test-e2e-vllm-multinode` target wires the docker
build, backend extract, and ginkgo run together; BuildKit caches both
images so re-runs only rebuild what changed. Tagged Label("VLLMMultinode")
so the existing distributed suite isn't pulled along.

Two pre-existing bugs surfaced by the test:

1. extract-backend-% (Makefile) failed for every backend, because all
   backend images end with `FROM scratch` and `docker create` rejects
   an image with no CMD/ENTRYPOINT. Fixed by passing
   --entrypoint=/run.sh -- the container is never started, only
   docker-cp'd, so the path doesn't have to exist; we just need
   anything that satisfies the daemon's create-time validation.

2. backend/python/vllm/run.sh's `serve` shortcut for the multi-node DP
   follower exec'd ${EDIR}/venv/bin/vllm directly, but uv bakes an
   absolute build-time shebang (`#!/vllm/venv/bin/python3`) that no
   longer resolves once the backend is relocated to BackendsPath.
   _makeVenvPortable's shebang rewriter only matches paths that
   already point at ${EDIR}, so the original shebang slips through
   unchanged. Fixed by exec-ing ${EDIR}/venv/bin/python with the script
   as an argument -- Python ignores the script's shebang in that case.

The test fixture caps memory aggressively (max_model_len=512,
VLLM_CPU_KVCACHE_SPACE=1, TORCH_COMPILE_DISABLE=1) so two CPU engines
fit on a 32 GB box. TORCH_COMPILE_DISABLE is currently mandatory for
cpu-vllm: torch._inductor's CPU-ISA probe runs even with
enforce_eager=True and needs g++ on PATH, which the LocalAI runtime
image doesn't ship -- to be addressed in a follow-up that bundles a
toolchain in the cpu-vllm backend.

Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-4-7 [Claude Code]
Signed-off-by: Richard Palethorpe <io@richiejp.com>

* feat(vllm): bundle a g++ toolchain in the cpu-vllm backend image

torch._inductor's CPU-ISA probe (`cpu_model_runner.py:65 "Warming up
model for the compilation"`) shells out to `g++` at vllm engine
startup, regardless of `enforce_eager=True` -- the eager flag only
disables CUDA graphs, not inductor's first-batch warmup. The LocalAI
CPU runtime image (Dockerfile, unconditional apt list) does not ship
build-essential, and the cpu-vllm backend image is `FROM scratch`,
so any non-trivial inference on cpu-vllm crashes with:

  torch._inductor.exc.InductorError:
    InvalidCxxCompiler: No working C++ compiler found in
    torch._inductor.config.cpp.cxx: (None, 'g++')

Bundling the toolchain in the CPU runtime image would bloat every
non-vllm-CPU deployment and force a single GCC version on backends
that may want clang or a different version. So this lives in the
backend, gated to BUILD_TYPE=='' (the CPU profile).

`package.sh` snapshots g++ + binutils + cc1plus + libstdc++ + libc6
(runtime + dev) + the math libs cc1plus links (libisl/libmpc/libmpfr/
libjansson) into ${BACKEND}/toolchain/, mirroring /usr/... layout. The
unversioned binaries on Debian/Ubuntu are symlink chains pointing into
multiarch packages (`g++` -> `g++-13` -> `x86_64-linux-gnu-g++-13`,
the latter in `g++-13-x86-64-linux-gnu`), so the package list resolves
both the version and the arch-triplet variant. Symlinks /lib ->
usr/lib and /lib64 -> usr/lib64 are recreated under the toolchain
root because Ubuntu's UsrMerge keeps them at /, and ld scripts
(`libc.so`, `libm.so`) hardcode `/lib/...` paths that --sysroot
re-roots into the toolchain.

The unversioned `g++`/`gcc`/`cpp` symlinks are replaced with wrapper
shell scripts that resolve their own location at runtime and pass
`--sysroot=<toolchain>` and `-B <toolchain>/usr/lib/gcc/<triplet>/<ver>/`
to the underlying versioned binary. That's how torch's bare `g++ foo.cpp
-o foo` invocation finds cc1plus (-B), system headers (--sysroot), and
the bundled libstdc++ (--sysroot, --sysroot is recursive into linker).

`run.sh` adds the toolchain bin dir to PATH and the toolchain's
shared-lib dir to LD_LIBRARY_PATH -- everything else (header search,
linker search, executable search) is encapsulated in the wrappers.
No-op for non-CPU builds, the dir doesn't exist there.

The cpu-vllm image grows by ~217 MB. Tradeoff is acceptable -- cpu-vllm
is already a niche profile (few users compared to GPU vllm) and the
alternative is a backend that crashes at first inference unless the
operator manually sets TORCH_COMPILE_DISABLE=1, which silently disables
all torch.compile optimizations.

Drops `TORCH_COMPILE_DISABLE=1` from tests/e2e/vllm-multinode -- the
smoke now exercises the real compile path through the bundled toolchain.
Test runtime is +20s for the warmup compile, still <90s end to end.

Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-4-7 [Claude Code]
Signed-off-by: Richard Palethorpe <io@richiejp.com>

* fix(vllm): scope jetson-ai-lab index to L4T-specific wheels via pyproject.toml

The L4T arm64 build resolves dependencies through pypi.jetson-ai-lab.io,
which hosts the L4T-specific torch / vllm / flash-attn wheels but also
transparently proxies the rest of PyPI through `/+f/<sha>/<filename>`
URLs. With `--extra-index-url` + `--index-strategy=unsafe-best-match`
uv would pick those proxy URLs for ordinary PyPI packages —
anthropic/openai/propcache/annotated-types — and fail when the proxy
503s. Master is hitting the same bug on its own l4t-vllm matrix entry.

Switch the l4t13 install path to a pyproject.toml that marks the
jetson-ai-lab index `explicit = true` and pins only torch, torchvision,
torchaudio, flash-attn, and vllm to it via [tool.uv.sources]. uv won't
consult the L4T mirror for anything else, so transitive deps fall back
to PyPI as the default index — no exposure to the proxy 503s.

`uv pip install -r requirements.txt` ignores [tool.uv.sources], so the
l4t13 branch in install.sh now invokes `uv pip install --requirement
pyproject.toml` directly, replacing the old requirements-l4t13*.txt
files. Other BUILD_PROFILEs continue using libbackend.sh's
installRequirements and never read pyproject.toml.

Local resolution test (x86_64, dry-run) confirms uv hits the L4T
index for torch and falls through to PyPI for everything else.

Assisted-by: claude-code:claude-opus-4-7-1m [Read] [Edit] [Bash] [Write]
Signed-off-by: Richard Palethorpe <io@richiejp.com>

---------

Signed-off-by: Richard Palethorpe <io@richiejp.com>
2026-05-06 00:22:50 +02:00
2026-04-08 19:23:16 +02:00
2025-02-15 18:17:15 +01:00
2023-05-04 15:01:29 +02:00




LocalAI stars LocalAI License

Follow LocalAI_API Join LocalAI Discord Community

mudler%2FLocalAI | Trendshift

LocalAI is the open-source AI engine. Run any model - LLMs, vision, voice, image, video - on any hardware. No GPU required.

  • Drop-in API compatibility — OpenAI, Anthropic, ElevenLabs APIs
  • 36+ backends — llama.cpp, vLLM, transformers, whisper, diffusers, MLX...
  • Any hardware — NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, Apple Silicon, Vulkan, or CPU-only
  • Multi-user ready — API key auth, user quotas, role-based access
  • Built-in AI agents — autonomous agents with tool use, RAG, MCP, and skills
  • Privacy-first — your data never leaves your infrastructure

Created by Ettore Di Giacinto and maintained by the LocalAI team.

📖 Documentation | 💬 Discord | 💻 Quickstart | 🖼️ Models | FAQ

Guided tour

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/08cbb692-57da-48f7-963d-2e7b43883c18

Click to see more!

User and auth

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/228fa9ad-81a3-4d43-bfb9-31557e14a36c

Agents

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/6270b331-e21d-4087-a540-6290006b381a

Usage metrics per user

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/cbb03379-23b4-4e3d-bd26-d152f057007f

Fine-tuning and Quantization

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/5ba4ace9-d3df-4795-b7d4-b0b404ea71ee

WebRTC

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/ed88e34c-fed3-4b83-8a67-4716a9feeb7b

Quickstart

macOS

Download LocalAI for macOS

Note: The DMG is not signed by Apple. After installing, run: sudo xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/LocalAI.app. See #6268 for details.

Containers (Docker, podman, ...)

Already ran LocalAI before? Use docker start -i local-ai to restart an existing container.

CPU only:

docker run -ti --name local-ai -p 8080:8080 localai/localai:latest

NVIDIA GPU:

# CUDA 13
docker run -ti --name local-ai -p 8080:8080 --gpus all localai/localai:latest-gpu-nvidia-cuda-13

# CUDA 12
docker run -ti --name local-ai -p 8080:8080 --gpus all localai/localai:latest-gpu-nvidia-cuda-12

# NVIDIA Jetson ARM64 (CUDA 12, for AGX Orin and similar)
docker run -ti --name local-ai -p 8080:8080 --gpus all localai/localai:latest-nvidia-l4t-arm64

# NVIDIA Jetson ARM64 (CUDA 13, for DGX Spark)
docker run -ti --name local-ai -p 8080:8080 --gpus all localai/localai:latest-nvidia-l4t-arm64-cuda-13

AMD GPU (ROCm):

docker run -ti --name local-ai -p 8080:8080 --device=/dev/kfd --device=/dev/dri --group-add=video localai/localai:latest-gpu-hipblas

Intel GPU (oneAPI):

docker run -ti --name local-ai -p 8080:8080 --device=/dev/dri/card1 --device=/dev/dri/renderD128 localai/localai:latest-gpu-intel

Vulkan GPU:

docker run -ti --name local-ai -p 8080:8080 localai/localai:latest-gpu-vulkan

Loading models

# From the model gallery (see available models with `local-ai models list` or at https://models.localai.io)
local-ai run llama-3.2-1b-instruct:q4_k_m
# From Huggingface
local-ai run huggingface://TheBloke/phi-2-GGUF/phi-2.Q8_0.gguf
# From the Ollama OCI registry
local-ai run ollama://gemma:2b
# From a YAML config
local-ai run https://gist.githubusercontent.com/.../phi-2.yaml
# From a standard OCI registry (e.g., Docker Hub)
local-ai run oci://localai/phi-2:latest

Automatic Backend Detection: LocalAI automatically detects your GPU capabilities and downloads the appropriate backend. For advanced options, see GPU Acceleration.

For more details, see the Getting Started guide.

Latest News

For older news and full release notes, see GitHub Releases and the News page.

Features

Supported Backends & Acceleration

LocalAI supports 36+ backends including llama.cpp, vLLM, transformers, whisper.cpp, diffusers, MLX, MLX-VLM, and many more. Hardware acceleration is available for NVIDIA (CUDA 12/13), AMD (ROCm), Intel (oneAPI/SYCL), Apple Silicon (Metal), Vulkan, and NVIDIA Jetson (L4T). All backends can be installed on-the-fly from the Backend Gallery.

See the full Backend & Model Compatibility Table and GPU Acceleration guide.

Resources

Team

LocalAI is maintained by a small team of humans, together with the wider community of contributors.

A huge thank you to everyone who contributes code, reviews PRs, files issues, and helps users in Discord — LocalAI is a community-driven project and wouldn't exist without you. See the full contributors list.

Citation

If you utilize this repository, data in a downstream project, please consider citing it with:

@misc{localai,
  author = {Ettore Di Giacinto},
  title = {LocalAI: The free, Open source OpenAI alternative},
  year = {2023},
  publisher = {GitHub},
  journal = {GitHub repository},
  howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/go-skynet/LocalAI}},

Sponsors

Do you find LocalAI useful?

Support the project by becoming a backer or sponsor. Your logo will show up here with a link to your website.

A huge thank you to our generous sponsors who support this project covering CI expenses, and our Sponsor list:


Individual sponsors

A special thanks to individual sponsors, a full list is on GitHub and buymeacoffee. Special shout out to drikster80 for being generous. Thank you everyone!

Star history

LocalAI Star history Chart

License

LocalAI is a community-driven project created by Ettore Di Giacinto and maintained by the LocalAI team.

MIT - Author Ettore Di Giacinto mudler@localai.io

Acknowledgements

LocalAI couldn't have been built without the help of great software already available from the community. Thank you!

Contributors

This is a community project, a special thanks to our contributors!

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