Files
LocalAI/backend/cpp
Ettore Di Giacinto d9d846e04b feat(paged): patch 0003 gather-read - Gate 0 green, token-identical, additive
Implements the paged-attention gather-read (the real engine compute): attention
reads ONLY a sequence's used cells by gathering K, V and the kq_mask by the
non-empty-cell index list before build_attn_mha. Verified token-identical to stock
greedy generation, 9/9 across 3 prompts x {32,96,128} tokens on Qwen3-0.6B, with
n_gather=71 < n_kv=256 confirming real compaction (not an identity no-op).

Built in the additive "hook, don't edit" form: all logic in new src/paged-attn.{h,cpp}
(an llm_graph_input_i gather-index subclass + the K/V/mask gather), hooked by one line
in build_attn + two thin accessors on llama_kv_cache_context + one CMake line. No edit
to llm_graph_input_attn_kv or llama-graph.h. 216 insertions; default-off behind
LLAMA_KV_PAGED so stock path stays byte-identical.

Key correctness finding: get_gather_idxs emits cells sorted by token position. CPU
flash-attn's online softmax reduces cells in physical-array order and is FP-order-
sensitive, so 0002's scattered placement alone (full-window read) diverges from stock
past the first block; the position-sorted gather reproduces stock's exact reduction
order -> bit-identical. So 0003 is what makes paged placement token-identical under
flash-attn.

Verified on a dev tree at the pin (0001+0002+0003 on branch paged); not pushed.

Assisted-by: Claude:opus-4.8 [Claude Code]
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
2026-06-22 08:26:46 +00:00
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