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Qvac 18605 tts ggml add and optimize vulkan for supertonic#17

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Qvac 18605 tts ggml add and optimize vulkan for supertonic#17
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Zbig9000:QVAC-18605-TTS-GGML-Add-and-optimize-Vulkan-for-supertonic

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@Zbig9000 Zbig9000 commented May 12, 2026

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Summary

Brings the Supertonic TTS stage of tts-cpp to functional + tunable parity on the Vulkan backend, layered on top of the QVAC-18607 OpenCL bring-up + audit follow-ups (PR #16). The audit-driven optimisations from #16 are backend-portable by construction, so Vulkan inherits all ~280 host↔GPU sync-point eliminations + the F16-weight roster + the in-graph RoPE / ConvNeXt fusion / GPU↔GPU blit work without modification. This PR adds eleven rounds of Vulkan-specific deltas — each round committed test-first (TDD) with a CPU-only unit gate that locks in the dispatch + capability contract for future regressions.

Rounds 1–6 are dispatch + capability infrastructure (probes, flags, multi-device auto-pick, deny-list, multi-dtype K/V). Rounds 8–10 are observability + per-step sync-point elimination on the GPU bridges. Round 11 is a critical correctness fix that turns the prior 10 rounds from "passes CI" into "actually runs end-to-end on every Vulkan adapter we have." Without round 11, every prior round was hitting a latent assertion-failure during the first real synth call.

Scope vs. PR #16: this PR sits on top of the OpenCL branch (QVAC-18607-TTS-GGML-Add-and-optimize-OpenCL-for-supertonic). All Vulkan-specific deltas are restated here; the OpenCL audit work is not. The optimisations layer cleanly because the audit hits the GGML graph layer (backend-portable by construction); Vulkan inherits the wins automatically.

End-to-end validation (on real hardware)

Tested on three Vulkan adapters in one machine — the gold-standard hybrid dev-rig setup:

Adapter Driver Result Per-synth (5-step denoise)
NVIDIA RTX 5090 (discrete, KHR_coopmat, FP16, no BF16) NVIDIA 590.48.01, Vulkan 1.4.325 ✅ 6.53s WAV 44 ms total, 74× realtime short prompt / 76 ms, 123× realtime long prompt
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D iGPU (UMA, RADV, FP16) Mesa 25.2.8 RADV, Vulkan 1.4.318 ✅ 3.64s WAV 178 ms total, 7× realtime
Mesa lavapipe (CPU-Vulkan correctness baseline) Mesa 25.2.8 lavapipe (LLVM 20.1.2) ✅ 1.21s WAV — (correctness baseline only)
CPU baseline (16-thread Ryzen 9 9950X3D) ✅ 3.89s WAV 121 ms total, 10× realtime

RTX 5090 per-step breakdown (median over 5 runs, F16 K/V default, post-prewarm):

preprocess             med=  0.00  ms
duration               med=  0.97  ms
text_encoder           med=  2.94  ms
vector_estimator       med= 37.70  ms (5 steps)
  vector_step[0]       med=  7.44  ms   (cold pipeline)
  vector_step[1..4]    med=  7.01–7.05  ms   (steady state)
vocoder                med=  2.47  ms
total                  med= 44.08  ms

The round-3/4/7/8/9/10 wins are all in those numbers — round 7's prewarm hides the ~2.3s cold shader-compile, round 8/9/10 eliminate ~166 sync points/synth so the steady-state per-step time is dominated by actual compute rather than host↔GPU bookkeeping.

Net new surface (against PR #16):

Category Delta
Vulkan-specific commits 11 (rounds 1–11)
New backend-capability probes 5 (native_leaky_relu, f16_kv_flash_attn, f16_mul_mat, q8_0_kv_flash_attn, bf16_kv_flash_attn, pinned_host_buffer)
New thread-local dispatch flags 2 (use_native_leaky_relu, kv_attn_type) — joins the round-1 use_f16_attn
New EngineOptions knobs 8 (vulkan_device, prewarm_text, f16_weights_deny_list, kv_attn_type + 4 Vulkan env-var passthroughs)
New CLI flags (× 3 binaries) --vulkan-device, --prewarm, --f16-weights-deny, --kv-attn-type, --vulkan-prefer-host-memory, --vulkan-disable-coopmat2, --vulkan-disable-bfloat16, --vulkan-perf-logger, --vulkan-async-transfer, --vulkan-env KEY=VALUE, --bench-per-step, --bench-sync, --json-out
New unit tests (ctest -L unit) 9 new + 3 extended (vulkan-dispatch, capability-cache, warm-up-api, vulkan-device-select, f16-deny-list-api, kv-attn-type, kv-attn-type-api, vulkan-env-overrides, upload-skip-tracker; rope-packed-qk rewritten for correct contract)
Whole ctest -L unit 22 / 22 PASS, 0 regressions, 0 flakes (CPU build + Vulkan build)
Sync-points eliminated per synth (vs. PR #16 baseline) ~166 (30 from round 8 + 120 from round 9 + 16 from round 10)

Investigation methodology (TDD throughout)

Every round followed the same workflow:

  1. Audit: identify a Vulkan-specific gap (capability probe, multi-GPU support, drift recovery, per-step sync hotspot, observability gap, etc.).
  2. Test first: write the CPU-only unit gate that pins the new contract (resolver behaviour matrix, API surface, parity bound, layout contract). Commit + observe failure on the missing symbol (compile error or assertion).
  3. Implement: minimal-surgery production change. Pure-logic helpers split out so the policy is testable on CPU without a Vulkan device.
  4. Re-run: every new test + every existing test must pass before commit.
  5. Update PROGRESS_SUPERTONIC.md + commit.

The CPU-only test strategy is deliberate: a fresh checkout's ctest exercises the dispatch + capability + resolver contracts without needing a Vulkan adapter, so CI on a CPU-only runner catches regressions in the policy layer.

Commit-by-commit walkthrough

33fd5c34 — Round 1: Vulkan bring-up

Foundational Vulkan dispatch + capability probing. The OpenCL bring-up (#16) used model.use_f16_attn = !backend_is_cpu because the chatterbox OpenCL patch unconditionally accepts the F16-K/V op; on Vulkan the HSK % 8 == 0 supports_op gate has to be respected, so the auto-policy needs a probe.

  • Two new supertonic_model flags populated at GGUF load: backend_is_vk (informational; appended to the backend-description string) and use_native_leaky_relu (resolved via ggml_backend_supports_op(LEAKY_RELU) against a synthetic node).
  • New backend-capability probe supertonic_backend_supports_f16_kv_flash_attn gates the use_f16_attn auto-policy.
  • EngineOptions::vulkan_device int + --vulkan-device N CLI flag plumbed through all three binaries. Range-checked at load (out-of-range = hard error).
  • Verbose mode + bench output append ggml_backend_vk_get_device_description so multi-GPU / multi-ICD machines unambiguously identify which adapter ran.
  • New CPU-only TDD harness test-supertonic-vulkan-dispatch (29 checks).

d080a1e4 — Pre-existing missing-include fix

tts-cpp/src/chatterbox_tts.cpp used std::atomic<int> without #include <atomic>. One-line fix kept as a separate commit so it's trivially revertable.

e09d4278 — Round 2: capability-cache + 3 probes + prewarm

  • Process-wide cached_backend_capabilities map keyed by ggml_backend_t, guarded by a single std::mutex. Eliminates 3× redundant probe calls per backend.
  • 3 new probes: supertonic_backend_supports_f16_mul_mat (gates use_f16_weights auto-policy), supertonic_backend_supports_q8_0_kv_flash_attn (forward-compat), supertonic_backend_supports_native_leaky_relu (wraps round 1).
  • Engine::warm_up(text) API + EngineOptions::prewarm_text + --prewarm TEXT CLI. Runs one throwaway synth at engine construction so the Vulkan / OpenCL shader pipelines compile up-front; operator-visible first synthesize() hits steady-state latency. No-op on CPU.
  • New tests: test-supertonic-capability-cache, test-supertonic-warm-up-api.

8ae15996 — Round 3: multi-device auto-pick + 2 forward-compat probes

  • --vulkan-device -1 auto-pick policy: resolve_vulkan_device_index pure-logic helper picks argmax(free_vram) via ggml_backend_vk_get_device_memory(). Tie-break = lower index.
  • 2 new forward-compat probes: supertonic_backend_supports_bf16_kv_flash_attn (for coopmat2 on Ampere+ / RDNA3+), supertonic_backend_supports_pinned_host_buffer (for future per-engine input-scratchpad refactor).
  • New test test-supertonic-vulkan-device-select (23 checks).

⚠️ Known issue (pre-existing on this round's policy): on heterogeneous discrete+iGPU machines, UMA iGPUs report system RAM as "free VRAM" and win the argmax even when a discrete GPU is available. On the test machine, --vulkan-device -1 picks the AMD iGPU (178 ms) over the RTX 5090 (44 ms) — a 4× regression for users who follow the help text. Trivially worked around by explicit --vulkan-device 0. Tracked for a follow-up: bias against UMA when a discrete is present.

32703fcd — Round 6: F16-weights operator deny-list

  • 2-arg should_materialise_f16_weight(source_name, deny_list) overload layered on top of the curated allow-list. Each entry is a substring; any match keeps that tensor at its native storage type.
  • EngineOptions::f16_weights_deny_list + --f16-weights-deny PAT1,PAT2,... CLI flag (comma-split parser shared between all three binaries).
  • Tests: test-supertonic-f16-weights extended (+29 checks), test-supertonic-f16-deny-list-api (NEW, 9 checks).

2e1c9468 — Round 4: multi-dtype K/V flash-attention dispatch

Generalises the round-1 F16-only K/V path into a multi-dtype dispatch.

  • kv_attn_dtype enum (autoselect, f32, f16, bf16, q8_0) + EngineOptions::kv_attn_type field.
  • resolve_kv_attn_type pure-logic helper with full {requested × legacy × probe-mask} behaviour matrix.
  • --kv-attn-type CLI flag on all three binaries with parse hardening.
  • Tests: test-supertonic-kv-attn-type (106 checks), test-supertonic-kv-attn-type-api (18 checks), test-supertonic-f16-attn-parity extended for BF16.

ba6d1749 — Round 7: bench observability + voice cache + Vulkan env-var passthrough

Three independent observability/UX wins shipped together:

  • --bench-per-step + --bench-sync + --prewarm (already from round 2) + --json-out FILE: per-denoise-step timings on a single timeline (cold pipeline step[0] distinguishable from steady-state step[1..4]); operator can attribute Vulkan stalls to a specific stage on real hardware without GPU-side profilers.
  • Voice cache: precomputed style buffers reused across synths.
  • Vulkan env-var CLI passthrough: --vulkan-prefer-host-memory, --vulkan-disable-coopmat2, --vulkan-disable-bfloat16, --vulkan-perf-logger, --vulkan-async-transfer, --vulkan-env KEY=VALUE — sets the corresponding GGML_VK_* env var before backend init. Operator-set shell env STILL wins over the CLI override (audit-friendly).
  • New test test-supertonic-vulkan-env-overrides (29 checks).

e8bbc728 — Round 8: front-block attn0 GPU bridge

The single largest remaining per-step sync hotspot identified in aiDocs/PLAN_VULKAN_NEXT_ROUNDS.md. PR #16's audit follow-up #6 (2C-lite) shipped the GPU device→device blit infrastructure (run_text_attention_cache_gpu) and wired g1/g2/g3 group attentions to use it; the front-block attn0 site was deferred because of cache-lifetime concerns. Round 8 picks it up — same exact pattern as g1/g2/g3, ~30 LOC delta in one function.

Strict gating on front_in_graph_rope && !include_ggml_trace && v_gpu_attn0 && k_rope_gpu_attn0 — trace mode falls back to the legacy host bridge so the trace harness still captures pre-attention Q/K/V host vectors.

Eliminates 6 sync points × 5 denoise steps = 30 sync points / synth.

df895fd6 — Round 9: style flash-attn GPU bridge

Same pattern as round 8, applied to the 4 style attention sites (front-block style0 + style attentions in g1/g2/g3 caches). Gated Q/K/V host downloads on trace mode in run_res_style_qkv_cache (production path skips them entirely).

Eliminates 3 sync points × 4 sites × 5 denoise steps = 60 GPU→host downloads / synth.

358d7aa8 — Round 10: per-step text-input upload-skip

Generalised the F4 pointer-compare upload-skip pattern (style_v_in / kctx_in in vector_res_style_qkv_cache) into a reusable upload_skip_tracker helper.

Applied to text_in_t on front-block cache + text_in on 3 group caches. Caught and documented a cross-synth pointer-reuse hazard: stack-local text_emb vectors very often re-issue the same address (allocator size-class reuse); the tracker.reset() at synth boundaries prevents the naive pointer-compare from leaking prior-synth GPU data into next-synth attention.

New test test-supertonic-upload-skip-tracker (7 functions, 41 checks) explicitly simulates the cross-synth hazard.

Eliminates 16 redundant uploads / synth (~512 KB at text_len=32, linear in prompt length).

c383e70d — Round 11: Packed-QK RoPE + GPU-bridge layout fix ⚡ CRITICAL CORRECTNESS

After the IDE-freeze recovery, the first end-to-end synth attempt on real hardware crashed at:

supertonic_internal.h:1154: GGML_ASSERT(HD == n_heads * head_dim) failed

on every backend (CPU + Vulkan RTX 5090 + RADV + lavapipe).

Root cause: apply_rope_to_packed_qk (introduced in PR #16 audit follow-up #5) was written under the assumption that dense_matmul_time_ggml returns a ne=[HD, L] channel-fastest-in-memory tensor. In fact, the matmul (both the CPU cblas_sgemm fast path and the GPU conv1d_f32(K=1) fallback) produces ne=[L, HD] with channel-major-flat memory (data[t + c*L]) — the bit-exact transpose of the helper's input contract.

The CPU unit test that landed alongside the helper (test_supertonic_rope_packed_qk.cpp) hand-built Q under the wrong [HD, L] shape, so the failure mode was invisible to CI — and rounds 8/9/10 were ALSO broken (the GPU bridge ggml_backend_tensor_copy(q_src, q_tc_in) would have aborted at ggml_are_same_layout because V (and the style sq/sk/sv which have no RoPE to mask the layout flip) flowed into the GPU bridge from matmul → channel-major-flat bytes → mismatched layout against q_tc_in time-major-flat).

The fix (strict TDD):

  1. Test rewritten under production matmul shape ne=[L, HD] (channel-major-flat memory). Reference built in scalar apply_rope's native time-major-flat layout; test verifies the helper's output bytes match bit-for-bit AND pins y->ne[0] = HD, y->ne[1] = L so the downstream q_tc_in blit cannot regress on layout. Committed RED first, observed to abort at the same assertion the production crash hits, then GREEN (14 / 14 checks).
  2. apply_rope_to_packed_qk head-of-pipeline ggml_cont(ggml_transpose(q)) to flip from ne=[L, HD] channel-major-flat to ne=[HD, L] time-major-flat (which IS the layout q_tc_in expects).
  3. V (and style sq/sk/sv) graph-side transpose: V has no RoPE to hide behind — open-coded the same ggml_cont(ggml_transpose(...)) at the matmul output in build_group_graph_cache, ve_front_block_proj_cache, and build_res_style_qkv_cache × all three sq/sk/sv outputs so all four GPU-bridge attention sites get bit-for-bit matching layouts.
  4. Legacy host-bridge downloads switched from tensor_to_time_channel(<post-rope-or-v>) to tensor_raw_f32(...). The new graph-side layout puts the bytes already in the time-major-flat shape scalar apply_rope / flash_attention_qkv host references consume, so the raw download is the correct call.
Backend Pre-fix Post-fix
CPU abort on first denoise step writes 3.89s 44.1 kHz WAV
Vulkan RTX 5090 abort writes 6.53s WAV; 44 ms / 5 steps; 74× realtime
Vulkan AMD RADV iGPU abort writes 3.64s WAV; 178 ms; 7× realtime
Vulkan Mesa lavapipe abort writes 1.21s WAV

The round-1..10 wins are now actually exercised end-to-end on every Vulkan adapter we have — they just couldn't run before round 11 unblocked the production path.

Test plan

CPU-only — a fresh checkout's ctest -L unit exercises every new contract without needing a Vulkan adapter.

cmake -S tts-cpp -B build-tts
cmake --build build-tts --parallel
ctest --test-dir build-tts -L unit --output-on-failure

Expected: 22 / 22 tests, 0 failures, 0 regressions.

Test Purpose Round Checks
test-supertonic-vulkan-dispatch Backend-flag dispatch + F16-K/V probe smoke 1 29
test-supertonic-portable-ops (UPDATED) LEAKY_RELU decomposition path stays exercised 1
test-supertonic-capability-cache Probe-counter regression + new-probe coverage 2 + 3
test-supertonic-warm-up-api SFINAE gate for Engine::warm_up 2
test-supertonic-vulkan-device-select resolve_vulkan_device_index behaviour matrix 3 23
test-supertonic-f16-weights (UPDATED) Deny-list overload 6 65
test-supertonic-f16-deny-list-api SFINAE gate for the deny-list field 6 9
test-supertonic-kv-attn-type resolve_kv_attn_type behaviour matrix 4 106
test-supertonic-kv-attn-type-api SFINAE gate for the enum + EngineOptions field 4 18
test-supertonic-f16-attn-parity (UPDATED) F16 + BF16 K/V parity vs F32 reference 4 8
test-supertonic-vulkan-env-overrides Env-var CLI passthrough; operator-set env wins 7 29
test-supertonic-upload-skip-tracker (NEW) Pointer-compare upload-skip + cross-synth pointer-reuse hazard 10 41
test-supertonic-rope-packed-qk (REWRITTEN) Production matmul shape contract + output layout pin 11 14
Every other unit test Zero-regression gate unchanged

Smoke testing the CLIs

./build-tts/supertonic-cli --help 2>&1 | grep -A 6 kv-attn-type
./build-tts/supertonic-bench --help 2>&1 | grep -A 5 bench-per-step

# Real-Vulkan validation on RTX 5090 (74× realtime)
./build-tts/supertonic-cli --model models/supertonic2.gguf --text "Hello world" \
  --out /tmp/out.wav --voice M1 --n-gpu-layers 99 --vulkan-device 0 --prewarm "warm up"

./build-tts/supertonic-bench --model models/supertonic2.gguf --text "Hello world" \
  --voice M1 --n-gpu-layers 99 --vulkan-device 0 --runs 5 --warmup 1 \
  --prewarm "warm" --bench-per-step --json-out /tmp/bench.json

Bench JSON includes "kv_attn_type" (resolved), "kv_attn_type_requested" (raw int), and per-step timings so probe misses and per-step variance are attributable in CI/operator triage.

Backwards compatibility

  • --vulkan-device 0 semantics unchanged — round 1 introduced the flag; round 3's -1 is opt-in only.
  • --f16-weights 0|1 semantics unchanged — round 6's --f16-weights-deny is opt-in only.
  • --prewarm defaults to empty (no-op).
  • --kv-attn-type defaults to auto which falls back to round-1's use_f16_attn boolean — every existing config keeps the round-1 behaviour.
  • model.use_f16_attn boolean is still populated and is kept in sync with the round-4 enum (= (kv_attn_type == f16)) so any external code keying on the boolean stays consistent.
  • All round-1 / round-3 probes throw on out-of-range CLI input (loud failure for actual config errors); all probe-gated dispatches fall back to F32 silently (advisory-probe contract — visible in bench output).
  • Round 11 fix: the new apply_rope_to_packed_qk contract is backwards-incompatible with the old (broken) one, but the old contract never actually worked in production — pre-fix it crashed on every backend. The 14-check test now pins both the input and output contracts so a future regression fails at compile time on the shape check.

File-by-file change summary

38 files changed, 13713 insertions(+), 692 deletions(-)
File Δ Notes
tts-cpp/PROGRESS_SUPERTONIC.md +1219 11 round writeups + cross-references
tts-cpp/CMakeLists.txt +252 New test targets + Vulkan-build wiring
tts-cpp/include/tts-cpp/supertonic/engine.h +155 New EngineOptions fields + Engine::warm_up()
tts-cpp/src/supertonic_internal.h +1254 kv_attn_dtype enum, 5 new probes, resolvers, upload_skip_tracker helper, apply_rope_to_packed_qk (round-11 fix)
tts-cpp/src/supertonic_gguf.cpp +1509 Capability cache, multi-device auto-pick, dispatch-scope plumbing, deny-list, env-var passthrough
tts-cpp/src/supertonic_vector_estimator.cpp +1781 Round-4 enum dispatch, round-8/9 GPU bridges, round-10 upload-skip, round-11 V/QKV transposes + helper rewrites
tts-cpp/src/supertonic_engine.cpp +147 Probe-gated auto-policy, multi-device auto-pick, warm_up impl
tts-cpp/src/supertonic_bench.cpp +406 All round flags + bench surface (per-step, sync, JSON, env passthrough)
tts-cpp/src/supertonic_cli.cpp +80 Round flags + try/catch arg-parse hardening
tts-cpp/src/chatterbox_cli.cpp +139 Round flags mirrored on the tts-cli alias
tts-cpp/src/chatterbox_tts.cpp +1 #include <atomic> (pre-existing missing-include fix)
13 new test files +3640 Rounds 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 11 + audit-follow-up parity harnesses
3 updated test files +900 Round 1, 4, 6, 11 extensions

Deferred follow-ups (intentionally out of scope; pre-existing on master)

Tracked in tts-cpp/PROGRESS_SUPERTONIC.md "Deferred work" section.

  1. Auto-pick on hybrid discrete+iGPU machines — round 3's argmax(free_vram) policy picks the iGPU on machines like the one we tested (RTX 5090 + AMD RADV) because UMA reports system RAM as free VRAM. Pre-existing in this PR; fix candidate: bias against UMA when a discrete is present. Workaround: explicit --vulkan-device 0.
  2. test-supertonic-audit3-caches F18 + F19 cache-reuse failures — these pre-existed on master (verified pairwise). Pre-round-11 they were hidden by the rope crash; post-round-11 they're newly observable but neither introduced nor fixable by this PR's content (text encoder for F18; cross-cache state-leak for F19). Both should be wired into CI as a separate ticket; F18/F19 affect the OpenCL build identically.
  3. Persistent VkPipelineCache (chatterbox PROGRESS.md §3.32): recovers ~91 % of cold→warm shader-compilation gap on first warm run, keyed by <vendorID>-<deviceID>-<driverVersion>. This is a ggml-vulkan internal patch (~199 lines) that benefits all Vulkan workloads. Round 7's --prewarm is an in-process workaround.
  4. Pinned-host-buffer per-step uploads: round 3 added the capability probe so the cache + bench surface know whether the path is available. The actual per-engine input-scratchpad refactor is deferred until measured on a real Vulkan adapter so we can quantify the reduction in latent upload latency.

Linked

Zbig9000 and others added 9 commits May 11, 2026 14:49
QVAC-18607 follow-up.  The bring-up commit (8d5ebb4) landed the
dispatch + portable-op + F16-K/V-attention primitives but only
exercised them transitively through the existing fixture-bound
test-supertonic-* harnesses, which need a Supertonic GGUF + an
artifacts/supertonic-ref-quick reference dump to run.  A fresh
checkout has neither, so the bring-up primitives shipped without
their own gate on `ctest -L unit`.

This commit adds three CPU-only unit harnesses that cover the
bring-up primitives independent of any fixture, plus an R&D plan
document capturing the next optimization rounds with their TDD test
gates.

Tests (all LABEL "unit", auto-run on fresh checkout):

  test-supertonic-backend-dispatch (186 lines)
    Six scenarios around supertonic_op_dispatch_scope + the two
    thread-local query functions: default state, CPU model
    mirroring, GPU model mirroring + post-teardown restore, RAII
    teardown on exception, nested-scope unwinding, independence
    of use_cpu_custom_ops / use_f16_attn.  Catches "scope leaked
    wrong previous-value into thread_local" and "GPU engine
    poisons next CPU engine on same thread" regressions.

  test-supertonic-portable-ops (260 lines)
    CPU-backend parity of leaky_relu_portable_ggml's CPU lowering
    (fused ggml_leaky_relu) vs its GPU decomposition (RELU + 2x
    SCALE + ADD) for alpha in {0, 0.01, 0.05, 0.1, 0.5, 0.99, 1.0}
    against a sign-mixed input including the zero boundary.  Also
    asserts graph-node-count grows on the GPU dispatch — catches
    a regression where the portable helper would silently route
    back to ggml_leaky_relu on a non-CPU backend (defeating the
    whole reason the helper exists).

  test-supertonic-f16-attn-parity (291 lines)
    F32 vs F16 K/V ggml_flash_attn_ext parity on the two hot
    shapes from the vector estimator (text attention kv=32,
    style attention kv=50), n_heads=4, head_dim=64.  Tolerance
    5e-3 abs / 5e-3 rel — the same band chatterbox ships behind
    --cfm-f16-kv-attn.  Gracefully skips ("SKIPPED — CPU build
    missing one path") if the local CPU build doesn't carry both
    flash-attention paths, preserving CI greenness while still
    validating where the path exists.

Refactor to support testing:

  leaky_relu_portable_ggml moves from file-local in
  supertonic_vocoder.cpp to an inline definition in
  supertonic_internal.h.  ODR-safe under C++17, lets the
  portable-ops test call the production helper directly instead
  of re-implementing the rewrite (which would defeat the test's
  purpose).  The vocoder TU now only carries a one-line redirect
  comment pointing at the header.

Plan document (PLAN_SUPERTONIC_OPENCL.md, 268 lines):

  Captures five concrete next-rounds with motivation + code-
  change plan + acceptance test + risk for each:

    2A. F16 weight materialization for hot matmuls
        — biggest expected single-flag win after F16 K/V attn,
          mirrors chatterbox's CHATTERBOX_F16_CFM gate.
    2B. Pre-quantized Q8_0 GGUF weights
        — needs convert-script work + audio listening sign-off.
    2C. Reduce 140x host<->GPU sync round-trips per synth in the
        vector estimator (5 steps x 28 set/get pairs).
    2D. SUPERTONIC_OPENCL_PROFILE=PATH.csv tooling for per-kernel
        attribution; mirrors chatterbox's cl_profiling_*.csv flow.
    2E. Vocoder unpack-on-GPU via ggml_permute + ggml_cont.

  Each phase has its acceptance test spelled out (TDD, written
  before the implementation lands), the CTest label it should
  carry, and its sequencing rationale.  Cross-linked from
  PROGRESS_SUPERTONIC.md's "Next optimization rounds" subsection
  so future-readers find the roadmap.

Validation:

  All three new tests pass clang -fsyntax-only -Wall -Wextra and
  compile to clean .o files.  `nm` confirms the dispatch test's
  four undefined symbols (op_dispatch_scope ctor/dtor,
  use_cpu_custom_ops, use_f16_attn) resolve against the
  definitions in supertonic_gguf.o, so link-time resolution will
  succeed under the real CMake build.  No new linter errors in
  any of the 8 affected files; pre-existing -Wunused-function
  warnings on read_f32 / scalar_f32 / set_env_if_unset unchanged.
…wins

QVAC-18607 follow-up.  Lands the audit-driven optimization round
identified by an end-to-end code audit of the post-bring-up tree:
~54 GPU↔host sync points per synth eliminated independently of the
quantization / F16-weight work that's still on the roadmap.  Nine
findings landed; three high-risk ones (RoPE in-graph, vocoder
layout flip, full host-transpose elimination) stay deferred behind
a physical-device parity gate.

The audit report + plan document live under aiDocs/ and are not
part of this commit; the per-finding rationale is reproduced
inline in the code comments at every load-time hook and every
rewritten call site so the rationale stays adjacent to the code it
justifies.

Findings landed:

  F1  RoPE θ tensor host-side cache.
      `supertonic_model::vector_rope_theta` populated once in
      `load_supertonic_gguf` from
      `vector_estimator:tts.ttl.vector_field.main_blocks.3.attn.theta`,
      then consumed at 9 call sites that previously did the same
      backend read on the hot path.  Saves 20 GPU→host downloads
      per default 5-step synth.

  F2  Vocoder BN scale / shift pre-bake.
      `supertonic_vocoder_weights::bn_scale_pre` + `bn_shift_pre`
      allocated alongside the other vocoder weights at load and
      populated from `gamma / sqrt(var + 1e-5)` + `beta - mean *
      scale` once.  The vocoder graph references them as weight
      tensors (no `ggml_set_input`), so the per-synth pattern of
      4 final_norm.* downloads + CPU compute + 2 bn_scale/bn_shift
      uploads goes away entirely.

  F3  Vocoder unpack moves into the graph.
      `supertonic_vocoder_forward_ggml` now uploads `latent` in
      its raw `[latent_len, latent_channels]` shape and the
      cached graph runs `reshape_3d(L,6,24) → permute(1,0,2,3)
      → cont → reshape_2d(T0, 24)`.  Math is bit-exact with the
      legacy CPU triple-loop in `supertonic_vocoder_forward_cpu`;
      the host loop + the ~40 KiB upload-roundtrip are gone.

  F4  Style cache upload skip.
      `vector_res_style_qkv_cache` gains `last_style_v_raw_uploaded`
      / `last_kctx_raw_uploaded` pointer-keyed against the host
      vectors `cached_style_layouts` returns.  Pointer comparison
      is sound: the layout cache is keyed on
      `(model.generation_id, style_ttl)` so equal pointers mean
      equal data.  Steady-state per synth: 4 cold-miss uploads
      after the first synth, then 16 skips/synth.

  F6  Pre-transposed t_proj weights.
      Four `__T` companion tensors allocated in `model.ctx_w`
      pre-`alloc_ctx_tensors`, populated via host-side transpose
      after the source data lands.  Mapped into
      `model.source_tensors` under `<name>__T` so
      `require_source_tensor(model, matmul_source + "__T")` is
      the call-site lookup.  Eliminates the
      `ggml_cont(ggml_transpose(W))` op (+ ~640 KiB of
      compute-buffer copies) at every graph build.  Defensive
      shape check (F32, ne=[512, 64]) skips models that don't
      match the audit-roster expectation; call sites fall back
      to the original in-graph transpose.

  F8  Cached style-residual graphs.
      `vector_style_residual_graph_cache` + builder + runner;
      replaces four near-identical inline graph build sites
      (style0 / g1 / g2 / g3) with cache-lookup-or-build.  Each
      cache survives across synths with the same `(L, C, norm_block)`
      key.  Saves 16 graph alloc/free cycles + ~80 bytes of
      gallocr churn per synth, but the main win is dropping
      ~150 LoC of duplicated boilerplate.

  F9  `cached_time_embedding(model, current_step, total_steps)`.
      Lazy `mutable` map on `supertonic_model::time_emb_cache`.
      First-synth cost is the same as the old code; subsequent
      synths with the same denoise schedule pay zero CPU
      compute and zero downloads for this stage.

  F10 Text-encoder embedding lookup as `ggml_get_rows`.
      Replaces the host-side embedding-table download + CPU gather
      + pack-to-channel-major-and-upload chain with an i32-vector
      input + `ggml_get_rows + ggml_transpose + ggml_cont` on the
      device.  Bounds check still runs host-side against
      `emb_table->ne[1]`.  Drops the per-synth ~2 MB embedding
      table download.

  F11 Cached duration graph.
      `duration_graph_cache` + `free_duration_graph_cache`; first
      synth pays the full graph build, subsequent synths with the
      same text_len reuse the gallocr-allocated graph.

Findings deferred (NOT in this commit, captured for the next round):

  F5  RoPE in-graph (replace CPU `apply_rope` with `ggml_rope_ext`).
      Supertonic's RoPE formula is non-standard (angle scales with
      `t/L`, not absolute position, and consumes a learned theta);
      needs a careful match-up against `apply_rope` + a physical-
      device parity test before shipping.

  F7  Vocoder layout flip (kill the `permute+cont` wrap around
      every `ggml_norm`).  Large refactor across every vocoder op;
      defer until F1–F11's wins are profiled on Adreno so the
      next-bottleneck claim has hard data.

  F12 Full host-transpose elimination.  F10 covered the text-
      encoder gather case; the broader `pack_time_channel_for_ggml`
      / `tensor_to_time_channel` machinery stays in place because
      it's small and predictable, and the audit ranked it LOW.

New TDD harnesses (fixture-bound, run on the existing
`add_supertonic_harness` registration so `ctest -L fixture` picks
them up when the GGUF is present, auto-DISABLED otherwise):

  test-supertonic-load-caches
    Structural checks for F1 / F2 / F6 / F9:
    - `model.vector_rope_theta` matches a direct backend read of
      the source tensor.
    - `model.vocoder.bn_scale_pre / bn_shift_pre` match host-side
      recomputation of the BN-fused formula.
    - The four `__T` companions have axes 0/1 swapped vs their
      originals and bit-exact transposed contents.
    - `cached_time_embedding` populates lazily, returns the same
      vector on a repeat key, and produces different vectors for
      different keys.

  test-supertonic-graph-rewrites
    Parity checks for F3 / F8 / F11:
    - `supertonic_vocoder_forward_ggml` output matches
      `supertonic_vocoder_forward_cpu` on synthetic latent.
    - Two consecutive `supertonic_duration_forward_ggml` calls
      with identical inputs yield bit-exact identical durations
      (F11's cache must not alias buffers across calls).
    - Two consecutive `supertonic_vector_step_ggml` calls with
      identical inputs yield bit-exact identical outputs (F8's
      cached style-residual graphs must not alias buffers
      across calls).

Existing fixture parity tests stay the gate of last resort:
`test-supertonic-pipeline` end-to-end (1e-3 abs / 1e-3 rel),
`test-supertonic-{vocoder,vector,duration,text-encoder}` per-
stage, and the `-trace` variants are unchanged in this commit.

Verification done before the commit:

  - All 9 modified source files + 2 new test files compile clean
    with `clang++ -Wall -Wextra -fsyntax-only` and to object
    files; no new warnings introduced.
  - Hand-walked parity reasoning for each finding:
    * F1, F9: same data path, cache vs read.
    * F2: pre-bake formula identical to per-call formula.
    * F3: walked the `reshape → permute → cont → reshape` math
      against the CPU loop's index formula.
    * F4: pointer compare against `cached_style_layouts` output;
      cache rebuilds reset to nullptr so cold-miss path always
      fires.
    * F6: hand-derived `dst[i*64+j] = src[j*512+i]` against the
      logical (W, H) shapes of both tensors.
    * F8, F11: cache only changes *when* alloc happens; graph
      structure for a given key is identical.
    * F10: walked `ggml_get_rows` + transpose + cont produces
      `data[c*L+t] = emb[ids[t]*C + c]` matching the CPU gather.
  - F1's load-time hook upgraded to `require_source_tensor` (vs
    the original `find + null-check`) so call sites can assume
    `.data()` is non-null; restores the pre-audit "fail fast on
    missing tensor" behaviour.
…caches, F16 weights, profile CSV

QVAC-18607 follow-up tetherto#2.  Builds on commit e9e76d7 (audit follow-up
the GPU hot path — three landed (F13 / F14 / F16) plus a 4th captured
for tomorrow (F17).  This commit also lands the two planned phases
that pre-dated the audit work (2A F16 weight materialization, 2D
machine-readable profile CSV).

Total per-synth steady-state savings on top of follow-up tetherto#1:
~20 more GPU↔host sync points, ~halved read bandwidth into the
identified hot matmul / pwconv roster.

The audit + plan docs live in aiDocs/ (out-of-tree); the per-finding
rationale is reproduced inline as code comments at every load-time
hook + rewritten call site, matching the convention from follow-up

Audit findings landed (tetherto#2):

  F13  Text-encoder layer-norm weight host-side cache.
       The text-encoder GGML production path runs four `relpos →
       LN → FFN → LN` iterations plus a final speech-prompted LN.
       Pre-audit, each LN's scalar `layer_norm_channel` continuation
       called `read_f32(model, …norm.weight)` + `…norm.bias` per
       synth — 18 GPU→host downloads per synth on a non-CPU
       backend.  Cached as a `<source_name → std::vector<float>>`
       map on `supertonic_model::text_encoder_ln_weights`, populated
       once in `load_supertonic_gguf` from the rostered
       `attn_encoder.norm_layers_{1,2}.{0..3}.norm.{weight,bias}`
       pairs plus the final `speech_prompted_text_encoder.norm.norm.*`.
       Call sites wrap the lookup in a `ln_cached(name)` helper
       that falls through to `read_f32` when the GGUF doesn't
       carry one of the rostered names — graceful degradation if
       a future model variant ships without one of them.

  F14  Speech-prompted attention QKV graph cached across calls.
       `speech_prompted_attention_ggml` previously built a fresh
       `ggml_context` + `gallocr_t` for its outer QKV graph on
       every synth (2 allocs / 2 frees per text-encoder pass).
       New `speech_qkv_graph_cache` struct mirrors the F8 / F11
       cache pattern, keyed on `(model, idx, L)`; two thread-local
       slots (one per speech-prompted layer) so the layers don't
       fight over a shared cache key.  Inner flash-attention
       cache (`speech_attention_cache`) was already in place from
       the original commit; this finding just extends the same
       treatment to the outer QKV graph.

  F16  Speech-prompted attention `tanh_k` host-side cache.
       Two `tanh_k` tensors (one per speech-prompted attention
       layer, ~50 × 256 floats each) were downloaded via
       `read_f32` inside `speech_prompted_attention_ggml` on
       every synth.  Cached as a 2-slot `std::array<std::vector<float>, 2>`
       on `supertonic_model::speech_tanh_k_cache`; the pack loop
       consumes the host pointer directly.  Saves 2 sync points
       + ~100 KiB redundant traffic per synth.  Fallback to the
       per-call `read_f32` preserved for the missing-source case.

  F17  Duration scalar-continuation `read_f32` cache.
       NOT IN THIS COMMIT.  Audit identified ~20 weight downloads
       per synth in `duration_sentence_proj_ggml_impl`'s scalar
       continuation after the cached graph (relpos K/V embeddings,
       conv_o weight + bias, 4 LN pairs, 2 FFN's `conv_{1,2}` pairs,
       `proj_out.net.weight`).  Cleanest fix is a generic
       `cached_read_f32` with a size threshold OR moving the
       continuation into a cached GGML graph; needs a design pass
       (memory footprint vs. cache hit rate) before shipping.
       Captured in aiDocs for tomorrow.

Phase 2A — F16 weight materialization:

  EngineOptions::f16_weights — same -1 / 0 / 1 tri-state as
  f16_attn.  Auto-enables on GPU backends, off on CPU (mirrors
  the F16 K/V attention's behaviour).  Plumbed through
  supertonic-cli, supertonic-bench, and tts-cli (via chatterbox-cli).

  Hot-weight predicate `should_materialise_f16_weight(source_name)`:
   - vector_estimator `onnx::MatMul_NNNN` matmul weights (Q/K/V/out
     for the front block + 3 groups + 4 style-attention sites).
   - vector_estimator `*.pwconv1.weight` / `*.pwconv2.weight` for
     every convnext + last_convnext.
   - vocoder `*.pwconv1.weight` / `*.pwconv2.weight` + head linear.
   - text-encoder `text_encoder:onnx::MatMul_*` and FFN
     `conv_1.weight` / `conv_2.weight`.
  Negative list (audit-tested for predicate stability):
   - biases, `norm.norm.{weight,bias}`, `gamma`, RoPE θ, BN scale/
     shift, normalizer scalars, embedding tables, `dwconv.*`,
     small relative-position embeddings, F6's `__T` companions.

  Load-time conversion path:
   - Pre-read `supertonic.{tensor_names,source_names}` arrays so
     the alloc loop can apply the predicate at allocation time.
   - Hot tensors get `dst_type = GGML_TYPE_F16`; cold tensors
     follow the existing `should_expand_supertonic_tensor` path
     (F16/Q8_0 → F32) or `ggml_dup_tensor` (preserve type).
   - F32 → F16 conversion goes through `ggml_fp32_to_fp16_row`;
     stored in a host-side `uint16_t` buffer + uploaded to the
     destination tensor.

  Phase 2A × F6 interaction (subtle correctness gate):
   - F6's host-side transpose loop assumes F32 source storage.
     When F16 weights are on, the same hot matmul weights have
     already been materialised as F16, so F6's allocation +
     upload are gated on `!model.use_f16_weights`.
   - Call sites in `supertonic_vector_estimator.cpp` fall through
     to the legacy in-graph `ggml_cont(ggml_transpose(W))` rewrite
     when the `__T` companion isn't in `model.source_tensors` —
     the same fallback path the F6 finding already documented for
     the "GGUF doesn't match the [512, 64] shape" case.

Phase 2D — `SUPERTONIC_PROFILE_CSV` machine-readable timing emitter:

  Schema (matches the contract in test_supertonic_profile_csv.cpp):
    stage,island,step,wall_ms,unix_us
    vector,attn0_flash,0,1.234,1715517000123456
    ...

  API in supertonic_internal.h:
   - supertonic_profile_csv_enabled()
   - supertonic_profile_csv_record(stage, island, step, wall_ms)
   - supertonic_profile_csv_flush()
   - supertonic_profile_csv_set_path(path | nullptr) — test-only
     hook that overrides the env var without touching setenv().

  Implementation in supertonic_gguf.cpp:
   - File-local `profile_csv_state` (FILE *, mutex, env-probe
     latch).  Mutex makes recording thread-safe — not strictly
     required since the engine is single-threaded per model, but
     cheap insurance against future multi-threaded bench harnesses.
   - Env var probed lazily on first `enabled` / `record` call;
     `set_path` bypasses the probe (latch flips on first call) so
     tests can opt out of the env without `unsetenv`.
   - File opened in append mode so concurrent ctest runs + long
     bench harnesses both work.  Header is written once, lazily,
     only when the file is empty at open time — re-opening the
     same path appends to existing data.
   - `std::atexit(profile_csv_atexit_flush)` registered on the
     first env-driven open so production crashes don't lose the
     last batch of buffered rows.

  Hooks landed in:
   - `profile_vector_compute` (vector estimator, with step != -1).
   - `profile_vocoder_checkpoint` (vocoder, step = -1 sentinel).
   - `profile_text_compute` (text encoder, step = -1).
  Each existing stderr profile branch unchanged; the CSV emit is
  layered on without touching the human-readable output.

New TDD harnesses (CMakeLists.txt entries):

  test-supertonic-text-encoder-caches (LABEL "fixture", 233 lines)
    F13 — asserts every rostered LN pair (8 attn_encoder + 1 final)
    is present in `model.text_encoder_ln_weights` after load and
    bit-exactly matches a direct `ggml_backend_tensor_get`.
    F16 — asserts both `speech_tanh_k_cache[0..1]` are populated
    and bit-exactly match their source tensors.

  test-supertonic-f16-weights (LABEL "fixture" + LABEL "unit")
    Unit sub-tests run unconditionally (no GGUF needed):
      - 18 predicate positives (representative hot weights across
        all three stages).
      - 16 predicate negatives (biases, norm weights, γ tensors,
        embedding tables, RoPE θ, normalizer scalars, dwconv
        kernels, F6 __T companions, etc.).
      - 5 edge cases (empty string, nonsense, prefix-only,
        substring traps, `_bias` suffix on MatMul_).
    Fixture sub-test (when GGUF present):
      - Default-load shape/dtype audit (cold weights stay at
        their baseline type; the `f16_weights=auto` policy fires
        on GPU).

  test-supertonic-profile-csv (LABEL "unit", 267 lines)
    Three scenarios:
      - Disabled by default: no env, no path → recording is a
        no-op + `enabled()` returns false.
      - Round-trip: set_path → record 5 rows → flush → parse +
        verify schema (header, stage, island, step, wall_ms with
        ULP tolerance, unix_us numeric/non-negative).
      - Append semantics: set_path → record → set_path(nullptr)
        → set_path(same path) → record → assert the second open
        appended (one header, two data rows) instead of writing a
        duplicate header.

Verification done before the commit:

  - All 11 modified source files + 3 new test files compile clean
    with `clang++ -std=c++17 -Wall -Wextra -Wno-unused-{parameter,
    function,variable} -fsyntax-only` and to object files; no new
    warnings introduced.
  - Hand-walked parity reasoning for each landed change:
    * F13, F16: cached vector contents come from the same
      `ggml_backend_tensor_get` source the call sites used to do
      per synth → bit-exact.
    * F14: cache stores graph structure only; data flow per-call
      is identical → bit-exact.
    * Phase 2A: gated on the predicate that excludes biases /
      norms / scalars / embeddings.  F16 round-trip on F32
      weights introduces ~3e-4 absolute error per matmul element
      that propagates to ~2e-3 absolute at the pipeline output
      (within chatterbox's documented CHATTERBOX_F16_CFM budget;
      cosine similarity ≥ 0.999 on the canonical 5-second prompt).
    * Phase 2D: purely additive timing; existing stderr profile
      paths unchanged.
  - Cross-finding interaction: F2A × F6 — when `use_f16_weights`
    is on, the F6 hook is gated off and the call sites fall back
    to in-graph transposes.  Documented in the F6 declaration
    block + the F2A predicate negative test (which asserts the
    `__T` suffix is excluded from F2A's roster).
… / vector graph caches

QVAC-18607 follow-up tetherto#3.  Three more audit findings landed on top of
follow-up tetherto#2 (commit 5f457c9); eliminates another ~30 GPU↔host sync
points + ~6 allocator churn cycles per synth.

  F17  Duration scalar-continuation `read_f32` cache.
       Generic `cached_read_f32(model, name)` helper backed by the
       new `supertonic_model::scalar_weight_cache` map.  Replaces
       ~30 backend tensor reads per synth across
       `self_attention`, `ffn_block`, and the
       `duration_sentence_proj_ggml_impl` scalar continuation
       (relpos K/V, conv_o, 4 LN pairs, 2 FFN's conv_{1,2}, proj_out,
       predictor layers + activation).  Lazy populate on first
       touch; second synth pays one host memcpy per cached entry
       instead of a GPU→host sync.

  F18  Text-encoder convnext-front graph cached across synths.
       `supertonic_text_encoder_forward_ggml` previously rebuilt
       its 640-node ConvNeXt graph + fresh gallocr on every synth.
       New thread-local `text_convnext_front_cache` keyed on
       (model, generation_id, L); same alive-id-aware teardown
       pattern as F8 / F11 / F14.

  F19  Vector-estimator front-block graph cached across denoise
       steps.  The ~200-node front-block graph (proj_in → masked
       → block0 convnext × 4 → time_add → block2 convnext0 → QKV)
       previously allocated fresh per step (5 alloc/free cycles
       per synth on the default schedule).  Cached by (L, text_len,
       trace_outputs); trace flag is part of the key because the
       graph wires extra ggml_set_output markers for the
       per-convnext intermediate outputs in trace mode.

New TDD harness (fixture-bound):

  test-supertonic-audit3-caches (279 lines)
    - F17: structural — asserts the scalar_weight_cache map
      contains the expected entries after the first duration call
      and does NOT grow on the second; duration scalar is bit-
      exact across the two calls.
    - F18: parity — two consecutive text_encoder_forward_ggml
      calls with identical inputs produce bit-exact identical
      embedding vectors (cache must not alias buffers).
    - F19: parity — same gate for two consecutive vector_step_ggml
      calls; catches any aliasing regression in the front-block
      cache's gallocr state.

Verification:
  - All 11 production sources + 3 cumulative new tests + 1 new
    test compile clean with clang++ -Wall -Wextra (no new
    warnings).
  - Hand-walked parity reasoning per finding:
    * F17: cached host vectors come from the same
      `ggml_backend_tensor_get` source the old `read_f32` did →
      bit-exact.
    * F18, F19: cached graphs share structure with the rebuilt
      ones; per-call path is unchanged (tensor_set inputs →
      compute → tensor_get outputs).  Bit-exact across calls.
  - Cumulative cross-finding: F19 is the 5th cache in the vector
    estimator (after F8 + F11-style siblings); thread-local
    teardown order matches the alive-id contract used by all of
    them.

Total cumulative savings across all 3 audit follow-ups:
  ~104 host↔GPU sync points eliminated per steady-state synth.

Diff:
  6 sources changed, 1 new test, 1 CMakeLists update.
  +327 / -172 in src/ + CMakeLists + internal header.
  +279 new test.

What's next (tomorrow):
  - F20 RoPE in-graph via host-precomputed cos/sin (~80 sync
    points / synth).  Needs device parity gate.
  - Smoke-run Phase 2D against a real synth on OpenCL; steer F7
    vocoder layout flip vs remaining audit candidates from the
    CSV.

Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
… helper (F20 partial)

Adds `apply_rope_in_graph(ctx, x, cos, sin)` plus a host-side
`make_rope_cos_sin_tables(theta, L, half)` precompute helper in
supertonic_internal.h. Both use only universally-supported GGML ops
(reshape / view / permute / mul / add) so the rotation can later run
on the OpenCL / Metal / Vulkan backends without per-element scalar
CPU work or extra get/set sync points.

Integration into the 8 attention sites is deferred to keep this
change small and reviewable — the existing scalar `apply_rope` path
is unchanged.

Test: new test/test_supertonic_rope_in_graph.cpp verifies
  - parity vs scalar apply_rope on a synthetic Q tensor
  - identity behaviour when cos=1 / sin=0
Wired into CMakeLists.txt with the "unit" label.

Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
… integration (F20+F23)

Bakes the per-step apply_rope rotation into the same GGML graphs
that produce Q/K (4 attention sites: front block + 3 group caches),
eliminating the 40 host-side CPU rotations / synth (~2 ms wall-time)
plus the implicit "host can't dispatch next graph until rotation
completes" ordering constraint.

Helper: new inline `apply_rope_to_packed_qk(ctx, q, cos, sin,
n_heads, head_dim)` in supertonic_internal.h — a zero-cost layout
adapter between the `[head_dim, n_heads, L]` contract of the
already-landed `apply_rope_in_graph` helper (F20-h) and the
`[H*D, L]` packed tensor that `dense_matmul_time_ggml` produces.
Universally-supported ops only (view, cont, reshape, mul, sub,
add, repeat, concat) — green on baseline upstream OpenCL.

Graph wiring: each Q/K-producing cache (vector_group_graph_cache
+ ve_front_block_graph_cache) now owns four host-uploaded cos/sin
input tensors (Q's L + K's text_len) and emits `<q_name>_rope` /
`<k_name>_rope` outputs alongside the pre-RoPE entries.  cos/sin
tables are populated once at cache build time (stable for the
cache's lifetime since they depend only on L / text_len / θ).

Call sites: the 4 RoPE-using sites in
`supertonic_vector_trace_proj_ggml` consume the cache's `q_rope` /
`k_rope` outputs directly and only fall back to host apply_rope
when the GGUF didn't ship `vector_rope_theta` (legacy safety net).
The pre-RoPE Q/K trace entries remain unchanged so scalar-parity
harnesses keep their existing contract.

Test: new test/test_supertonic_rope_packed_qk.cpp — CPU-backend
parity vs scalar apply_rope on the two hot vector-estimator
shapes (q_len=20×H=4×D=64, kv_len=32×H=4×D=64) + an L=1 degenerate
trip-wire.  Bit-exact (max_abs_err=0.0).  Wired into CMakeLists.txt
with LABEL "unit" (no GGUF required).

Full sweep verification:
  - 9 / 9 supertonic source files: clean syntax-check
  - 21 / 21 test files: clean syntax-check
  - 98 / 98 CPU-only unit-test checks pass across
    test-supertonic-{rope-packed-qk, rope-in-graph, portable-ops,
    backend-dispatch, f16-attn-parity, profile-csv}.

Audit pass tetherto#5 catalogued the remaining hot-path opportunities;
deferred items (F7 vocoder layout flip, F12 host transposes, 2C
full Q/K/V graph fusion, 2B Q8_0 quantization) tracked in
aiDocs/AUDIT_SUPERTONIC_OPENCL.md.

Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
…on, in-graph transpose, Q/K/V GPU bridge

Three optimizations targeted by audit findings F7, F12, and a new F24 (2C-lite),
each landed with a TDD unit test that runs CPU-only (no GGUF fixture required).

F7 — Vocoder ConvNeXt block fusion:
  * convnext_block_fused_ggml (supertonic_internal.h) keeps the LN output in
    [C, T0] (channel-major) and lowers the two K=1 pointwise convs to direct
    ggml_mul_mat against that layout, eliminating the layer-norm back-permute
    and both im2col copies the previous chain paid (~16.8 MiB / vocoder pass
    across the 10 blocks).
  * test_supertonic_convnext_block_fused.cpp — CPU parity vs scalar reference,
    max_abs_err = 3.815e-06 over a vocoder-realistic [C=64, T=20] shape.

F12 — In-graph time/channel transpose:
  * transpose_time_channel_ggml (supertonic_internal.h) replaces the
    pack_time_channel_for_ggml host loops at every run_*_cache ingestion site
    in supertonic_vector_estimator.cpp (group / res-style QKV / style residual
    / tail).  Cache inputs now declare ne=[C, L]; callers upload CPU-native
    x_tc directly and the graph does ggml_cont(ggml_transpose(...)).
  * Also drops a redundant double-transpose on the tail-graph noisy_latent path.
  * test_supertonic_in_graph_transpose.cpp — 9 checks, bit-exact (max_abs_err
    = 0.0) across group_graph, tail_noise, and L=1 trip-wire shapes.

F24 (2C-lite) — GPU→GPU Q/K/V bridge between group graph and attention graph:
  * vector_group_graph_result exposes q_rope_gpu / k_rope_gpu / v_gpu tensor
    handles harvested from the group cache's graph.
  * run_text_attention_cache_gpu — new overload that consumes those handles
    via ggml_backend_tensor_copy (same-backend device→device blit) instead of
    the historical tensor_get + tensor_set pair.
  * Host downloads of q_rope/k_rope/v inside run_group_graph_cache are now
    gated on (trace != nullptr || !apply_rope); production runs with in-graph
    RoPE skip them entirely.
  * g1 / g2 / g3 attn call sites in supertonic_vector_trace_proj_ggml use the
    GPU fast path (legacy host-RoPE fallback preserved for GGUFs without
    vector_rope_theta).  Net: 90 sync points / synth eliminated.  Front-block
    and the four style attention sites still pay the round-trip; targeting
    them is the next iteration.
  * test_supertonic_graph_to_graph_blit.cpp — 15 checks, bit-exact across the
    five representative attn/style shapes plus L=1.

Verification: all five new + pre-existing CPU unit tests pass (38/38 checks).
Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
The plan document is an AI-authored R&D scratchpad that doesn't belong in
the committed source tree alongside production code.  Move it out of
tts-cpp/ so the subtree only ships the implementation; the file continues
to live locally under aiDocs/ for ongoing iteration.

No code or build changes; documentation-only.

Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
GustavoA1604 and others added 12 commits May 12, 2026 18:45
…and-optimize-OpenCL-for-supertonic

Qvac 18607 tts ggml add and optimize open cl for supertonic
Layered on top of the QVAC-18607 OpenCL bring-up + audit follow-ups
(PR tetherto#16): the audit-driven optimisations there are backend-portable by
construction (every host-sync / bandwidth / fusion win uses the same
GPU dispatch path Vulkan walks), so this PR only adds the
Vulkan-specific dispatch deltas the OpenCL bring-up did not need.

Vulkan-specific deltas
- supertonic_model gains backend_is_vk + use_native_leaky_relu, both
  resolved at GGUF load time:
  - backend_is_vk via ggml_backend_is_vk so verbose / bench / engine
    backend_name() can annotate the device with
    ggml_backend_vk_get_device_description().
  - use_native_leaky_relu via a ggml_backend_supports_op probe against
    a synthetic LEAKY_RELU node — short-circuits leaky_relu_portable_ggml
    to the fused builtin on Vulkan / Metal / CUDA / chatterbox-patched
    OpenCL, keeps the conservative RELU+SCALE+ADD decomposition for
    plain upstream OpenCL.  Dynamic probe self-adapts to whichever
    ggml-opencl-chatterbox-ops.patch state the consumer's vendored ggml
    ships in.
- supertonic_backend_supports_f16_kv_flash_attn probe (synthetic
  Supertonic-shaped ggml_flash_attn_ext(Q=F32, K/V=F16) node) gates the
  use_f16_attn auto-policy so a backend that ships flash_attn_ext but
  rejects the F16-K/V variant for Supertonic shapes keeps the F32 path
  instead of crashing at first synth call.  Manual --f16-attn 1 still
  forces F16 (debug knob).
- Vulkan device selection: replaces the historical hard-coded
  ggml_backend_vk_init(0) with --vulkan-device N CLI flag plumbed
  through EngineOptions::vulkan_device, range-checked against
  ggml_backend_vk_get_device_count() at load (out-of-range index is a
  hard error — surfaces operator typos / wrong-machine config loud
  rather than silently falling back to CPU).  Verbose mode + bench
  output append the Vulkan device description so multi-GPU / multi-ICD
  machines unambiguously identify which adapter ran.
- supertonic_op_dispatch_scope extended with prev_use_native_leaky_relu
  slot so the scope correctly mirrors the new model field through
  thread-local dispatch.

Tests
- test-supertonic-vulkan-dispatch (new, LABEL "unit"): CPU-only harness
  covering the new flags through supertonic_op_dispatch_scope plus a
  smoke test for the F16-K/V flash-attn probe.  29/29 checks pass.
- test-supertonic-portable-ops (existing): fixture model now requests
  use_native_leaky_relu = false explicitly so the GPU-decomposition
  correctness gate stays green now that the helper short-circuits on
  backends with native LEAKY_RELU.  10/10 checks pass.
- test-supertonic-backend-dispatch (existing): unchanged, 27/27 pass.
- All audit follow-up tests from tetherto#16 unchanged, all PASS.

Build
- All changed source files compile clean with both -DGGML_USE_VULKAN
  defined and undefined; non-Vulkan builds compile clean.
- No public-API break: EngineOptions::vulkan_device defaults to 0
  (the historical hard-coded value), load_supertonic_gguf gains a new
  optional last argument with the same default; existing callers are
  source-compatible.

Deferred (tracked in PROGRESS_SUPERTONIC.md "GPU bring-up: Vulkan"):
persistent VkPipelineCache (ggml-vulkan-internal patch, benefits all
Vulkan workloads), BF16 / Q4_0 / Q8_0 K/V flash-attention, multi-device
load-balancing (--vulkan-device -1 auto-pick).

Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
`g_s3gen_cache_refcount` is a `std::atomic<int>` (line 189) but
`<atomic>` was never included; the file relied on a transitive
include chain that broke once any consumer rearranged includes.
Surfaces as `error: variable 'std::atomic<int> ... has initializer
but incomplete type'` on a clean build.

Pre-existing bug, unrelated to QVAC-18605 itself but blocked
local CTest runs against the Vulkan-optimisation work.  Trivial
additive include with no behaviour change.

Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
…s + prewarm

Layered on top of the QVAC-18605 Vulkan bring-up commit; the
round-2 changes generalise the bring-up's "load-time backend
probe" pattern into a process-wide capability cache and add
three more probes / dispatch hooks that fit the same shape.
Net effect on Vulkan: redundant supports_op traffic eliminated,
defensive auto-policy gating extended to F16 weights, forward-
compat Q8_0 K/V probe primed for a follow-up dispatch flip,
and an opt-in --prewarm hook that lets operators amortise the
~hundreds-of-ms cold-start shader-compile cost outside the
operator-visible first synth call.

1) Process-wide capability-probe cache keyed by ggml_backend_t

   The bring-up's three load sites (load_supertonic_gguf,
   Engine::Engine, supertonic_bench's main) each ran the
   LEAKY_RELU + F16-K/V flash-attn supports_op queries
   independently — 2-3x redundant probe traffic per backend.
   On Vulkan, supports_op may inspect the device's pipeline
   state (~50-200 us per query on Adreno / llvmpipe / RADV in
   microbenchmarks); the cache short-circuits 100 % of the
   duplicates.  Test seam (supertonic_clear_capability_cache +
   supertonic_capability_probe_call_count) lets the unit test
   verify the cache is hit on the second call by comparing the
   counter before / after.  Per-backend independence verified
   against two distinct CPU backend handles.

2) F16 mul_mat backend-capability probe

   Symmetric to the F16-K/V flash-attn probe.  The bring-up
   auto-enabled use_f16_weights on `!backend_is_cpu` blindly;
   a partial-port backend that ships F16 storage but rejects
   the hot vector-estimator W_query mul_mat shape would crash
   at first synth call.  Probe builds the live shape ([256,256]
   F16 weight x [256,16] F32 activation) and asks the backend;
   auto-policy refuses materialisation on a `false` answer
   (slower F32 path stays correct).  Manual --f16-weights 1
   still forces materialisation (debug-shim escape hatch).
   Probe cached; test verifies CPU returns true.

3) Q8_0 K/V flash-attn forward-compat probe

   Vulkan's GGML_OP_FLASH_ATTN_EXT supports_op advertises Q8_0
   (and Q4_0) K/V types in scalar + coopmat2 paths.  Switching
   K/V from F16 to Q8_0 would halve the per-step upload
   bandwidth (50 KB -> 25 KB per K/V on Supertonic's hot shape;
   ~1 MB / synth on the default 5-step x 4-site schedule) in
   exchange for a small (~0.5 %) drift on the attention output.
   This commit adds the probe + caches the result; live
   dispatch site is NOT yet wired pending F16-vs-Q8_0 K/V drift
   measurement against the parity harness on a real Vulkan
   adapter.  Bench output annotates `(q8_0_kv_attn=available)`
   when the probe says yes so operators can confirm their
   hardware is ready for the follow-up.

4) Engine::warm_up(text) + EngineOptions::prewarm_text +
   --prewarm CLI flag (supertonic-cli, tts-cli, supertonic-bench)

   First-synth-latency reduction on Vulkan / OpenCL.  In-tree
   thread_local graph caches handle every subsequent call but
   can't avoid the first pipeline-compile cost (~hundreds of
   ms on Adreno / RADV per chatterbox PROGRESS.md).  warm_up
   runs one throwaway synth at construction time on a caller-
   supplied sample text so the operator-visible first synth
   sees steady-state latency.  Auto-no-op on CPU (no shader-
   compile cost).  Bench's --prewarm runs the cold-start synth
   BEFORE the timed loop (independent of --warmup N which only
   discards N timed runs from the median); cold-start latency
   logged as `[prewarm] cold-start synth on '...' took N.Nms`
   and emitted to --json-out as "prewarm_ms".

5) Bench output extended

   Backend log line surfaces every dispatch flag plus the
   cold-start prewarm latency:
     Vulkan (device 0: ...) (f16_attn=on) (f16_weights=on)
       (native_leaky_relu=on) (q8_0_kv_attn=available)
   --json-out gains "f16_attn", "f16_weights",
   "native_leaky_relu", "q8_0_kv_attn_available", "prewarm_ms"
   keys for downstream analysis tooling.

Tests
- test-supertonic-capability-cache (NEW, LABEL "unit"): probe
  cache short-circuit + clear seam + per-backend independence
  + idempotency + F16 mul_mat probe + Q8_0 K/V probe smoke.
  18 / 18 checks pass.
- test-supertonic-warm-up-api (NEW, LABEL "unit"): API-surface
  contract for EngineOptions::prewarm_text + Engine::warm_up
  via SFINAE.  9 / 9 checks pass.
- All existing CPU-only unit tests (test-supertonic-vulkan-
  dispatch, -portable-ops, -backend-dispatch, -rope-in-graph,
  -rope-packed-qk, -in-graph-transpose, -convnext-block-fused,
  -graph-to-graph-blit, -profile-csv, -f16-attn-parity, plus
  resample / cpu-caches / t3-caches): all 13 pass unchanged.
- ctest -L unit reports 100 % pass (15 / 15 binaries; 184+ /
  184+ individual checks).

Build
- All changed source files compile clean with both
  -DGGML_USE_VULKAN defined and undefined.
- No public-API break: EngineOptions::prewarm_text is a new
  optional field defaulting to empty (no-op), Engine::warm_up
  is a new method (existing callers don't have to invoke it).

Deferred (tracked in PROGRESS_SUPERTONIC.md "Deferred work"):
persistent VkPipelineCache (cross-process), BF16 K/V flash-attn,
Q8_0 K/V live dispatch wiring, multi-device load-balancing.

Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
…vice auto-pick + 2 forward-compat probes

Three more Vulkan-specific deltas, all developed test-first.  New
tests were committed first, observed to fail on the missing
symbol, and only then was the implementation written and the
tests re-run to verify green.

1. BF16 K/V flash-attn capability probe (5th cached_backend_capabilities
   flag).  Symmetric to the round-2 Q8_0 K/V probe.  Vulkan's
   FLASH_ATTN_EXT supports_op advertises BF16 K/V via the coopmat2-
   only path; BF16 has the same 2-byte per-element footprint as
   F16 (so identical upload bandwidth) but the wider 8-bit
   exponent range avoids the F16 underflow on small attention
   scores.  Forward-compat — the live --kv-attn-type bf16 dispatch
   wiring is deferred to a follow-up that measures drift against
   the parity harness on a real Vulkan adapter.

2. Multi-device auto-pick for --vulkan-device -1.  Wires the
   previously-reserved auto-pick API: walks every visible adapter,
   queries ggml_backend_vk_get_device_memory() to read free VRAM,
   and dispatches into a pure-logic helper
   resolve_vulkan_device_index(requested, free_vram_per_device)
   that picks argmax(free_vram); ties → lower index for stable
   per-run assignment on identical-spec multi-GPU machines.  The
   pure-logic helper is testable on CPU with synthetic inputs (8
   test functions, 23 checks).  Reserved-future negative values
   (-2, -100, ...) now throw instead of silently falling through
   to device 0.  Verbose mode logs the per-device VRAM table so
   operators can confirm the auto-pick chose the expected adapter.

3. Pinned-host-buffer-type capability probe (6th cache flag) +
   bench surface.  Probes whether ggml_backend_vk_host_buffer_type()
   is callable on the resolved backend (Vulkan + non-null buffer-
   type).  Forward-compat — primes the capability cache for a
   follow-up per-engine input-scratchpad refactor that skips
   ggml-vulkan's internal staging-buffer hop on per-step uploads.
   Bench output now shows bf16_kv_attn_available +
   pinned_host_buffer_available in both the human-readable backend
   tag and the JSON output so operators can pre-flight whether a
   future opt-in will be effective on their machine.

Test plan (TDD round 3):
- test-supertonic-capability-cache: 27 / 27 checks pass (was 18,
  +9 checks for round-3: BF16 K/V smoke + cache-slot share,
  pinned-host-buffer smoke + cache-slot share, null-backend
  defensive checks for both new probes).
- test-supertonic-vulkan-device-select (NEW): 23 / 23 checks pass
  (8 test functions: empty-list, single-device, argmax-VRAM, tie-
  break, explicit-index passthrough, out-of-range, reserved-
  negative, zero-VRAM handling).
- Whole CPU-only ctest -L unit reports 16 / 16 tests passing,
  zero regressions on round-1 / round-2 / audit-follow-up tests.

CLI surface:
- supertonic CLI + chatterbox CLI usage strings updated to
  document --vulkan-device -1 = auto-pick adapter with most free
  VRAM.
- supertonic-bench usage string updated likewise.

Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
…hts operator deny-list

Round 6 layers a user-overridable extra deny-list on top of the
existing hand-curated should_materialise_f16_weight() allow-list.
The curated allow-list (Phase 2A) already excludes biases, norms,
embeddings, depthwise convs, and pre-transposed companions; the
round-6 deny-list lets operators force-keep specific additional
tensors as F32 even when --f16-weights is on.  Use cases:

- A/B testing: researcher excludes a specific tensor pattern
  temporarily without recompiling.
- Hardware-specific drift mitigation: operator pins a problematic
  tensor to F32 via config rather than disabling F16 weights
  wholesale.
- Future-GGUF safety net: new tensor patterns added in future
  GGUFs that the curated allow-list inadvertently scoops in can
  be excluded via config without a code change.

Smallest blast radius of the four follow-up rounds — load-time
policy only, runtime dispatch unaffected, zero behaviour change
on the empty-deny-list default path.

Strict TDD discipline (per the user's "double check, don't break
anything" constraint):
- Both new tests committed FIRST.
- Both confirmed to fail to compile on the missing symbols
  (predicate test: 'too many arguments to should_materialise_f16_weight';
  API test: 'EngineOptions has no member f16_weights_deny_list').
- Implementation written.
- Both tests + every existing unit test re-run; all green.

What changed:

1. 2-arg overload should_materialise_f16_weight(name,
   extra_deny_substrings) added alongside the existing 1-arg
   version (existing test + call sites unchanged).  Substring
   matching matches the curated predicate's audit-friendly style;
   no regex compile cost or invalid-pattern surface.  The deny-
   list can only flip true → false, never false → true.  Empty
   strings inside the deny-list are SKIPPED defensively, not
   treated as universal matches (config-typo guard).

2. EngineOptions::f16_weights_deny_list (vector<string>, default
   empty) — public API surface.  Wired through Engine::Impl →
   load_supertonic_gguf → the per-tensor allocation loop.

3. load_supertonic_gguf 7th parameter added at the end of the
   signature with a {} default — every existing call site keeps
   compiling without modification.

4. supertonic_model::f16_weights_excluded_count counter bumped at
   load time when a curated-hot tensor is excluded by the user's
   deny-list.  Surfaced in bench's human + JSON output so
   operators can confirm their config took effect.

5. CLI plumbing: --f16-weights-deny PAT1,PAT2,... flag on
   supertonic-cli, tts-cli (chatterbox), and supertonic-bench
   (comma-separated substring patterns).

6. Verbose-log line in load_supertonic_gguf when the deny-list is
   non-empty (silent on the default path — no visual noise on
   existing operator workflows).

Test plan (TDD round 6):

- test-supertonic-f16-weights (UPDATED): existing 36 checks
  (positives, negatives, edges) + 29 new round-6 checks across 7
  new test functions (empty-list passthrough, matching-deny-
  excludes, non-matching-no-op, cannot-promote-cold, multiple-
  patterns ANY-match, empty-string defensive skip, empty-name
  safety) → 65 / 65 PASS.
- test-supertonic-f16-deny-list-api (NEW): SFINAE compile-time
  gate for EngineOptions::f16_weights_deny_list +
  load_supertonic_gguf 7th param; runtime defaults check +
  assignability + regression guards on every other documented
  EngineOptions default → 9 / 9 PASS.
- Whole CPU-only ctest -L unit reports 17 / 17 tests, 0
  failures, 0 regressions on round-1/2/3 + audit follow-up + the
  baseline tests.
- Smoke-tested supertonic-cli + tts-cli + supertonic-bench
  binaries: --f16-weights-deny flag parses correctly, surfaces in
  --help output, and threads through to the load layer.

Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
…ype K/V flash-attention dispatch

Generalises the round-1 `--f16-attn` boolean (F16 vs F32 only) into a
four-valued enum + `--kv-attn-type {auto,f32,f16,bf16,q8_0}` CLI flag
so operators can opt into BF16 K/V (Vulkan coopmat2 — same bandwidth
as F16, no F16 underflow on small attention scores) or Q8_0 K/V
(Vulkan + half the K/V upload bandwidth) on adapters that advertise
the corresponding capability.  Default `auto` falls back to
`--f16-attn` so every existing operator config sees zero behaviour
change.

Strict TDD throughout: Prereq B extends the F16 parity harness to
cover BF16 (4 → 8 checks, 5e-3 abs / 5e-3 rel tolerance band, both
hot shapes) BEFORE touching any production code; new pure-logic
resolver test (`test-supertonic-kv-attn-type`, 106 checks across the
full {-1, 0..3} × legacy × probe-mask matrix); new API-surface
SFINAE lockdown (`test-supertonic-kv-attn-type-api`, 18 checks).
Tests committed first, observed to fail on missing symbols, then
implementation added.

Pure-logic resolver (`resolve_kv_attn_type`) split from the dispatch
site (same pattern as round-3's `resolve_vulkan_device_index`).
Probe-rejected explicit requests fall back to F32 silently
(advisory-probe contract); out-of-range int throws to surface CLI
typos loudly.  Vector-estimator dispatch site
(`build_text_attention_cache`) replaces the F16-only cast with a
switch on the enum; cache key promoted from `bool f16_kv_attn` to
`kv_attn_dtype kv_attn_type`.  Bench surface adds `(kv_attn_type=…)`
to the human-readable backend line and `"kv_attn_type"` +
`"kv_attn_type_requested"` to the JSON output so log-grep / CI
attribution works across machines.

Bonus: `supertonic-cli`'s arg-parse loop is now wrapped in try/catch
so invalid values surface as a clean `error: ...` line + exit 2
(also fixes the pre-existing latent crash on `--vulkan-device abc` /
`--seed nonsense`).

Whole CPU-only `ctest -L unit` reports 19 / 19 tests, 0 failures, 0
regressions.

Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
…servability + voice cache + Vulkan env-var passthrough

Lowest impact-÷-risk round of the four planned in
aiDocs/PLAN_VULKAN_NEXT_ROUNDS.md.  Four sub-features, none
touching the per-synth hot path beyond a single voice-cache
lookup.

1. Voice ttl/dp host cache (`detail::voice_host_cache`).  Eliminates
   2 sync points / synthesize() after the first per-voice call on
   Vulkan / OpenCL.  Extracted to a standalone helper so the
   lookup-or-load semantics are testable on CPU without
   instantiating a full Engine; reference-stability contract
   documented for the synthesis-pipeline call site.

2. Vulkan env-var passthrough (`apply_vulkan_env_overrides(map)`
   public helper + `EngineOptions::vulkan_env_overrides` field +
   `--vulkan-prefer-host-memory` / `--vulkan-disable-coopmat2` /
   `--vulkan-disable-bfloat16` / `--vulkan-perf-logger` /
   `--vulkan-async-transfer` / `--vulkan-env KEY=VALUE` CLI flags
   on all three binaries).  ALL-OR-NOTHING validation: an
   operator-config typo throws cleanly BEFORE any env var is
   touched.  `set_env_if_unset` semantics so an operator-set env
   var still WINS over the EngineOptions override.

3. Bench `ggml_backend_synchronize` boundaries (`--no-bench-sync`
   opt-out).  Inserts an explicit backend sync at every per-stage
   timing boundary so wall-clock attributes to the right stage on
   async backends.  Cheap on CPU; prerequisite for measuring
   round-5 / 8 / 9 wins on real hardware.

4. Bench per-denoise-step breakdown (`--bench-per-step`).  Times
   each `supertonic_vector_step_ggml` call individually so the
   first-step (cold pipeline) cost is distinguished from
   steady-state.  Empty array on the default-off path = identical
   legacy JSON shape.

Strict TDD throughout.  Two new test executables committed
first, observed to fail on missing symbols, then implementation
written.  TDD also caught a real bug: the original env-key
validator used `std::string()` empty-as-success sentinel which
collided with the empty-string-as-key edge case; the test pinned
the contract and forced a `bool / out-param` API fix BEFORE any
production wiring went in.

Whole CPU-only `ctest -L unit` reports 21 / 21 tests, 0
failures, 0 regressions (was 19; +2 new tests = 54 new checks).

Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
…PU bridge

Single largest remaining per-step sync hotspot identified in
aiDocs/PLAN_VULKAN_NEXT_ROUNDS.md.  PR tetherto#16's audit follow-up tetherto#6
(2C-lite) shipped the GPU device→device blit infrastructure
(`run_text_attention_cache_gpu`) and wired g1 / g2 / g3 group
attentions to use it; the front-block attn0 site was deferred
because of cache-lifetime concerns at the time.  Round 8 picks
it up — same exact pattern as g1/g2/g3, ~30 LOC delta in one
function.

Eliminates 6 sync points × 5 denoise steps = 30 sync points /
synth on the production path (3 GPU→host downloads + 3 host→GPU
uploads of post-RoPE Q / K / raw V at the front-block attn0
site).  Strict gating on `front_in_graph_rope &&
!include_ggml_trace && v_gpu_attn0 && k_rope_gpu_attn0` — trace
mode falls back to the legacy host bridge so the trace harness
still captures pre-attention Q/K/V host vectors, and legacy
GGUFs without `vector_rope_theta` continue to take the host-
rotate path.

The blit primitive parity gate already shipped with PR tetherto#16
(`test-supertonic-graph-to-graph-blit`); round 8 extends it
with explicit coverage of the front-block K / V shapes
(text_len=32 and text_len=50, both bit-exact `max_abs = 0.0`).

Whole CPU-only `ctest -L unit` reports 21 / 21 tests, 0
failures, 0 regressions.

Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
…U bridge

Extends the round-8 GPU bridge pattern to the 4 style flash-attn
sites (style0 + g1_style + g2_style + g3_style).  Largest
bandwidth-style optimisation that ships from pure-Supertonic-side
code: 120 sync points / synth eliminated on the production
Vulkan / OpenCL path (4× the round-8 win).

- vector_res_style_qkv_result extended with `sq_gpu / sk_gpu /
  sv_gpu` GPU handles, populated unconditionally by
  `run_res_style_qkv_cache` (cheap — no GPU sync; just
  `ggml_graph_get_tensor` lookups).  Same shape as
  `vector_group_graph_result::q_rope_gpu` etc from the round-1
  2C-lite work.

- `run_res_style_qkv_cache` host-download gating: the 3
  `tensor_to_time_channel(...)` downloads of `sq` / `sk` / `sv`
  are now gated on `trace != nullptr`.  Production path skips
  them entirely.  Mirrors the round-1 2C-lite
  `need_host_qkv = (trace != nullptr)` gate.  `post` stays
  unconditional — consumed by the next-stage
  `run_style_residual_cache` which still expects a host vector
  (cross-stage GPU bridge for `post` is deferred).

- 4 dispatch sites rewired with the same gating pattern as the
  round-8 front-block bridge: `!include_ggml_trace && sq_gpu &&
  sk_gpu && sv_gpu` → GPU bridge; otherwise legacy host bridge.
  Trace mode falls back to the legacy host bridge so the trace
  harness still gets all the host vectors.

Strict TDD: parity test
(`test-supertonic-graph-to-graph-blit`) extended with explicit
style-shape coverage (`style_sq_L1` trip-wire + clarified
`style0_q_rope_L20` / `style0_k_rope_kv50`) BEFORE any
production wiring.  All 24 / 24 parity checks pass at bit-exact
`max_abs = 0.0`.

Whole CPU-only `ctest -L unit` reports 21 / 21 tests, 0
failures, 0 regressions.

Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
…t upload-skip

After rounds 8 + 9 wired the GPU bridge for the 5 attention
sites, the largest remaining per-step host upload is `text_emb`
(uploaded to 4 caches × 5 denoise steps = 20 times / synth, but
constant data within one synth).  Round 10 generalises the F4
pointer-compare upload-skip pattern (already used for
`style_v_in` / `kctx_in`) into a reusable
`upload_skip_tracker` helper and applies it to the front-block
+ 3 group caches.

CRITICAL CORRECTNESS HAZARD addressed:

`text_emb` is a stack-local `std::vector<float>` in
`Engine::Impl::synthesize()` (and bench loops).  Modern heap
allocators (jemalloc / tcmalloc / glibc) very often re-issue
the SAME address for the next stack-local vector of the same
size — so synth N+1 may have `text_emb.data() ==
synth_N.text_emb.data()` despite holding completely different
data.  A naive pointer-compare upload-skip would silently leak
prior synth's text-encoder embedding into the next synth's GPU
buffer.

Mitigation: caller MUST invoke `tracker.reset()` at every
synth boundary (`current_step == 0`).  The CPU-only TDD test
includes an explicit cross-synth pointer-reuse hazard
simulation that documents the bug and verifies the reset
prevents it.

Per-synth wins:
- 16 fewer `ggml_backend_tensor_set` host→GPU uploads per synth
- ~512 KB / synth bandwidth saved at text_len=32 (linear in
  prompt length)

Strict TDD: `test-supertonic-upload-skip-tracker` (NEW, 7
functions, 41 checks) committed first, observed to fail compile
(`upload_skip_tracker was not declared`), then implementation
added.

Whole CPU-only `ctest -L unit` reports 22 / 22 tests, 0
failures, 0 regressions.

Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
…PU-bridge layout fix

Critical correctness fix.  Round 11 didn't add a new optimisation
— it made every prior round actually run end-to-end on real
hardware.  Rounds 8 + 9 + 10 had all shipped CPU-only unit-test
green, but the unit tests never exercised the production code
path with a real GGUF carrying `vector_rope_theta`.  The first
end-to-end synth attempt (CPU OR Vulkan) aborted at
`GGML_ASSERT(HD == n_heads * head_dim)` inside
`apply_rope_to_packed_qk`, and even past that assertion every
`ggml_backend_tensor_copy(q_src, q_tc_in)` on the GPU-bridge
fast paths would have hit
`GGML_ASSERT(ggml_are_same_layout(src, dst))` because Q/K/V
matmul outputs were the byte-for-byte transpose of what the
attention cache's `q_tc_in` / `k_tc_in` / `v_tc_in` tensors
expect.

Root cause: `apply_rope_to_packed_qk` (PR tetherto#16 audit follow-up tetherto#5)
was written under the assumption that `dense_matmul_time_ggml`
returns a `ne=[HD, L]` channel-fastest-in-memory tensor.  In
fact the matmul (CPU `cblas_sgemm` and GPU `conv1d_f32(K=1)`)
produces `ne=[L, HD]` with channel-major-flat memory — the
bit-exact transpose of the helper's input contract.  The CPU
unit test that landed alongside the helper hand-built Q under
the wrong `[HD, L]` shape, so the failure mode was invisible
to CI.

The fix (strict TDD):

1. `test_supertonic_rope_packed_qk.cpp` rewritten under the
   production matmul shape `ne=[L, HD]` (channel-major-flat
   memory).  Reference built in scalar `apply_rope`'s native
   time-major-flat layout; test verifies the helper's output
   bytes match bit-for-bit AND pins `y->ne[0] = HD,
   y->ne[1] = L` so the downstream `q_tc_in` blit cannot
   regress on layout.  Committed RED first, observed to abort
   at the same assertion the production crash hits, then
   landing the helper fix turned it GREEN (14 / 14 checks).

2. `apply_rope_to_packed_qk` (`supertonic_internal.h`): add a
   head-of-pipeline `ggml_cont(ggml_transpose(q))` to flip from
   `ne=[L, HD]` channel-major-flat to `ne=[HD, L]` time-major-
   flat (which IS the layout `q_tc_in` expects).  Rest of the
   pipeline unchanged.  Output ne=[HD, L] time-major-flat
   bytes match scalar `apply_rope`'s native layout AND
   `q_tc_in`'s blit target bit-for-bit.

3. V (and the style sq/sk/sv) have no RoPE to mask the layout
   flip — open-code the same `ggml_cont(ggml_transpose(...))`
   at the matmul output in `build_group_graph_cache`,
   `ve_front_block_proj_cache`, and `build_res_style_qkv_cache`
   so all four GPU-bridge attention sites get bit-for-bit
   matching layouts.

4. Legacy host-bridge fallbacks switched from
   `tensor_to_time_channel(<post-rope-or-v>)` to
   `tensor_raw_f32(...)`.  The new graph-side layout puts the
   bytes already in the time-major-flat shape scalar
   `apply_rope` / `flash_attention_qkv` host references read,
   so the raw download is the correct call;
   `tensor_to_time_channel` would now apply the transpose-of-
   the-transpose and feed wrong-orientation Q/K/V into the
   attention silently.

Verification:

| Backend | Pre-fix | Post-fix |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | abort on first step | writes 3.89s 44.1 kHz WAV |
| Vulkan RTX 5090 | abort | writes 6.53s WAV; 44 ms / 5 steps; 74x realtime |
| Vulkan AMD RADV iGPU | abort | writes 3.64s WAV; 178 ms; 7x realtime |
| Vulkan Mesa lavapipe | abort | writes 1.21s WAV |

CPU-only `ctest -L unit`: 22 / 22 tests, 0 failures, 0
regressions.  Vulkan build's `ctest` likewise 22 / 22.

The round-1..10 wins (multi-device cache, BF16 / Q8_0 K/V
dispatch, native LEAKY_RELU, F16 weights deny-list, prewarm,
front-block + style + group GPU bridges, text-input upload-
skip) are now actually exercised end-to-end on every Vulkan
adapter we have — they just couldn't run before round 11
unblocked the production path.

Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
@Zbig9000 Zbig9000 force-pushed the QVAC-18605-TTS-GGML-Add-and-optimize-Vulkan-for-supertonic branch from 1b710d3 to c383e70 Compare May 13, 2026 16:01

@tradingsuit-freddy tradingsuit-freddy left a comment

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Review of the Vulkan delta (pr16...pr17). The round-11 RoPE/transpose layout fix looks correctly applied at all four attention sites and the legacy host downloads moved to tensor_raw_f32 consistently. Below are 2 blocking issues I verified line-by-line plus 2 non-blocking risks.

#ifdef GGML_USE_VULKAN
if (model.backend_is_vk) {
char desc[256] = {0};
ggml_backend_vk_get_device_description(opts.vulkan_device < 0 ? 0 : opts.vulkan_device,

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BUG (blocking): --vulkan-device -1 (auto-pick) reports the wrong device in every log / bench / JSON line.

backend_name() builds the device label from the raw option, mapping the auto-pick sentinel -1 to 0:

ggml_backend_vk_get_device_description(opts.vulkan_device < 0 ? 0 : opts.vulkan_device, desc, ...);
out += " (device " + std::to_string(opts.vulkan_device < 0 ? 0 : opts.vulkan_device) + ": " + desc + ")";

The index actually chosen by resolve_vulkan_device_index (argmax free VRAM) is never propagated back to opts/model, so on a multi-GPU host --vulkan-device -1 that resolves to device 2 still prints device 0: <wrong name>. That defeats the exact use case the comment promises ("unambiguous when triaging multi-GPU machines"), and supertonic_bench.cpp has the same issue (~line 538), so the bench JSON attributes timings to the wrong adapter.

Suggest storing the resolved index (e.g. model.vulkan_device_resolved) at backend init and using it here instead of opts.vulkan_device.

// No-op for the default `kv_attn_type == -1` path (the
// resolver already mirrors the boolean). Becomes a
// no-op for explicit `--kv-attn-type 1` too.
model.use_f16_attn = (model.kv_attn_type == kv_attn_dtype::f16);

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BUG (blocking): --f16-attn 1 no longer forces F16 — the round-1 debug escape hatch was lost in round 4.

The comment at lines 169-170 still states: "Manual override via --f16-attn 1 still forces dispatch (useful for debug-shim backends)." That is no longer true. Round 1 sets use_f16_attn = (opts.f16_attn != 0) (line 175), but round 4 then re-gates it through the probe and overwrites the boolean here:

// resolve_kv_attn_type, case -1 (auto / default kv_attn_type):
if (legacy_use_f16_attn && backend_supports_f16) return kv_attn_dtype::f16;
return kv_attn_dtype::f32;
...
// line 209:
model.use_f16_attn = (model.kv_attn_type == kv_attn_dtype::f16);

So on a backend whose F16-K/V probe returns false — i.e. exactly the "debug-shim backend" the comment targets — --f16-attn 1 silently falls back to F32 and the override is undone. Either the comment is stale and should say the override is probe-gated, or the forced path needs to bypass the probe. Please pick one and align code + comment.

return n;
}

const backend_capabilities & cached_backend_capabilities(ggml_backend_t backend) {

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RISK (non-blocking): capability cache keyed by a raw ggml_backend_t pointer has no invalidation hook.

The process-wide cached_backend_capabilities map keys on the backend pointer, and the surrounding comment already acknowledges pointers can be recycled after ggml_backend_free. There is no invalidation in free_supertonic_model, so if a backend is freed and a new one is allocated at the same address it inherits the previous backend's probe results (wrong use_native_leaky_relu / F16 / weights policy) for the rest of the process. For a long-lived host that loads/unloads multiple models this is a latent correctness bug, not just a perf cache. Suggest evicting the entry on backend teardown (or keying on something stable).

// 4 (skipped) × 3 (groups) × text_len × 256 × 4 bytes. See
// upload_skip_tracker contract in supertonic_internal.h.
if (current_step == 0) cache.text_in_skip.reset();
if (cache.text_in_skip.needs_upload(text_lc_host)) {

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RISK (non-blocking): upload_skip_tracker skips host->device uploads via raw pointer compare — silent stale-input hazard.

Cross-synth correctness rests entirely on reset() being called at current_step == 0 (line 1235). The engine/bench loops honor that today, but nothing ties the reset to the upload path in an integration test, and the pointer-compare can be defeated two ways: (a) the allocator reuses a freed text_emb/text_lc_host address for a different encoding, or (b) the buffer is mutated in place with the same data() pointer across steps (the public supertonic_vector_step_ggml API does not forbid it). In both cases the tracker wrongly skips a required upload and the GPU runs on stale input -> silently wrong audio, no crash. Worth a guard (size/contents hash, or a generation counter bumped per synth) and an integration test that exercises a new encoding without the step==0 reset.

@ishanvohra2 ishanvohra2 closed this Jun 5, 2026
@ishanvohra2 ishanvohra2 reopened this Jun 5, 2026
@Zbig9000

Zbig9000 commented Jun 8, 2026

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It has been replaced by another PR.

@Zbig9000 Zbig9000 closed this Jun 8, 2026
@tradingsuit-freddy

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Process / PR-level notes (separate from the inline findings)

Beyond the four inline comments, a few higher-level points worth raising before this lands:

1. Rounds 1–10 never ran end-to-end and CI didn't catch it. The description itself states that without round 11 "every prior round was hitting a latent assertion-failure during the first real synth call," and that the unit test built Q under the wrong shape so the failure was invisible to CI. That means the "22/22 PASS, 0 regressions" across 10 rounds was false confidence — the tests were green while production crashed on the first synth. The CPU-only unit-test strategy has a real gap: it never exercises the GPU path where the bug actually lived. At minimum, a lavapipe (Vulkan-on-CPU) smoke test in CI would gate the GPU contract.

2. No GPU coverage in CI. All Vulkan validation is manual on the author's dev rig (RTX 5090 / RADV / lavapipe); nothing in CI gates the GPU path. Given point 1, that's a significant risk for a +13k-line change on the inference path.

3. Known-broken behaviors are being merged.

  • F18/F19 cache-reuse failures are deferred but described as "newly observable post-round-11" — please confirm they're ticketed and don't affect the shipping path.
  • The UMA auto-pick (--vulkan-device -1) picks the iGPU over a discrete GPU (documented ~4× regression) and ships as the "auto" behavior with no warning in --help. At least the help text should warn, or -1 shouldn't be recommended.

4. Size / reviewability + public-API change.

  • 11 rounds plus a critical correctness fix stacked into one diff; the round-11 fix (the only thing that makes it run at all) is buried under 10 rounds of optimization. Correctness should ideally have landed separately from the perf work.
  • EngineOptions in the public header (include/tts-cpp/supertonic/engine.h) changed layout (vulkan_device inserted before f16_weights, plus new std::vector/std::map members). That's an ABI break — relevant because tts-cpp is consumed prebuilt via vcpkg in qvac, so any downstream positional init or layout assumption breaks.

Suggested verdict: block on the two BUG inline comments + a lavapipe smoke in CI (point 1); treat the rest as non-blocking with tracking tickets.

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