Update Dockerfile.rocm for AINIC & Thor NIC

[haic0]

Summary
Updates the ROCm image build (docker/Dockerfile.rocm and docker/Dockerfile.rocm_base) so MORI can be built with an optional AMD AINIC (Pensando / ionic) or **BNXT (broadcom)" NIC stack, following the same approach as SGLang’s docker/rocm.Dockerfile MORI section.

Co-authored with: @ichbinblau @simondanielsson

Purpose

Fixes #38687.

This PR installs Thor2 and AINIC userspace libraries by default into the ROCm vLLM image. This allows for MoRI to be directly used on MI300/MI355 platforms where AINIC/Thor2 NICS are typically available.

MoRI automatically picks up the correct userspaces libs based on what devices are in use, so it's safe to install libs for both devices. We provide the option to specify the NIC_BACKEND build arg in situations where both NICs are available and conflict with each other.

Co-authored with: @ichbinblau @simondanielsson

Test Plan

1. Build image without errors:

docker build -f Dockerfile.rocm .

2. Run vllm w/ MoRI connector in this image, expect no errors:

docker run -it --rm \
      --init \
      --network host \
      --ipc host \
      --privileged \
      --cap-add SYS_PTRACE \
      --security-opt seccomp=unconfined \
      --ulimit memlock=-1 \
      --ulimit stack=67108864 \
      --shm-size 256G \
      --group-add video \
      --group-add render \
      --device /dev/kfd \
      --device /dev/dri \
      --device /dev/infiniband \
      -v /sys:/sys \
      -v "${HOME}/.cache/huggingface:/root/.cache/huggingface" \
      -e HF_HOME=/root/.cache/huggingface \
      -e HF_HUB_ENABLE_HF_TRANSFER=0 \
      -e VLLM_MORIIO_CONNECTOR_READ_MODE=1 \
      -e NCCL_MIN_NCHANNELS=112 \
      -e VLLM_USE_V1=1 \
      -e VLLM_ENGINE_READY_TIMEOUT_S=3600 \
      -e VLLM_SERVER_DEV_MODE=1 \
      -e VLLM_ROCM_USE_AITER=1 \
      -e VLLM_ROCM_USE_AITER_PAGED_ATTN=0 \
      -e VLLM_ROCM_USE_AITER_RMSNORM=1 \
      -e VLLM_USE_AITER_TRITON_SILU_MUL=0 \
      ghcr.io/simondanielsson/vllm-bnxt-drivers-53e3fb7:latest \
      deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1-0528 \
          --load-format dummy \
          --tensor-parallel-size 8 \
          --kv-cache-dtype fp8 \
          --gpu-memory-utilization 0.7 \
          --max-num-batched-tokens 32768 \
          --max-model-len 16384 \
          --trust-remote-code \
          --no-enable-prefix-caching \
          --block-size 1 \
          --enforce-eager \
          --kv-transfer-config '{
            "kv_connector": "MoRIIOConnector",
            "kv_role": "kv_producer",
            "kv_connector_extra_config": {
              "proxy_ip": "127.0.0.1",
              "proxy_ping_port": "36367",
              "http_port": "8100",
              "handshake_port": "6301",
              "notify_port": "61005"
            }
          }'

Test Result

TODO

---

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• (Optional) Release notes update. If your change is user facing, please update the release notes draft in the Google Doc.

[claude]

Claude Code Review

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[gemini-code-assist]

Code Review

This pull request introduces support for Broadcom bnxt NIC backends in the ROCm Dockerfile by implementing the build and installation of rdma-core. Feedback suggests correcting a misleading comment in the 'none' backend case and recommends purging build-time dependencies after installation to optimize image size and security. A minor indentation inconsistency was also identified.

[functionstackx]

hi @haic0 & @simondanielsson

can we ship this PR without validating the BXNT MoRI side and only validating the AINIC MoRI side to unblock the AINIC userspace install on NIC_BACKEND=None and then once firmware arrives, we can do vllm BXNT MoRI validation and do follow up PRs for bug fixes as needed. this aligns to what sglang folks did as they too r blocked on waiting for firmware
a. sgl-project/sglang#23263
b. sgl-project/sglang#21774
c. https://github.com/sgl-project/sglang/blob/929e00eeab0e0f2d5537a9019984941a4f8f7071/docker/rocm.Dockerfile#L393-L394

without this currently nightly images are still not built with AINIC userspace libs as https://github.com/vllm-project/vllm/blob/main/.buildkite/release-pipeline.yaml builds with default buildarg of NIC_BACKEND=None

as described here #38687 (comment)

[simondanielsson]

hi @haic0 & @simondanielsson

can we ship this PR without validating the BXNT MoRI side and only validating the AINIC MoRI side to unblock the AINIC userspace install on NIC_BACKEND=None and then once firmware arrives, we can do vllm BXNT MoRI validation and do follow up PRs for bug fixes as needed. this aligns to what sglang folks did as they too r blocked on waiting for firmware a. sgl-project/sglang#23263 b. sgl-project/sglang#21774 c. https://github.com/sgl-project/sglang/blob/929e00eeab0e0f2d5537a9019984941a4f8f7071/docker/rocm.Dockerfile#L393-L394

without this currently nightly images are still not built with AINIC userspace libs as https://github.com/vllm-project/vllm/blob/main/.buildkite/release-pipeline.yaml builds with default buildarg of NIC_BACKEND=None

as described here #38687 (comment)

Discussed with @tjtanaa - we're validating once more the AINIC driver installation and once that's validated we can merge this to ensure image is built for the AINIC. We will validate the bnxt once that's possible

[tjtanaa]

@haic0 Let's set this to all?

So, we introduce 4 paths, where the default is all.

case "${NIC_BACKEND}" in \
   none)  ;; \
   all)  install_ainic; install_bnxt ;; \
   ainic) install_ainic ;; \
   bnxt)  install_bnxt ;; \
   *)     echo "ERROR: unknown NIC_BACKEND=${NIC_BACKEND}. Use one of: none, ainic, bnxt, all"; exit 2 ;; \
 esac'

Do developers who doesn't need to setup MoRI can just skip installing the user space lib.
--build-arg NIC_BACKEND=none

[tjtanaa]

# NIC backend for MoRI RDMA support.
# By default (all), drivers and userspace libraries for all supported NIC types
# (ainic and bnxt) are installed; MoRI selects the appropriate one at runtime.
# To install drivers for a single NIC type only, set NIC_BACKEND explicitly:
#   --build-arg NIC_BACKEND=ainic   # AMD AINIC (Pensando) only
#   --build-arg NIC_BACKEND=bnxt    # Broadcom Thor-2 only
#   --build-arg NIC_BACKEND=none    # Install nothing.

[tjtanaa]

make this the all case

and keep the none case to not install anything.

[simondanielsson]

I've tested the following

1. Build the image locally

NB: my current cluster uses kernel module ionic-dkms=25.08.4.004, and after browsing https://repo.radeon.com/amdainic/pensando/ubuntu/1.117.3-hydra/pool/main/i/ionic/ I found that AINIC_VERSION=1.117.3-hydra should be compatible with that one. This is lower than the image's default value. If you don't have a compatible kernel module version, you MoRI will first log a mismatch in ABI level and then crash with an error that no (NIC) devices could be found.

Note that the default value AINIC_VERSION=1.117.5 requires kernel module ionic-dkms_26.03.3.001_all.deb. If this is not what one has on the machine you need to manually rebuild by setting --build-arg AINIC_VERSION as I do below.

@functionstackx @tjtanaa as of May 6 there is an even newer version available: 1.125.0-a-187. Similarly to 1.117.5 it requires kernel module ionic-dkms_26.03.27.002_all.deb, so just a patch away from what's required by the current default 1.117.5. Question: should we bump the default AINIC_VERSION in the image to 1.125.0-a-187 instead? IMO we might as well bump it to the latest available version. but LMK what you think.

DOCKER_BUILDKIT=1 docker build \
  --build-arg AINIC_VERSION=1.117.3-hydra \
  --build-arg BASE_IMAGE=rocm/vllm-dev:base \
  --tag  rocm/vllm-dev:ainic-test \
   -f docker/Dockerfile.rocm .    

2. Run 1P1D MoRI on MI355X without errors:

docker run \
  --name vllm-router \
  --network host \
  --rm \
  vllm/vllm-router:nightly-20260507-e667ebb \
  vllm-router \
  --vllm-pd-disaggregation \
  --kv-connector moriio \
  --vllm-discovery-address "0.0.0.0:36367" \
  --policy consistent_hash \
  --prefill-policy consistent_hash \
  --decode-policy consistent_hash

docker run \
  --rm \
  --name moriio-prefill \
  --init --network host --ipc host --privileged \
  --cap-add SYS_PTRACE --security-opt seccomp=unconfined \
  --ulimit memlock=-1 --ulimit stack=67108864 \
  --shm-size 256G \
  --pid host \
  --group-add video --group-add render \
  --device /dev/kfd --device /dev/dri --device /dev/infiniband \
  -v /sys:/sys \
  -v "${HOME}/repos/vllm/hf_cache:/root/.cache/huggingface" \
  -e HF_HOME=/root/.cache/huggingface \
  -e HF_HUB_ENABLE_HF_TRANSFER=0 \
  -e VLLM_MORIIO_CONNECTOR_READ_MODE=1 \
  -e NCCL_MIN_NCHANNELS=112 \
  -e VLLM_USE_V1=1 \
  -e VLLM_ENGINE_READY_TIMEOUT_S=3600 \
  -e VLLM_SERVER_DEV_MODE=1 \
  -e VLLM_ROCM_USE_AITER=1 \
  -e VLLM_ROCM_USE_AITER_PAGED_ATTN=0 \
  -e VLLM_ROCM_USE_AITER_RMSNORM=1 \
  -e VLLM_USE_AITER_TRITON_SILU_MUL=0 \
  rocm/vllm-dev:ainic-test \
  meta-llama/Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct \
    --port 8100 \
    --tensor-parallel-size 1 \
    --kv-cache-dtype fp8 \
    --gpu-memory-utilization 0.3 \
    --max-num-batched-tokens 8000 \
    --max-model-len 8000  \
    --trust-remote-code \
    --no-enable-prefix-caching \
    --enforce-eager \
    --kv-transfer-config '{
      "kv_connector": "MoRIIOConnector",
      "kv_role": "kv_producer",
      "kv_connector_extra_config": {
        "proxy_ip": "localhost",
        "proxy_ping_port": "36367",
        "http_port": "8100",
        "handshake_port": "6401",
        "notify_port": "62005"
      }
    }'

docker run \
  --rm \
  --name moriio-decode \
  --init --network host --ipc host --privileged \
  --cap-add SYS_PTRACE --security-opt seccomp=unconfined \
  --ulimit memlock=-1 --ulimit stack=67108864 \
  --shm-size 256G \
  --pid host \
  --group-add video --group-add render \
  --device /dev/kfd --device /dev/dri --device /dev/infiniband \
  -v /sys:/sys \
  -v "${HOME}/repos/vllm/hf_cache:/root/.cache/huggingface" \
  -e HF_HOME=/root/.cache/huggingface \
  -e HF_HUB_ENABLE_HF_TRANSFER=0 \
  -e VLLM_MORIIO_CONNECTOR_READ_MODE=1 \
  -e NCCL_MIN_NCHANNELS=112 \
  -e VLLM_USE_V1=1 \
  -e VLLM_ENGINE_READY_TIMEOUT_S=3600 \
  -e VLLM_SERVER_DEV_MODE=1 \
  -e VLLM_ROCM_USE_AITER=1 \
  -e VLLM_ROCM_USE_AITER_PAGED_ATTN=0 \
  -e VLLM_ROCM_USE_AITER_RMSNORM=1 \
  -e VLLM_USE_AITER_TRITON_SILU_MUL=0 \
  rocm/vllm-dev:ainic-test \
  meta-llama/Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct \
    --port 8200 \
    --tensor-parallel-size 1 \
    --kv-cache-dtype fp8 \
    --gpu-memory-utilization 0.3 \
    --max-num-batched-tokens 8000 \
    --max-model-len 8000  \
    --trust-remote-code \
    --no-enable-prefix-caching \
    --enforce-eager \
    --kv-transfer-config '{
      "kv_connector": "MoRIIOConnector",
      "kv_role": "kv_consumer",
      "kv_connector_extra_config": {
        "proxy_ip": "localhost",
        "proxy_ping_port": "36367",
        "http_port": "8200",
        "handshake_port": "6501",
        "notify_port": "63005"
      }
    }'

# run bench serve, 1k/1k 
docker exec moriio-prefill vllm bench serve \
  --base-url http://localhost:30000 \
  --backend vllm \
  --model meta-llama/Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct \
  --dataset-name random \
  --random-input-len 1000 \
  --random-output-len 1000 \
  --max-concurrency 1 \
  --num-warmups 20 \
  --num-prompts 100 \
  --goodput ttft:1000 \
  --seed 1234  

and runs without errors:

Image size

For reference, these libraries add ~1.82MB into the images

[simondanielsson]

@functionstackx what ionic kernel module is used in your clusters? We could base the default AINIC version based on this. e.g modinfo ionic or ls /var/lib/dkms/ionic/

[functionstackx]

@functionstackx what ionic kernel module is used in your clusters? We could base the default AINIC version based on this. e.g modinfo ionic or ls /var/lib/dkms/ionic/

i am afk rn. can u check in the cluster (u should have access, if not, @chunfangamd can give u access to mi355)

[simondanielsson]

@functionstackx what ionic kernel module is used in your clusters? We could base the default AINIC version based on this. e.g modinfo ionic or ls /var/lib/dkms/ionic/

i am afk rn. can u check in the cluster (u should have access, if not, @chunfangamd can give u access to mi355)

Unable to access the cluster for now but I've notified Chun. I'll try again in the morning

[functionstackx]

@functionstackx what ionic kernel module is used in your clusters? We could base the default AINIC version based on this. e.g modinfo ionic or ls /var/lib/dkms/ionic/

i am afk rn. can u check in the cluster (u should have access, if not, @chunfangamd can give u access to mi355)

Unable to access the cluster for now but I've notified Chun. I'll try again in the morning

@chunfangamd has given you access iirc, can u coordinate with him to add ur ssh key to it if u still dont have access?

here is the info

~$ modinfo ionic
filename:       /lib/modules/6.8.0-60-generic/updates/dkms/ionic.ko
supported:      external
version:        25.08.4.004

$ ls /var/lib/dkms/ionic/
25.08.4.004  kernel-6.8.0-60-generic-x86_64

[simondanielsson]

@functionstackx what ionic kernel module is used in your clusters? We could base the default AINIC version based on this. e.g modinfo ionic or ls /var/lib/dkms/ionic/

i am afk rn. can u check in the cluster (u should have access, if not, @chunfangamd can give u access to mi355)

Unable to access the cluster for now but I've notified Chun. I'll try again in the morning

@chunfangamd has given you access iirc, can u coordinate with him to add ur ssh key to it if u still dont have access?

On it 👍

here is the info

~$ modinfo ionic
filename:       /lib/modules/6.8.0-60-generic/updates/dkms/ionic.ko
supported:      external
version:        25.08.4.004

$ ls /var/lib/dkms/ionic/
25.08.4.004  kernel-6.8.0-60-generic-x86_64

Thanks for the update - we're on identical ionic kernel module version.

Suggestion: switch default AINIC_VERSION=1.117.3-hydra in Dockerfile.rocm and this should work OOB on @functionstackx cluster (and mine), as validated here. Users can always build their own image by specifying a different AINIC_VERSION suitable for their kernel module version and FW.

@tjtanaa WDYT?

[simondanielsson]

@functionstackx @tjtanaa I've validated on @functionstackx 's cluster with an image built with AINIC_VERSION=1.117.3-hydra (using these commands) that PD with MoRI works out of the box.

I'll update this to the default AINIC version, let me know if you disagree.

[tjtanaa]

@simondanielsson sure let's go with 25.x for now.

[functionstackx]

@simondanielsson lgtm! I am chill with an AINIC version where it works out of the box

[simondanielsson]

@simondanielsson lgtm! I am chill with an AINIC version where it works out of the box

Great, we successfully ran an InferenceX job using this image.

@tjtanaa please let me know if there's any additional changes needed before completing this. Thanks🙏

[tjtanaa]

LGTM

[functionstackx]

thanks @tjtanaa @simondanielsson @haic0 @chunfangamd for this! glad that pollara NICs on vLLM finally works out of the box and then we have almost unblocked the inferencex disagg kimi PR (i guess only the mori connector high conc hanging pr left to merge)

[simondanielsson]

thanks @tjtanaa @simondanielsson @haic0 @chunfangamd for this! glad that pollara NICs on vLLM finally works out of the box and then we have almost unblocked the inferencex disagg kimi PR (i guess only the mori connector high conc hanging pr left to merge)

Exactly! Thanks for the help on this