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[ROCm] Don't re-quantize bf16 MLA kv_b_proj to fp4/fp8 for GLM MoE DSA - #48051

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amd-sriram:fix/glm-mla-bf16-no-fp4-requant

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@amd-sriram

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Purpose

On ROCm, the AITER MLA path assumes a bf16 kv_b_proj is unquantized and
quantizes it to fp4/fp8. This is wrong for GlmMoeDsaForCausalLM (e.g.
amd/GLM-5.2-MXFP4), where the MLA weights are intentionally bf16 and only the
MoE experts are MXFP4.

Quantizing these MLA weights to fp4 adds ~11% error per attention layer. It
accumulates across layers and pushes greedy decoding into repetition loops.

This PR skips fp4/fp8 MLA quantization for GLM MoE DSA (matching SGLang). The MoE
experts stay MXFP4, so the model remains int4.

Test Plan

Serve amd/GLM-5.2-MXFP4 on gfx950 with the AITER sparse MLA backend, greedy
(temperature=0), reasoning_effort="high":

curl -s localhost:8990/v1/chat/completions -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{
  "model": "amd/GLM-5.2-MXFP4",
  "messages": [{"role":"user","content":"What is the capital of France?"}],
  "max_tokens": 200, "temperature": 0.0, "reasoning_effort": "high"
}'

Test Result

Before — repeats indefinitely:

... No, the user asked "What is the capital of France?" No, the user asked ...

After:

...</think>The capital of France is Paris.   (finish_reason: stop)

Confirmed MLA weights stay bf16 and MoE experts remain MXFP4.

The ROCm AITER MLA path treats `kv_b_proj.weight.dtype == bfloat16` as
"unquantized, safe to quantize to fp4/fp8". For checkpoints like
GlmMoeDsaForCausalLM (AMD GLM-5.2-MXFP4) the MLA kv_b_proj weights are
intentionally kept in bf16 while only the MoE experts are MXFP4. Re-quantizing
these absorbed MLA weights to fp4/fp8 injects large per-layer error that
compounds and drives greedy decoding into repetition loops.

Guard the fp4/fp8 BMM enablement on the model architecture so these bf16 MLA
weights are left untouched (matching SGLang's behavior for GLM), while the MoE
experts remain MXFP4.
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@mergify mergify Bot added the rocm Related to AMD ROCm label Jul 8, 2026
@github-project-automation github-project-automation Bot moved this to Todo in AMD Jul 8, 2026

@fxmarty-amd fxmarty-amd left a comment

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In the first place, I am not sure why VLLM_ROCM_USE_AITER_FP8BMM (and VLLM_ROCM_USE_AITER_FP4BMM) are enabled by default at:

vllm/vllm/envs.py

Lines 1252 to 1256 in dc9f845

# Whether to use aiter triton fp8 bmm kernel
# By default is enabled.
"VLLM_ROCM_USE_AITER_FP8BMM": lambda: (
os.getenv("VLLM_ROCM_USE_AITER_FP8BMM", "True").lower() in ("true", "1")
),

These are potentially destructive optimizations (as you found out), so I am skeptical why they are enabled by default. If anything, if quantizing kv_b_proj was safe, models should be shipped as such?

AFAIK there is no such silent kv_b_proj quantization on non-AMD devices? Seems like in this case it is ALWAYS kept in bf16, no matter the original precision:

def process_weights_after_loading(self, act_dtype: torch.dtype):
# we currently do not have quantized bmm's which are needed for
# `W_UV` and `W_UK_T`, we just store fp16/bf16 copies and perform
# the bmm's in 16-bit, the extra memory overhead of this is fairly low
kv_b_proj_weight = get_and_maybe_dequant_weights(
self.kv_b_proj, out_dtype=act_dtype
).T

and
else:
# Convert from (L, N, V) to (N, L, V)
self.W_UV = W_UV.transpose(0, 1)
# Convert from (L, N, P) to (N, P, L)
self.W_UK_T = W_UK.permute(1, 2, 0)

This default originally comes from:

  • #25896 (fp8, vllm/v1/attention/backends/mla/common.py)
  • #32238 (fp4)

cc @zyongye @maleksan85 for comment

@fxmarty-amd

fxmarty-amd commented Jul 16, 2026 •

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Okay on sglang side, on nvidia, by default:

On sglang side, on AMD:

So not as aggressive as here (esp. on nvidia side).

@mergify mergify Bot added the quantization label Jul 23, 2026
@mergify

mergify Bot commented Aug 3, 2026

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This pull request has merge conflicts that must be resolved before it can be
merged. Please rebase the PR, @amd-sriram.

https://docs.github.com/en/pull-requests/collaborating-with-pull-requests/working-with-forks/syncing-a-fork

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