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[MRV2] Add reduced sampling for tensor-parallel decoding - #54332

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hzx55906:reduced_sampling

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@hzx55906 hzx55906 commented Aug 29, 2026 •

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Purpose

This PR adds an opt-in reduced sampling path that avoids gathering full-vocabulary logits during supported tensor-parallel decoding workloads.

With --enable-reduced-sampling:

  • Greedy sampling gathers one local (max_logit, global_token_id) pair per TP rank.
  • Bounded top-k sampling gathers only local top-k candidate values and global token IDs.
  • Greedy speculative decoding verifies draft tokens using reduced target argmaxes.
  • Unsupported cases automatically fall back to the existing full-logits path.

The feature is disabled by default and requires Model Runner V2 with tensor_parallel_size > 1.

Related RFC/issue: #54333

Implementation

The implementation is model-agnostic and does not modify individual model files.

  • LogitsProcessor exposes shard-local logits and vocabulary metadata when the standard vocab-parallel head supports it.
  • Model Runner V2 decides whether to keep local logits or perform the normal full-vocabulary all-gather.
  • Sampler implements reduced greedy and bounded top-k sampling.
  • RejectionSampler adds reduced verification for all-greedy speculative decoding.
  • Configuration and tests cover supported cases and fail-closed behavior.

For greedy sampling, communication is reduced from O(B × V) to O(B × TP).

For bounded top-k sampling, communication becomes O(B × K × TP). The reduced path is used only when its candidate payload is smaller than the full local-logits payload.

Compatibility and fallback

Reduced sampling supports:

  • All-greedy decoding.
  • Random sampling with bounded top_k.
  • Bounded top-k combined with top-p.
  • Eligible mixed greedy/random batches.
  • Greedy target plus greedy draft speculative decoding.
  • Standard FP16, BF16, and FP32 vocab-parallel heads.

The batch falls back to full logits when it uses features requiring the complete vocabulary distribution, including:

  • Logit bias, allowed tokens, bad words, or penalties.
  • Thinking budgets, min_p, grammar, or structured output.
  • Output logprobs or explicit logprob token IDs.
  • NaN counting or sampling-distribution replay.
  • Random sampling without bounded top-k or with an explicit seed.
  • Probabilistic speculative decoding.
  • Unsupported vocabulary-shard metadata or model logits postprocessing.
  • Cases where candidate communication would not be smaller.

The configuration is rejected when used with Model Runner V1, TP=1, batch-sharded sampling, LoRA, diffusion models, or custom samplers.

Known limitations

  • Exact ties at the top-k cutoff may not preserve every token retained by the full threshold-based implementation.
  • Random reduced sampling is distributionally equivalent outside tie cases, but not guaranteed to be bit-for-bit identical to every full-logits backend.
  • Out-of-tree models that modify the captured logits tensor in place may require a future explicit local-logits contract.
  • Fallback currently applies to the whole sampler batch rather than individual requests.

Test Plan

.venv/bin/python -m pytest tests/test_config.py -k reduced_sampling -v

.venv/bin/python -m pytest \
  tests/v1/sample/test_head_dtype.py \
  -k compute_local_logits -v

.venv/bin/python -m pytest \
  tests/v1/worker/test_gpu_sampler_flags.py \
  -k reduced -v

Multi-GPU validation:

  • Compare greedy outputs with reduced sampling enabled and disabled.
  • Compare greedy speculative acceptance and output tokens.
  • Validate bounded top-k sampling and all full-logits fallback cases.
  • Measure latency for TP=2+.

Test Result

Test configuration

  • GPU: L20X
  • Number of GPUs: equal to the tensor-parallel size
    • TP=2: 2× L20X
    • TP=4: 4× L20X
  • Sequence length: 8K
  • Latency unit: milliseconds; lower is better
  • Sampling configurations:
    • Greedy: temperature=0
    • Top-k/top-p: temperature=0.6, top_k=20, top_p=0.95

Performance results

Model Hardware Sampling Batch Speculative Baseline E2E Reduced E2E E2E reduction Baseline sampling Reduced sampling Sampling reduction
Qwen3.6 2× L20X, TP=2 Greedy 512 None 34.55 33.65 3% 1.065 0.122 89%
Qwen3.6 2× L20X, TP=2 Top-k/top-p 512 None 36.90 34.90 5% 3.240 1.326 59%
Qwen3.6 2× L20X, TP=2 Greedy 256 None 21.43 21.00 2% 0.554 0.097 82%
Qwen3.6 2× L20X, TP=2 Greedy 256 MTP-1 26.30 24.70 6% 1.045 0.114 89%
Qwen3.6 2× L20X, TP=2 Top-k/top-p 256 None 22.39 21.56 4% 1.657 0.724 56%
Qwen3-235B 4× L20X, TP=4 Top-k/top-p 128 None 34.90 33.70 3% 0.611 0.235 62%
Qwen3-235B 4× L20X, TP=4 Greedy 128 None 33.65 33.432 1% 0.224 0.060 73%

Across the measured configurations:

  • Sampling latency is reduced by 56%–89%.
  • End-to-end latency is reduced by 1%–6%.
  • Greedy sampling achieves a sampling-latency reduction of 73%–89%.
  • Top-k/top-p sampling achieves a sampling-latency reduction of 56%–62%.
  • Greedy MTP-1 speculative decoding reduces sampling latency by 89% and end-to-end latency by 6%.
  • Performance improvements are observed on both TP=2 and TP=4.

The end-to-end improvement is smaller than the sampling improvement because sampling is only one component of the decode step. Model execution and other runtime overhead remain unchanged.

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@mergify mergify Bot added speculative-decoding mrv2 Model Runner V2 specific labels Aug 29, 2026
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mergify Bot commented Aug 29, 2026

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This pull request has merge conflicts that must be resolved before it can be
merged. Please rebase the PR, @hzx55906.

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

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mergify Bot commented Aug 29, 2026

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This pull request has merge conflicts that must be resolved before it can be
merged. Please rebase the PR, @hzx55906.

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

@mergify mergify Bot added the needs-rebase label Aug 29, 2026
Add --enable-reduced-sampling to avoid full-vocabulary logits all-gathers by reducing shard-local argmax pairs for greedy decoding and bounded top-k candidates for random sampling. Fall back to full logits for unsupported or communication-heavy sampling features, and support greedy speculative verification.

Co-authored-by: OpenAI Codex <codex@openai.com>

Signed-off-by: hzx55906 <513464215@qq.com>
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mergify Bot commented Sep 12, 2026

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This pull request has merge conflicts that must be resolved before it can be
merged. Please rebase the PR, @hzx55906.

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

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