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chore: Check malformed jaccl hostfile that miss rdma in pairs - #4284

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erwinzhang7:jaccl-hostfile-validation
Aug 22, 2026
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chore: Check malformed jaccl hostfile that miss rdma in pairs#4284
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erwinzhang7:jaccl-hostfile-validation

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Fixes #4283.

The existing checks cover the shape of the rdma matrix and its null diagonal, not
whether the pairs about to be used are present, so a hostfile whose rank order places
unconnected nodes beside each other passes and then leaves every rank alone in a
group of size one, reporting success. Same class as #4210.

missing_jaccl_links reports the pairs that are used but absent: for a ring each
rank's two neighbours, for a mesh every pair. With two ranks the previous and next
neighbour are the same node, which is harmless because the pair is simply examined
twice. The error names the hosts and says that for jaccl-ring the host order is the
ring order, since that is the mistake that produces it.

Checked against a live four node mesh: the misordered hostfile is now rejected, a
ring hostfile used as a mesh is rejected, and valid mesh and valid ring hostfiles
still run at 20.87 and 16.33 GB/s respectively. Six unit tests cover mesh, ring, the two rank
edge case and a ring that is deliberately not a mesh.

@zcbenz zcbenz added await verification This pull request is non-trivial and requires a human expert to verify its correctness. low priority labels Aug 16, 2026

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Both the code comment and error message are hard to comprehend, so it checks connected nodes must have rdma set in hostfile?

@zcbenz zcbenz removed the await verification This pull request is non-trivial and requires a human expert to verify its correctness. label Aug 22, 2026
@erwinzhang7

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Yes, but it checks the pairs the chosen topology will actually use, not every connected pair. For jaccl-ring that is each rank's two neighbours; for the mesh it is every pair. So a hostfile can be a valid ring and an invalid mesh, which is one of the tests.

erwinzhang7 and others added 2 commits August 22, 2026 17:02
…uses

launch_jaccl checked the shape of the rdma matrix, its dimensions and its null
diagonal, but never whether the pairs the backend is about to communicate over
are actually in it. A hostfile whose rank order places unconnected nodes beside
each other passes both checks.

What follows is the worst failure available. The group does not fail to form
and it does not run slowly: every rank ends up alone in a group of size one,
reports success, and the job computes N separate wrong answers at full speed
with nothing on stderr. Verified on four M4 Pro minis wired as a full mesh,
where permuting two hosts in a working hostfile, rows and columns together so
the file stays internally consistent, produced four independent groups of one
and four 'membership OK' lines. This is the same class as ml-explore#4210, where a group
of size 1 counted as a successful init.

missing_jaccl_links reports the pairs that are used but absent: for a ring each
rank's two neighbours, for a mesh every pair. With two ranks the previous and
next neighbour are the same node, which is harmless because the pair is simply
examined twice. The error names the hosts and says that for jaccl-ring the host
order is the ring order, since that is the mistake that produces it.

Checked against the live mesh: the misordered hostfile is now rejected, and
valid mesh and valid ring hostfiles still run at 20.87 and 16.33 GB/s.
@zcbenz
zcbenz force-pushed the jaccl-hostfile-validation branch from 0516cd3 to 7b0499a Compare August 22, 2026 08:25
@zcbenz zcbenz changed the title Reject a jaccl hostfile that does not describe the links the backend uses chore: Check malformed jaccl hostfile that miss rdma in pairs Aug 22, 2026
@zcbenz
zcbenz merged commit c7a185a into ml-explore:main Aug 22, 2026
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davidtai added a commit to Layr-Labs/mlx that referenced this pull request Aug 25, 2026
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* Mirror the depth axis in the decomposed 3D conv when flipped (ml-explore#4277)

* Fix Metal row reductions on negative-stride views (ml-explore#4267)

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* [CUDA] Fix custom kernel cache collision for same name, different source (ml-explore#4273)

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* Fix ops rejecting integers larger than INT32_MAX (ml-explore#4255)

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* Fix var/std for complex numbers (ml-explore#4260)

* Fix int32 overflow in conv padded input and pad shapes (ml-explore#4258)

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* chore: Reject complex in remainder (ml-explore#4270)

* chore: Compare the macOS SDK version as a version when gating JACCL (ml-explore#4286)

* Clamp ring socket transfers so a payload of 2 GiB or more can be sent (ml-explore#4281)

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* chore: Use normalize_axis_index in split/unstack/partition/topk (ml-explore#4288)

* Remove grouped output in CI (ml-explore#4195)

* [CUDA] Fix finding cuda 13 headers in JIT compilation (ml-explore#3995)

* Refactor wheel building script (ml-explore#3818)

* Make mx.compile cache erasing thread safe (ml-explore#4248)

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* Add builds for free-threaded python (ml-explore#3812)

* Fix int32 overflow in concatenate/repeat/kron (ml-explore#4303)

* python: Widen list elements that do not fit in int32 to int64 (ml-explore#4305)

* Propagate CPU errors to events (ml-explore#3742)

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* Fix mx.arange dtype inference overflow regression (ml-explore#4324)

* Add workflow to update pull request limit bypass list (ml-explore#4320)

* Support head dimension 72 in Metal full attention (ml-explore#4330)

* Patch bump to 0.32.2 (ml-explore#4333)

* Preserve subnormal float values when casting to bool (ml-explore#4224)

* python: Support assigning through a bare Ellipsis index (ml-explore#4314)

* Fix divmod truncating the quotient for floats (ml-explore#4108)

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* Add force_fused option to scaled_dot_product_attention (ml-explore#4185)

* chore: Reject negative eps in the normalization layers (ml-explore#4312)

* Bound GGUF metadata string/array values against the file mapping (ml-explore#4212)

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* Read each K/V byte once in gqa-8 decode attention (ml-explore#4077)

* Fix fft vmap and jvp for transforms over a subset of axes (ml-explore#4138)

* Fix median dropping NaN (ml-explore#4146)

* Fix the CPU scan over a size one axis with a padded stride (ml-explore#4139)

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* chore: Validate the optimizer betas at construction (ml-explore#4310)

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* Update nanobind to 2.15.0 (ml-explore#4337)

* Skip unnecessary simdgroup computations for quantised MOE matmuls on NAX (ml-explore#4352)

* Add AI usage policy (ml-explore#4331)

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* chore: Validate eps in Adam at construction (ml-explore#4361)

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* Fix Log and Equal is_equivalent ignoring primitive state (ml-explore#4266)

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The Metal allocator throws `[metal::malloc] Resource limit (N) exceeded`
when num_resources_ (the live+cached Metal buffer COUNT) reaches
resource_limit_ (the iogpu.rsrc_limit sysctl, default ~499000). Freed
buffers are recycled into a size-keyed cache whose only trim is by BYTES
(release_cached_buffers takes a bytes-to-free target, max_pool_size_ ~=
physical RAM). Under churn with many distinct buffer shapes (varied prompt
lengths, growing KV caches, multiple co-resident models) the cache fills
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cache so the count drops back to the live working set. Clearing the cache
only costs re-allocation, never correctness, so the count limit becomes
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limits keep total memory bounded.

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* perf(mlx): add opt-in Gemma 4 expert-QMM tile kernel with parallel descriptor builder

Adds a distinctly-named expert QMM implementation for the Gemma 4
26B-A4B MoE production shapes, gated by MLX_GATHER_QMM_EXPERT_SLICES:

- qmm_t_expert_impl: BM32 expert tile body (BM16 fallback rows) taking a
  private/by-value row count; the shared qmm_t_impl constant-address ABI
  and all ordinary gathered/batched/dense QMM routes are unchanged.
- build_gemma4_sorted_expert_tiles_bm32: one 128-thread threadgroup
  replaces the reference design's single-GPU-thread serial builder;
  parallel expert-range binary search, Hillis-Steele scan, and strided
  upper-bound descriptor emission.
- Selector runs after the NAX-first route and requires affine BF16
  transposed inputs, 4-bit gs=64 weights, 128 experts, assignment counts
  of exactly 4096/8192/16384, and the exact gate/up or down rank-3
  shapes; every miss keeps the legacy route. NAX engagement is
  non-engagement, never bypassed.
- device.{h,cpp}: one-shot request resolution, nonthrowing dual-symbol
  AOT probe/prewarm, relaxed-atomic diagnostics (requested, aotAvailable,
  naxAvailable, hits, per-class fallbacks).
- gpu_tests: exact-shape arithmetic parity, fallback, and counter
  invariant probes.

Retention standing (2026-08-09 production matrix): opt-in experiment.
Standalone profile dropped (prefill -10.2% vs bracket); paired
weighted-unsort+R1 profile retained-final (prefill +1.8%, TTFT -7.5%,
decode +3.3%, arrival E2E +12.0%). NOTE: this source post-dates the
benchmarked binaries/metallib (post-measurement kernel-body edit);
rebuild and re-verify before any performance claim.

* fix(mlx): fail-safe sortedness check in gemma expert tile builder; counter/atomic hygiene

Review-wave fixes for the R1 expert-QMM path:

- N1 (sortedness trust): build_gemma4_sorted_expert_tiles_bm32 now
  verifies each thread's post-binary-search segment boundary against the
  generalized invariant indices[start - 1] < lid <= indices[start]
  (edge threads check their single neighbor), votes per simdgroup via
  simd_or, folds the votes through threadgroup memory, and on any
  violation retracts count[0] to 0 (tile kernel then early-returns) and
  records the violation in count[1]; the buffer ABI is unchanged
  (count index 1 was previously unused). try_gemma4_expert_qmm allocates
  the second count element, drains the encoder after the builder, and
  re-routes a retracted call to the order-agnostic legacy path instead of
  dispatching the tile kernel (zero count is unambiguous: the selector's
  assignment gate guarantees M is 4096/8192/16384).
- N2 (route-condition duplication): the sorted-RHS gate literal that
  appeared (negated) in the diagnostics record and in the dispatch
  decision is now the shared static constexpr predicate
  takes_sorted_rhs_route, so future tuning of the 16/4 thresholds cannot
  desynchronize counter vs route.
- N3 (per-call bias normalization): gather_qmm_rhs no longer spends
  ensure_row_contiguous on biases before classification reads the raw
  tensor's fields; normalization runs only inside the winning-route
  branch (hit semantics unchanged; the legacy block keeps its own
  normalization point and ordering).
- N4 (armed_ data race): Gemma4ExpertQMMCounters::armed_ is now
  std::atomic<bool> with relaxed loads/stores in armed(), snapshot(),
  snapshot_and_disarm() (read-then-write order preserved) and
  clear_and_arm(); the class remains non-copyable, now enforced.

* fix(mlx): make the R1 sortedness fail-safe sound; proper retract attribution

F1: the per-expert boundary vote was a partial detector -- an inversion
inside a segment used by no other expert's boundary could escape, so
"re-route on any violation" overclaimed. build_gemma4_sorted_expert_tiles_bm32
now also runs a strided adjacent-pair scan: thread lid checks
indices[i-1] <= indices[i] for i = lid+1; i < M; i += 128, covering every
adjacent pair in [1, M) exactly once (1..128 iterations at the reachable
M in {4096,8192,16384}). Adjacent-pair monotonicity is transitive, so a
clean scan is a sound and complete sortedness oracle; it folds into the
same simd_or/threadgroup vote and the same retract (count[0]=0, count[1]=1).
The boundary checks stay as cheap, precise diagnostics.

F2: retracts were write-only in count[1] and surfaced as
fallback_metallib_unavailable -- misattribution in the only observable
surface. A dedicated fallback_sortedness_retracted counter now rides the
GemmA4 route counters and the C diagnostics ABI
(sizeof 80 -> 88, new uint64 at offset 80; existing offsets unchanged).
try_gemma4_expert_qmm returns the route class: count[0]==0 with count[1]==1
records fallback_sortedness_retracted, any other unusable build keeps
fallback_metallib_unavailable, then re-routes to the legacy path as before.

F4: new doctest drives the full armed() -> clear_and_arm() ->
snapshot_and_disarm() cycle and the attempts == hits + fallbacks invariant
including the new class; the route-table and counter-invariant tests now
cover fallback_sortedness_retracted.

Verified: cmake tests 262/262 + 3550 assertions pass; metal -Wall -Wextra
-fno-fast-math compile of kernels/quantized.metal is warning-free.

* perf(metal): E=256 expert-tile route + trust + gpu::eval UAF fix — darkbloom-base mirror (#7)

* perf(metal): instantiate E=256 expert-tile route for Qwen 3.5/3.6 MoE prefill (mirror of Cmlx/mlx 58fab46)

* fix(metal): use-after-free in gpu::eval for primitives that synchronize mid-eval (mirror)

* perf(metal): trust mode skips retract readback (mirror)

* fix(compile): preserve all-cache binding cleanup

---------

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[BUG] A jaccl hostfile whose rank order is wrong silently produces N groups of size 1

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