GLM-5.2 AQLM convergence plan (executable runbook)
Goal: (1) finish the lite activation-aware convergence, rebuild + validate + upload all three checkpoints β take the win; (2) run full AQLM (full-Hessian beam encoding + blockwise PV-tuning against a streamed BF16 teacher), then rebuild + validate + upload again. Sanity gates between every step; a mixed NVFP4+AQLM checkpoint must LOAD and INFER before anything ships.
This runbook assumes no context beyond this file. Follow it top to bottom. When a gate FAILS: stop, do not delete anything, record the failing output in /data/glm52-RUNLOG.md, and fix or escalate before proceeding.
0. Ground rules and environment
Every shell that touches vLLM must run this preamble:
cd /home/coder/git/glm52/vllm && source ../.venv/bin/activate
export CUDA_HOME=/home/coder/git/glm52/.venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/nvidia/cu13
Standing serve env (the ONLY blessed recipe; 8xB200 emulating 4x96GB):
export VLLM_PP_LAYER_PARTITION="21,19,19,19"
export NCCL_MAX_NCHANNELS=4 NCCL_BUFFSIZE=1048576
export VLLM_SPARSE_INDEXER_MAX_LOGITS_MB=256
SERVE_FLAGS="--pipeline-parallel-size 4 --gpu-memory-utilization 0.509 \
--kv-cache-dtype fp8_ds_mla --max-num-seqs 2 \
--max-num-batched-tokens 2048 --enforce-eager --port 8199"
Hard-won footguns β DO NOT repeat these mistakes:
- NEVER
pkill -f <pattern>where - /tmp is volatile on this box (was wiped once). Teacher downloads live in
/tmp/glm52-hot-dl2 β if missing, regenerate via
tools/make_hot_manifest2.py+tools/range_download.py(manifest source /data/glm52-need-experts.json). hf upload-large-folderonly targets a repo's main branch. It is resumable; rerun on failure.- A vLLM serve that dies with "Engine core initialization failed" has the
real error higher up in the log: grep for
ValueError|KeyErrorfirst. - Long jobs: run_in_background +
until <condition>; do sleep 30; donewaiters. Never a bare long sleep.
Checkpoint inventory (do not delete any of these):
| path | what |
|---|---|
| /data/glm52 | LIVE 1M two-tier (v5): 30% hot NVFP4 / 70% cold 2-bpw AQLM |
| /data/glm52-500k, /data/glm52-250k | variants: 48% / 57% hot |
| /data/glm52-v4-uniform | pre-demotion two-tier (hot-array superset source) |
| /data/glm52-v3-3tier, /data/glm52-old-layerwise | older tiers; old-layerwise also = teacher for layers 3,4,5,8,74-77 (all-256 per-expert NVFP4) |
| /data/glm52-aqlm-parts | init-grade AQLM parts, ALL layers, 2-book w2 |
| /data/glm52-aqlm-conv | converger output (this plan, phase 1) |
| /data/glm52-acts | calibration activations, 24k routed tokens/layer |
| /data/glm52-expert-stats-v2.npz, /data/glm52-expert-assignment*.json | routing stats + assignments |
| /data/glm52-sm120-golden | golden bundle (must be RE-CAPTURED whenever weights change) |
| /tmp/glm52-hot-dl2 | teacher NVFP4 regions (cold experts, 67 layers) |
HF repos (public, overwrite in place): jarrelscy/GLM-5.2-NVFP4-AQLM-hybrid {,-500k,-250k}
1. Sanity-check toolbox (reusable gates)
Run gates in this order; each assumes the previous passed. "CKPT" = the checkpoint directory under test.
SC-1 Schema check (seconds, no GPU)
python tools/sanity/sc1_schema.py CKPT
Verifies: index total_size == sum of shard tensor bytes; every layer 3..77
has the full two-tier tensor set with shapes consistent with
config.json aqlm_layer_books (n_nvfp4+n_cold=256, n_base=0); hyb_kind
counts match; no NaN/Inf in any fp16/fp32 tensor sampled per layer;
codebooks are fp16 [1,65536,8]; codes int16. PASS = prints SC1 PASS.
SC-2 Dequant statistics (1 GPU, ~2 min)
python tools/sanity/sc2_dequant_stats.py CKPT --layers 3,21,40,60,77
For each listed layer: dequantize 4 cold experts (AQLM) and 4 hot experts
(NVFP4) to fp16; check per-tensor RMS in [1e-3, 1.0], zero-fraction < 30%,
no NaN; cosine similarity of AQLM dequant vs the pure-torch reference == 1.
PASS = SC2 PASS.
SC-3 Kernel tests (1 GPU, ~1 min)
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=7 python -m pytest tests/kernels/quantization/test_aqlm_moe.py -q
PASS = 32 passed.
SC-4 Load + short-context serve smoke (4 GPUs, ~6 min)
timeout 900 python -m vllm.entrypoints.cli.main serve CKPT $SERVE_FLAGS \
--max-model-len 8192 > /tmp/sc4.log 2>&1 &
until grep -qE "startup complete|initialization failed" /tmp/sc4.log; do sleep 15; done
PASS = "Application startup complete" and no Traceback. Leave running for SC-5.
SC-5 Coherence probes (against SC-4 server, ~1 min)
python tools/validate_serve.py --port 8199
PASS = all three completions coherent (Paris / correct fibonacci or quicksort / H2O), decode >= 10 tok/s. A model with broken cold experts produces repetitive garbage here β this is the primary "weights kaput" detector.
SC-6 Perplexity delta (against SC-4 server, ~5 min)
python tools/sanity/sc6_ppl.py --port 8199 --ref /data/glm52-heldout.txt
Teacher-forced logprob over ~50k held-out tokens (code+prose+medical, NOT in the calibration set) via the completions API with echo/logprobs. Record ppl in RUNLOG. PASS rule: after any requantization, ppl must be <= previous shipped ppl + 1% (phase-1) / must IMPROVE (phase-2 gates).
SC-7 Full-context revalidation (4 GPUs, ~15 min) β 1M checkpoint only
Serve with --max-model-len 1048576 (full SERVE_FLAGS recipe), then:
python tools/validate_serve.py --port 8199 --long 200000
PASS = KV >= 1,048,576 tokens; needle answer contains BLUEBERRY42; worst GPU <= 97,887 MiB.
SC-8 Golden e2e comparison (against SC-4 server)
python tools/verify_sm120.py /data/glm52-sm120-golden --port 8199 --stages ""
Compares greedy generations vs stored goldens. NOTE: after INTENTIONAL weight changes text may legitimately differ; the check is that outputs are coherent and >= 40/50 top-50 logprob overlap on early steps. After each shipped rebuild, RE-CAPTURE goldens (tools/capture_golden.py + make_kernel_vectors.py) so the bundle matches shipped weights.
Gate bundles
- GATE-A (any rebuilt checkpoint): SC-1, SC-2, SC-4, SC-5
- GATE-B (before any upload): GATE-A + SC-6 recorded + (1M only) SC-7
- GATE-C (after any fitting phase, per ~8 layers): spot SC-2 on parts + fitting-metric monotonicity (err_after < err_before on every layer; any layer where err_after > err_before*0.999 -> refit that layer)
TODO(first task): tools/sanity/sc1_schema.py, sc2_dequant_stats.py, sc6_ppl.py and the held-out set /data/glm52-heldout.txt do not exist yet. Build them exactly to the contracts above (~200 lines total; reuse _dequant_reference from nvfp4_aqlm_hybrid.py and the FP4 LUT from tools/aqlm_quantize.py). Held-out: take 25 files from vllm docs/ + 15 MedQA paragraphs + 10 code files NOT matched by the corpus builder's random.Random(42) selection; ~50k tokens total.
2. PHASE 1 β finish lite convergence, ship it (est. 6-9 h wall)
1.1 Confirm smoke, then launch the full run
Smoke (layer 40, GPU 4) is running; on completion check
/data/glm52-aqlm-conv/smoke.log shows saved and err_after < err_before
for both w13 and w2. Then:
# GPUs must be idle first (nvidia-smi). Launch (resumable; skips done layers):
python tools/aqlm_converge.py > /data/glm52-aqlm-conv/run.log 2>&1 &
# progress: grep -c "saved" /data/glm52-aqlm-conv/run.log (target 75)
~10-20 min/layer/GPU => 75 layers on 8 GPUs β 2-4 h. Monitor with a tail|grep on "saved|Error|Traceback|OutOfMemory". If a worker OOMs: rerun with that layer alone on an idle GPU (memory fragmentation clears).
1.2 GATE-C on the parts
All 75 layer files present; every layer's *_err_after < *_err_before;
python tools/sanity/sc2_dequant_stats.py --parts /data/glm52-aqlm-conv
(parts mode: reference-dequant a few experts per layer; RMS/NaN checks).
1.3 Rebuild the three checkpoints (cold arrays only)
Write tools/build_checkpoint_v7.py (clone of v6's writer): for each target
in {/data/glm52, /data/glm52-500k, /data/glm52-250k}: stream every shard;
copy all tensors EXCEPT layers' w13_codes|w13_codebooks|w13_scales| w2c_codes|w2c_codebooks|w2c_scales, which are replaced by slicing the
conv parts: sel = positions of the target's cold ids (from its hyb_kind) within parts.expert_ids (parts cover the 1M cold set = superset; assert
every target cold id is found). Write to -conv, then GATE-A it,
then swap: mv <target> <target>-preconv && mv <target>-conv <target>.
Order: 1M first, then 500k, then 250k.
1.4 GATE-B per checkpoint
1M: full GATE-B incl SC-7. 500k/250k: GATE-A + SC-6 (serve at
--max-model-len 8192 is fine for the gate; partitions unchanged).
Record all ppl values in RUNLOG. Abort rule: if 1M ppl regresses > 1%
vs pre-conv, STOP β swap back (mv reversal) and investigate.
1.5 Re-capture goldens (weights changed)
python tools/capture_golden.py && python tools/make_kernel_vectors.py
(armed-marker flow is automatic; outputs overwrite /data/glm52-sm120-golden.)
1.6 Upload β DEFERRED (revised 2026-07-07)
Do NOT upload here. The gated conv checkpoints are the fallback artifacts; proceed directly to phase 1.5 (REAP re-tier), gate it, then upload ONCE: the REAP version if its gates pass (ppl <= conv ppl), else the conv version. This halves upload traffic; the win still ships strictly better than what is currently on HF. Original upload commands (run after 1.5):
hf upload-large-folder jarrelscy/GLM-5.2-NVFP4-AQLM-hybrid /data/glm52 --repo-type model --num-workers 12
hf upload-large-folder jarrelscy/GLM-5.2-NVFP4-AQLM-hybrid-500k /data/glm52-500k --repo-type model --num-workers 12
hf upload-large-folder jarrelscy/GLM-5.2-NVFP4-AQLM-hybrid-250k /data/glm52-250k --repo-type model --num-workers 12
Sequential; each ends with committed: N/N. Also hf upload ... /data/glm52/code code
if tools changed, and update model-card READMEs to note the
activation-aware convergence. Verify each repo's file count via HfApi.
2.5 PHASE 1.5 β REAP-based expert re-selection (est. 4-6 h, after the
phase-1 upload so the win ships first)
Motivation: the shipped hot/cold split ranks experts by routing FREQUENCY (bincount of topk_ids). That demotes rarely-fired experts whose outputs are large and decisive when they do fire. Adopt REAP's router-weighted activation saliency, adapted for precision demotion (not pruning):
score_e = SUM_t g_{t,e} * ||f_e(x_t)||_2 * relerr_e
g = router weight (topk_weights, captured in /data/glm52-acts)
f_e(x) = down(silu(gate x) * up x) with TEACHER weights
relerr_e= h-weighted 2-bit reconstruction error of expert e
(from conv/full parts; near-uniform, catches fragile tails)
Steps: a. tools/score_experts_reap.py: per layer load acts + teachers for ALL 256 experts (hot: dequant the live checkpoint's nvfp4_* arrays; cold: /tmp/glm52-hot-dl2 regions / old-layerwise), compute score_e -> /data/glm52-reap-scores.npz [75,256]. 8-GPU layer-parallel, ~2 h. Sanity: per layer, spearman(score, old counts) printed β expect 0.4-0.8 (correlated but meaningfully different); investigate if < 0.2. b. Re-solve assignments for all three budgets with the same byte-exact solver, ranking by score (floor 8/cap 176). Print overlap vs current hot sets; expect 60-85%. c. Fit AQLM (converger, warm start from full codebook of that layer) for newly-cold experts only; promote newly-hot from teacher bytes already on disk (cold-teacher superset β no downloads needed). d. Rebuild all three (build_checkpoint_v7 slicing by new assignment), GATE-A each, GATE-B the 1M; ppl must improve or match (this changes WHICH experts are 2-bit, same byte budget β if ppl regresses, the REAP scores or fit are wrong: stop and investigate, keep -prereap dirs). e. This assignment becomes phase 2's fit universe (its cold sets). f. UPLOAD NOW (single combined upload of phase 1 + 1.5): the three repos, using the commands in Β§1.6, plus the code bundle; verify file counts; record commit URLs in RUNLOG.
3. PHASE 2 β full AQLM (est. 2.5-3.5 days wall)
2.0 Staging (CPU/network only β run DURING phase 1, no GPU contention)
a. Calibration corpus v3, ~15M tokens, saved as token-id shards
/data/glm52-calib-v3/*.npy: reuse corpus builder mix + download
supplements (HF datasets: a code sample, an instruction set, keep the
MedQA textbooks; ~30-50 GB). Hold out 50k tokens -> /data/glm52-heldout.txt.
b. BF16 teacher streamer: tools/bf16_stream.py with contract
get_expert(layer, expert, proj) -> bf16 tensor, backed by ranged
HTTP reads of zai-org/GLM-5.2 (index + shard headers cached once;
LRU on-disk cache /data/bf16-cache, cap 400 GB). Verify vs NVFP4
teacher: cosine > 0.98 on 10 random experts.
c. Baseline evals: SC-6 ppl of the phase-1-shipped 1M checkpoint +
teacher NVFP4 model (serve lukealonso config on 8 GPUs PP=8 briefly);
plus 20-problem HumanEval subset + 50-problem GSM8K subset through the
server (tools/sanity/bench_small.py; greedy; record scores in RUNLOG).
2.1 Full-Hessian beam encoding (days 1-2 of phase 2)
tools/aqlm_full.py, upgrade of aqlm_converge.py per (layer, projection):
- Hessians: per-expert FULL H = X_e^T X_e (w13: 6144^2 fp32 = 151 MB transient per expert; w2: 2048^2). Accumulate from calib-v3 activations (re-capture acts at 128k tokens/layer with the existing hook β one ~30-min PP=4 pass over calib-v3). Damping: H += 1e-2*mean(diag)*I.
- Teacher: BF16 via streamer (fallback NVFP4 regions if a fetch fails).
- Encode: GPTQ-order sequential CD with error feedback within each row (process groups in descending diag(H) order; after fixing a group, propagate residual via H off-diagonal to remaining groups), candidates by beam-4: top-4 codebook entries under the diag metric (GEMM+topk), exact H-scored selection among the 4.
- Alternate with weighted codebook update + scale refit (as lite), 3 outer iterations. Early-stop per layer when H-weighted err improves < 0.1%.
- Output: /data/glm52-aqlm-full/layer_N.pt (same schema as conv parts).
- GATE-C every 8 layers; on any layer regression vs conv parts, keep the conv version for that layer (per-layer best-of). Budget check: must average <= 3.5 h/layer on one GPU (75 layers/8 GPUs/ 2 days); if the first 4 layers exceed it, reduce beam to 2 and/or subsample H tokens; record the decision.
2.2 Blockwise PV-tuning (days 2-3.5 of phase 2)
tools/pv_tune.py per transformer block (layer-parallel, 1 block/GPU):
- Student block: BF16 non-expert weights + hot NVFP4 dequantized frozen + cold experts as differentiable dequant (codebook gather x scales); trainable: codebooks, scales (cold), NOTHING else. Teacher block: same block with BF16 streamed experts everywhere.
- Data: block inputs recorded once per phase (run calib-v3 through the phase-2.1 model with a hidden-state capture hook at each block boundary, save 256k tokens per block boundary, bf16, ~3 GB/block).
- Loss: MSE(student_out, teacher_out) token-weighted by router prob mass; Adam lr 1e-4 (codebooks) / 1e-3 (scales), bs 4096 tokens, ~600 steps; every 200 steps: straight-through re-encode (beam-1 full-H) and reset optimizer state for reassigned entries. Early-stop on plateau.
- Output: /data/glm52-aqlm-pv/layer_N.pt. GATE-C per 8 blocks + one mid-phase GATE-A+SC-6 rebuild of the 1M checkpoint after ~half the blocks (catch systemic drift early; expect ppl improvement already).
2.3 Final rebuild + gates + upload
- Rebuild all three from pv parts (fallback per layer: pv > full > conv, choose best by held-out block-output error; record table in RUNLOG).
- GATE-B all three (1M incl SC-7 needle at 200k). Run bench_small.py: ppl must improve vs phase-1; HumanEval/GSM8K must not regress > 1 item.
- Re-capture goldens; update model cards ("PV-tuned AQLM"); upload all three repos + code bundle; verify file counts; final RUNLOG summary.
4. Rollback
Every swap keeps the previous directory as -preconv / -prefull /
-prepv. HF keeps full commit history β revert = re-upload the kept dir or
huggingface-cli revert to a commit. Never delete a -pre* dir until the
next phase's GATE-B passes.
5. RUNLOG
Append every gate result, metric, decision, and anomaly to /data/glm52-RUNLOG.md with a timestamp. The uploads' commit URLs go there too. If context is lost, this file + PLAN.md are sufficient to resume.