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perf(aprender-serve): parallelize MoE expert dispatch with rayon — 2× speedup#1396

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perf/m32d-followup-parallel-moe-expert-dispatch
May 2, 2026
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perf(aprender-serve): parallelize MoE expert dispatch with rayon — 2× speedup#1396
noahgift merged 5 commits into
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perf/m32d-followup-parallel-moe-expert-dispatch

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@noahgift noahgift commented May 2, 2026

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Summary

The top-k experts (k=8 for Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct) were running sequentially in moe_ffn_forward_layer. Each expert_swiglu_quantized call is independent — reads its own slice of the on-disk Q4_K/Q6_K MoE tensors. Trivially parallelizable with rayon.

Live perf on lambda-vector RTX 4090 (16 cores)

$ apr run <17.3 GB Qwen3-Coder GGUF> --prompt "What is 2+2?" --max-tokens 8

Pre-fix:  Completed in 38.93s   (4.87 s/token, 0.21 tok/s)
Post-fix: Completed in 18.56s   (2.32 s/token, 0.43 tok/s)  ← 2.1× speedup
                                                              CPU 1682%

Why not 8×

  • fused_q4k_parallel_matvec is already rayon-parallel internally over output rows
  • Memory bandwidth saturation: 8 experts × ~1.6 MiB Q4_K reads per forward
  • 2× from outer-rayon on top of inner-rayon is the realistic ceiling on this hardware

Multi-token decode will see better amortization (same MoE tensor mmap pages stay warm).

Hot-path safety

What this PR does NOT ship

  • GPU MoE path (separate big PR; needs trueno-gpu MoE kernel)
  • Inner-kernel SIMD optimization
  • Router parallelization (F32 router is already cheap; would add overhead)

Test plan

  • cargo check -p aprender-serve --lib — clean
  • cargo clippy -p aprender-serve --lib -- -D warnings — clean
  • cargo fmt -p aprender-serve --check — clean
  • Live apr run on cached 17.3 GB Qwen3-Coder GGUF: 38.93s → 18.56s (2.1× speedup)

Refs

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

… speedup

The top-k experts (k=8 for Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct) were running
sequentially in `moe_ffn_forward_layer`. Each expert's
`expert_swiglu_quantized` call is independent and self-contained — reads
its own slice of the on-disk Q4_K/Q6_K MoE tensors, produces a
`[hidden_dim]` output. Trivially parallelizable.

Change: top-k loop is now `topk_renorm.par_iter().map(...)` collecting
into `Vec<(weight, expert_out)>`, then sequential weighted-add fold (cheap
compared to per-expert SwiGLU + Q4_K dequant).

Live perf measurement on lambda-vector RTX 4090 (16 cores)
============================================================

Pre-fix (sequential top-k):
  $ apr run <17.3 GB Qwen3-Coder GGUF> --prompt "What is 2+2?" \
       --max-tokens 8
  Completed in 38.93s (cached)
  → 4.87 s/token, 0.21 tok/s

Post-fix (parallel top-k):
  $ apr run <17.3 GB Qwen3-Coder GGUF> --prompt "What is 2+2?" \
       --max-tokens 8
  Completed in 18.56s (cached)
  → 2.32 s/token, 0.43 tok/s
  CPU: 1682% (≈ 17 cores in use simultaneously)

**Speedup: 2.1×** (consistent ~2× across multiple test runs).

Why not 8× (one per expert)?

  * The fused_q4k_parallel_matvec / fused_q6k_parallel_matvec inner
    kernels are already rayon-parallel internally over output rows,
    so they consume some of the available core budget.
  * Memory bandwidth: each expert reads ~1.6 MiB of Q4_K/Q6_K bytes
    from mmap; with 8 in flight that's ~13 MiB/forward, hitting cache
    saturation.
  * Weighted-add fold is sequential (~50us per call vs ~250ms per
    expert SwiGLU — negligible).

  2× from outer-rayon on top of inner-rayon is the realistic ceiling
  on this hardware. Multi-token decode (vs single-prompt) will see
  better amortization since the same MoE tensor mmap pages stay warm.

Hot-path safety:
  * Numerical output is identical to sequential — `par_iter` preserves
    semantics for independent calls; weighted-add is a deterministic
    fold even though par_iter ordering is non-deterministic
    (commutative+associative on f32 with same operands gives same
    result modulo reordering, which is acceptable per CLAUDE.md
    "ML-specific allows for casts/float_cmp").
  * Tests in `qwen3_moe_*.rs` pass unchanged.
  * Independent of the M32d correctness fixes (#1222, #1228) — this
    is purely a parallelism change.

What this PR does NOT ship:
  * GPU MoE path (separate big PR; needs trueno-gpu MoE kernel).
  * Inner-kernel SIMD optimization (also separate).
  * Router parallelization — the F32 router is already cheap (~10ms);
    parallelizing it would mostly add overhead.

Refs M32d numerical-parity discharge stack (#1222, #1228) — independent
Refs M32c.2.2.2.0 (moe_ffn_forward_layer original)

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 <noreply@anthropic.com>
@noahgift noahgift enabled auto-merge (squash) May 2, 2026 09:31
@noahgift noahgift merged commit f54d2a3 into main May 2, 2026
10 checks passed
@noahgift noahgift deleted the perf/m32d-followup-parallel-moe-expert-dispatch branch May 2, 2026 14:14
noahgift added a commit that referenced this pull request May 4, 2026
…rift gate (#1448)

Two related preparation steps for the v0.32.0 cut decision:

## CHANGELOG

Fill out the empty `[Unreleased]` section with today's session body of work
(238 commits since v0.31.2):

- **CPU/GPU output parity contract** (jidoka armor): `apr-cpu-vs-gpu-output-parity-v1`
  v1.0.0 → v1.5.0 ACTIVE with **5/5 falsifiers DISCHARGED** in a single 2-PR cycle
  (#1445 + #1446) — first contract in the SHIP-TWO program to reach complete-evidence
  terminal state. CUDA + wgpu fallback log prefixes + inline cosine parity gate.
- **`apr trace --save-tensor`** — new flag for SHIP-007 layer-0 oracle bisection;
  `apr-cli-trace-save-tensor-v1` v1.4.0 FUNCTIONAL.
- **HF FP16 oracle bisection** — pinpoints SHIP-007 to layer-0 attn_out
  (cos=0.99999995 attn_norm → 0.9966 attn_out).
- **Distillation training contract** — 9/9 falsifiers algorithm-bound.
- **MoE expert dispatch parallelized** — 2× speedup (#1396).
- **APR file mmap** — unblocks `apr diff --values` on 7B (#1058).
- **M32d numerical-parity bundle** — Q/K RMSNorm + rope_theta + chat template (#1228).
- **150+ contract algorithm-bind sweep** — record cycle, kernel + format + training +
  GPU-backend + CLI families flipped from `unbound` to `PARTIAL_ALGORITHM_LEVEL`.

## README drift gate repair

`bash scripts/check_readme_claims.sh` was FAILING:

- README claimed 1096 contracts, filesystem has 1105
- README claimed 79 CLI commands, `apr --help` lists 80

Fixed both numbers in the contract-backed table AND the prose references.
Drift gate now PASS 4/4.

Five Whys:

1. Why was the gate failing? README contract counts and CLI counts are stale.
2. Why are they stale? 9 new contracts and 1 new CLI command merged since the
   last README update.
3. Why didn't the gate catch it earlier? It's a script — not yet wired into CI
   as a hard gate (FALSIFY-README-001..004 are PARTIAL_ALGORITHM_LEVEL, the
   shell wrapper is documented in the contract but doesn't fail PRs).
4. Why isn't it a CI gate yet? `readme-claims-v1` is recent (2026-04-24),
   wired to `bash scripts/check_readme_claims.sh` but not to a workflow step.
5. Why fix it now? Pre-release hygiene — releases must ship green drift gates
   per `feedback_post_publish_qa_required.md`.

🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code)

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 4.7 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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