The raw speed_mode string was forwarded to _enable_fp16_accumulation, so a
case-variant like MAX failed the speed_mode != SPEED_MAX check and wrongly
disabled fp16 accumulation on float16 pipelines. Forward the normalized mode
and cover the case-insensitive path in the test.
Measured on the fresh linux x64 prebuilt (z-image Q8_0, sd-cli, 192 CPU
threads, 512x512, 9 steps, steady state): sampling 56.1s vs 51.3s (about
9 percent faster), VAE decode unchanged, peak RSS identical. The sd.cpp
engine only serves the no-GPU tier, so the default profile now matches
max: --diffusion-fa plus --diffusion-conv-direct.
An unset transformer_quant used to mean off (run the GGUF as-is), so the
hardware ladder only engaged when auto was explicitly chosen and the panel
showed Off as the default. Unset (or auto) now hands the decision to the
ladder: a dense-capable GPU gets at least int8, data-center silicon fp8,
falling back to the GGUF when the device, VRAM, family deny table or disk
cannot take it. An explicit none/off pins GGUF-as-is and is now
expressible in the API (previously only omission meant off, so pinned-off
and unset were indistinguishable); an explicit scheme pins that scheme.
The dense candidate also gains a free-disk gate: with auto as the default
the bf16 base download (up to ~40 GB) must never wedge a nearly-full
model-cache disk, so the candidate is dropped (GGUF build kept) when free
space cannot hold it plus a 10 GiB margin. Unprobeable disk passes.
Frontend: the Dtype select defaults to Auto (fastest for GPU), keeps Off
as an explicit choice, and sends none through instead of omitting it.
Suite: 622 diffusion tests green (default-load test rewritten to the new
contract, explicit-off short-circuit covered), CI-sim green.
resolve_dense_quant_candidate now passes fam.name to
select_transformer_quant_scheme so the policy's proposed scheme honors the
family deny table (qwen-image lands on int8 instead of proposing fp8 that
the execution path would refuse). Test stub updated for the new keyword.
A 28-pair accuracy gate on a B200 (same-seed vs the dense bf16 reference)
found per-row fp8 dynamic quant renders EVERY qwen-image frame black
(mean luma 0.0000, SSIM 0.016), reproduced identically with on-the-fly
quantize_ on the dense transformer, so it is the model's activation range,
not a checkpoint artifact. mxfp8 shows real semantic damage at 1024px
(CLIP delta mean 0.0146, worst cases 0.064/0.102) and nvfp4 measures
LPIPS mean 0.51. int8 dynamic (per-token scales) is excellent on Qwen:
LPIPS mean 0.069, SSIM 0.958.
The per-scheme smoke probe only proves the GEMM kernel runs, so it cannot
catch model-level breakage. Add _FAMILY_SCHEME_DENY consulted by
select_transformer_quant_scheme: auto skips denied schemes (Qwen lands on
int8) and an explicit denied request returns None, the same GGUF-fallback
contract as an unsupported scheme. Family is threaded from the three
diffusion.py call sites; existing behavior is unchanged for every other
family. 4 new tests; 529 diffusion tests green; CI-sim green.
train_precision_modes gates int8/fp8/mxfp8 on has_functional_torchao, and the
Backend CI runner does not install torchao, so the three capability-gating
tests collapsed to nf4/bf16/auto and failed. They exercise the CAPABILITY
gate, not torchao presence: stub the probe functional alongside the CUDA
capability patch. Validated with a torchao-blocked run (22 passed).
The A/B harness measured two regimes. bf16 loads (the Studio default on Ampere+)
are bit-identical with the flag on across all six families, 36/36 same-seed cases,
because the flag only changes fp16 GEMM accumulation. fp16 loads (the pre-Ampere
fallback dtype) show real same-seed drift on the families that genuinely run fp16
GEMMs: SDXL up to 0.050 mean abs diff, FLUX.1 0.028, FLUX.2-klein 0.045, all
finite, no new black frames. qwen-image renders black in fp16 with the flag off
too and z-image fp16 fails in attention, so both are dtype limitations, not
accumulation ones.
So the gate now takes the compute dtype and the speed tier: bf16 engages on any
active tier (provably output-neutral), fp16 engages only under max, the tier that
already trades exactness for measured speed. The deny-list stays empty by
measurement.
spec.forward imports Krea2Pipeline for prepare_position_ids, so the test needs a
real diffusers install; the backend CI matrix runs without one and failed on the
import. Same importorskip guard the sigmas gather test already uses.
fp16 accumulation (torch.backends.cuda.matmul.allow_fp16_accumulation) roughly
doubles fp16 GEMM throughput on consumer tensor cores by keeping the accumulator
in fp16. The flag only affects fp16 GEMMs: bf16-compute DiT families are untouched
by construction, while SDXL's fp16 UNet and any fp16 text encoder or VAE path get
the speedup.
Gate in apply_speed_optims: CUDA target, consumer GPU (datacenter parts keep fp32
accumulation), torch exposes the flag, family not in _FP16_ACCUM_DENY, and the
UNSLOTH_DISABLE_FP16_ACCUM kill switch is unset. The flag is captured in
snapshot_backend_flags and restored on unload like the other process-wide knobs.
_FP16_ACCUM_DENY starts empty: a same-seed A/B harness (off vs on per family at
512 and 1024 with long-prompt and high-guidance stress cases, non-finite, black
frame and drift checks) backs the empty list and populates it if a family ever
overflows.
The loader used to plan memory from the GGUF file size and only offer the dense
transformer-quant fast path when that plan was already resident, so on a card where
the GGUF forced offload the int8/fp8 build (roughly half the bf16 bytes, or exactly
the quantised size when a pre-quantized checkpoint exists) was never attempted.
diffusion_auto_policy.py is a pure decision layer: a bf16-resident component table
per family (transformer / text encoders / VAE, with base-repo overrides for the
multi-size families), per-scheme size factors with separate steady and transient
(build peak) numbers, and resolve_dense_quant_candidate which the loader now uses to
re-plan memory against the candidate artifact before settling for offload. The
engaged plan is adopted only when the dense build succeeds; the GGUF fallback keeps
its own plan.
Status now carries a resolved provenance record per Advanced control (value, source
auto or explicit, reason) so the UI can label backend decisions.
The always-visible description under the select is gone (the hint tooltip keeps the
full detail) and the no-model gallery placeholder now reads 'Select a diffusion model
to load'.
