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Tuning profiles — purpose × machine × model

lobes resolves the vLLM serve config from three layers, so the same catalog model can be served in different gears without editing the compose file. lobes switch <model> --purpose <p> --machine <m> writes the resolved VLLM_* values to the deployment .env; docker compose substitutes them at up.

Resolution order (highest precedence last):

  1. machine profile (--machine, default auto) — memory/arch defaults
  2. workload profile (--purpose, default balanced) — batching + bench shape
  3. model (the catalog) — quantization, tool parser, and MoE-only serve extras
  4. explicit CLI flags (--max-model-len, --gpu-mem-util, …) — always win

The tables live in lobes/profiles.py (a pure data module, guarded by tests/test_profiles.py). See lobes explain tuning.

Workload profiles (--purpose)

The purpose is the request mix the deployment is tuned for. The default is balanced. lobes benchmark defaults its (input, output) shape to the configured VLLM_PURPOSE, so the measured numbers track the serve config.

purpose --max-num-seqs --max-num-batched-tokens benchmark shape
balanced (default) 4 8192 ≈1K in / 1K out
prompt-heavy 4 16384 ≈8K in / 1K out
decode-heavy 8 4096 ≈1K in / 8K out

The (input, output) shapes and the balanced batching values come straight from shahizat's report (below); the prompt-heavy / decode-heavy batching knobs are configured heuristics — a sensible starting point, not a measured optimum. Confirm them with lobes benchmark --purpose <p>.

Machine profiles (--machine)

Auto-detected by default from nvidia-smi -L + the hostname (GB10 → spark, Thor → thor, RTX PRO 6000 → blackwell, else generic). Override with an explicit --machine.

machine --gpu-memory-utilization --max-model-len --attention-backend status
spark (GB10, 128 GB unified, usually shared) 0.6 262144 flashinfer load-tested
thor (Jetson Thor, unified) 0.6 32768 flashinfer configured
blackwell (RTX PRO 6000, dedicated VRAM) 0.85 65536 flashinfer configured
generic (unknown Blackwell-class) 0.6 32768 flashinfer configured

spark deliberately keeps the conservative 0.6 GPU-memory fraction: the GB10 is shared with other mesh agents, and co-residence OOMs at higher fractions (see gateway-fleet.md). A dedicated single-model box can raise it toward 0.85 with lobes switch --gpu-mem-util 0.85.

Model layer (per-model serve extras)

Quantization and the tool-call parser are per-model (from the catalog). MoE-only flags — --moe-backend and the MTP --speculative-config — apply to Qwen3.6-35B-A3B (MoE) alone and would break the dense/hybrid models, so they are not in the default template. lobes switch to the MoE prints them for a manual compose edit; see qwen3.6-35b-a3b-nvfp4.md.

Reference benchmark (shahizat)

The throughput flags lobes adopts (the flashinfer attention backend, chunked prefill, async scheduling, --max-num-seqs / --max-num-batched-tokens, and — for the MoE — the marlin backend + MTP speculative decode) follow shahizat's cross-machine NVFP4 benchmark of nvidia/Qwen3.6-35B-A3B-NVFP4: NVIDIA Developer Forums, 2026-05-31.

shahizat ran one serve config across all three machines and three workloads (16 concurrent requests, vllm bench serve). Output-token throughput (tok/s):

workload Blackwell 6000 Pro DGX Spark Jetson Thor
prompt-heavy (8K/1K) 343.8 171.6 124.2
decode-heavy (1K/8K) 1052.7 268.2 239.1
balanced (1K/1K) 817.5 249.5 190.7

These are a cross-machine reference baseline (dedicated boxes, the nvidia/ checkpoint, concurrency 16, with MTP) — not lobes's own measurements.

Our own replication (shared DGX Spark, 2026-05-31)

We did not trust the post — we measured on spark-f8a9 (single GB10, 121.7 GiB unified, shared with the audio NIMs + reachy; vLLM 0.19.0+nv26.04), with the new config. Single-stream decode (batch=1, identical probe — 1000 in / 512 out):

model (new config) decode tok/s prefill (845 tok + 16 gen)
35B MoE candidate (marlin, no MTP, util 0.70) 35.0 / 36.1 0.62 s
27B hybrid primary (util 0.6) 7.8 / 7.9 2.33 s

The 35B MoE is ~4.6× faster on single-stream decode than the 27B on the same box (the MoE's ~3B-active advantage). The 27B itself gains a little from the new flags (~7.1 → ~7.8 tok/s, prefill 2.51 → 2.33 s — a shippable bonus; decode is memory-bandwidth bound, so the batching/scheduling flags help it less).

Findings that drove config choices:

  • util 0.85 fails the pre-flight on this shared box — only ~90 of 121.7 GiB is free (other services hold the rest), so the spark profile's conservative 0.6 is correct; the 35B needed 0.70 solo (with the 27B stopped).
  • shahizat's MTP --speculative-config does not transfer to the cached mmangkad/ checkpoint (qwen3_5_mtp.py weight-shape mismatch on vLLM nv26.04) — so the catalog carries only --moe-backend=marlin for the MoE, not MTP. See qwen3.6-35b-a3b-nvfp4.md.
  • The GB10 reports no native FP4 compute → vLLM falls back to the Marlin weight-only FP4 kernel (a perf caveat on this image).

We could not reproduce shahizat's exact tok/s (his were dedicated boxes, concurrency 16, nvidia/ checkpoint, with MTP), but the qualitative result — MoE = much faster decode — replicates. Re-run with lobes benchmark --purpose <p> to refresh these on the live server.