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[Kernel] Extend Marlin atomic-add reduction to fused MoE#48569

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[Kernel] Extend Marlin atomic-add reduction to fused MoE#48569
hsamrat007 wants to merge 1 commit into
vllm-project:mainfrom
hsamrat007:marlin-moe-atomic-add

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Summary

  • Apply the existing should_use_atomic_add_reduce policy to both Marlin
    fused-MoE GEMMs.
  • Replace the fused-MoE path's hardcoded use_atomic_add=False with a per-GEMM
    decision using the actual (M, N, K), device, and activation dtype.
  • Preserve the current default behavior: atomic reduction remains opt-in via
    VLLM_MARLIN_USE_ATOMIC_ADD=1.

Motivation

Dense Marlin already uses the atomic-add policy introduced in #14138, while the
current fused-MoE integration hardcodes the option off even though
moe_wna16_marlin_gemm supports it. This change restores policy parity for MoE
without changing the kernel or enabling experimental behavior by default.

Atomic reduction can avoid Marlin's lock/global-reduction path for eligible
GEMMs with a narrow output dimension and large reduction dimension. The benefit
is workload-dependent, so this PR deliberately reuses the existing opt-in
policy rather than introducing a new default.

Example eligibility under the existing n < 2048, k >= 2048 shape gates:

Model shape GEMM1 (n=2I, k=H) GEMM2 (n=H, k=I)
Qwen3-30B-A3B (H=2048, I=768) eligible ineligible
128-expert 26B MoE (H=2816, I=704) eligible ineligible
Mixtral-8x7B (H=4096, I=14336) ineligible ineligible

The existing helper also preserves its CUDA, environment-variable, and BF16
architecture checks.

Performance validation

Tested on NVIDIA GB10 (SM121) with BF16 activations and 4-bit weights.

vLLM serving: Qwen3-30B-A3B-GPTQ-Int4

Workload Atomic OFF Atomic ON Delta
B=1, GSM8K greedy, 50 requests 82.7 tok/s 81.4 tok/s -1.6%
Concurrency 8, 32 requests 256.6 tok/s 259.3 tok/s +1.1%
Concurrency 32, 64 requests 516.9 tok/s 525.5 tok/s +1.7%

The B=1 median was effectively unchanged (82.8 vs 83.0 tok/s); aggregate gains
appeared as the effective batch size increased.

DiffusionGemma custom decode stack

This comparison isolates atomic reduction while holding AWQ and
moe_block_size=32 fixed:

Configuration GSM8K accuracy Throughput
Block size 32, atomic OFF 46/50 303.6 tok/s
Block size 32, atomic ON 45/50 314.5 tok/s

Atomic reduction improved end-to-end throughput by 3.6% in this workload. The
accuracy counts are a coarse task-level sanity check, not a
numerical-equivalence claim.

Paired Marlin MoE-layer timing

With block size held at 32, paired/interleaved timing showed the isolated atomic
contribution tapering with token count:

Tokens Atomic OFF Atomic ON Delta
64 1.95 ms 1.81 ms +7%
128 2.16 ms 1.93 ms +11%
256 2.08 ms 2.04 ms +2%
512 2.34 ms 2.32 ms +1%

Correctness and limitations

  • The environment flag is off by default, so existing users see no behavior
    change.
  • Atomic floating-point accumulation is order-dependent and may produce small
    ULP-level differences, matching the trade-off of the existing dense Marlin
    path.
  • Validation above is from one SM121 system. The existing helper continues to
    reject unsupported or unsuitable device, dtype, and shape combinations.
  • The GSM8K samples are end-to-end sanity checks; kernel numerical tests and
    project CI remain authoritative.

Test plan

  • Verify that vLLM loads the patched fused-MoE path.
  • Run atomic OFF/ON serving comparisons at B=1 and concurrency 8/32.
  • Run paired/interleaved Marlin MoE-layer timing with block size fixed.
  • Run an isolated DiffusionGemma block-size-32 OFF/ON comparison.
  • Pass vLLM CI and existing Marlin/MoE kernel tests.

AI assistance disclosure

Claude and Cursor were used for non-trivial assistance during implementation,
validation, and PR preparation. The submitter reviewed the changed code and
validation results. The commit includes the corresponding Co-authored-by
trailer and DCO sign-off.

Apply the existing should_use_atomic_add_reduce heuristic (opt-in via
VLLM_MARLIN_USE_ATOMIC_ADD=1) to both grouped GEMMs in fused_marlin_moe,
mirroring the dense marlin path. No behavior change by default.

This change was developed with AI assistance (Claude); all lines
human-reviewed and validated on hardware.

Co-authored-by: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
Signed-off-by: hsamrat007 <144432599+hsamrat007@users.noreply.github.com>

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Claude Code Review

This pull request is from a fork — automated review is disabled. A repository maintainer can comment @claude review to run a one-time review.

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