ds4 streaming expert cache sizing under TP
Parent: Mac local LLMs: Clusters, RDMA, exo and ds4 · Published reference · snapshot 2026-10-05
↓ Facts as markdownall context files
Because ownership skips the peer's experts before they are fetched, a rank's hot set is about half of what a single Mac sees; a cache count sized for single-Mac use wastes about half its slots on experts this rank will never request.
These notes link each claim to its source. Some citations identify archived research reports that are no longer hosted on this site. A published reference means the content is available; it does not certify independent review or accuracy.Read the editorial policy and follow the sources before relying on a claim.
Facts
- Because ownership skips the peer's experts before they are fetched, a rank's hot set is about half of what a single Mac sees; a cache count sized for single-Mac use wastes about half its slots on experts this rank will never request. [source]
- `ds4_streaming_cacheable_expert_count` returns `layers * DS4_N_EXPERT` with no TP divisor [source]
- The "cacheable by this layer slice" cap keys on the pipeline `distributed.role` and layer range, not TP rank [source]
- A manual `--ssd-streaming-cache-experts` byte target is capped at 7/8 of the GPU recommended working-set size minus context and graph memory, rounded down to GiB with a 1 GiB floor [source]
- If the prefill headroom is at least the cache target, ds4 reduces the headroom to the target minus one expert and prints "prefill reserve reduced" [source]
- If no complete expert slot fits, ds4 prints "leaves no complete expert slot; using direct per-layer reads" and uses a cache budget of 0 [source]
- Each TP rank sizes its cache from its own working-set size, and no budget is exchanged between ranks [source]
- Metal streaming fast paths such as the GLM tiny pair-SwiGLU path are gated on `tp_world < 2` [source]
- On ROCm the GLM streaming cache can grow by the prefill headroom after prefill unless `DS4_ROCM_GLM_STREAMING_GROW_CACHE_AFTER_PREFILL=0` [source]
- A cache count sized for single-Mac use wastes about half its slots under TP, since the peer's experts are skipped before fetch [source]
Children
- No children recorded.