In CP=8 + NSA-shared-KV + HiCache disagg-prefill, cache-hit prefill produced
incoherent decode output. Cold prefill on CP was correct; pure CP without
HiCache was correct. The bug lived at the HiCache load_cp / device-alloc
interface.
Root cause: cache_controller.load_cp called the plain
mem_pool_device_allocator.alloc(logical_len), which returns logical pages
with no CP owner-pattern preservation. Cold prefill instead uses
alloc_extend_compute_owner with a zigzag owner pattern from
build_in_seq_page_compute_owners. The saved CpHiCacheNodeMetadata.owned_positions
records WHICH POSITIONS in the write-time alloc were owned by this rank. At
load time, those same positions are applied to a new alloc whose per-position
owner pattern is arbitrary -- each rank loads its host bytes into physical
slots whose corresponding logical page is owned by a DIFFERENT rank.
Attention's materialize_shared_token_kv_buffer reads from the owner's
physical slot, which was never loaded. Result: garbage.
Fix:
- CpHiCacheNodeMetadata gains two required fields: page_owners (int8 per
logical page, identical on all CP ranks) and page_size. __post_init__
validates; split() bisects page_owners by page index with a page-alignment
check.
- _write_cp derives page_owners from device_indices (page-first slot of each
page -> logical page id -> layout.owner_for_logical_pages) and stores in
both metadata-construction sites (zero-owned and normal).
- New CPSharedPagedTokenToKVPoolAllocator.alloc_pages_with_owners() reuses
_select_compute_owner_pages (with its tai-kernel fast path) and returns
page-contiguous token locs whose per-page owner sequence equals the input.
- load_cp now concats page_owners across nodes_to_load and calls
alloc_pages_with_owners. On None (lane exhausted) the caller hits the
retry-with-eviction path; further failure returns None and degrades to
cache miss. No silent fallback to plain alloc -- that recreated the bug.
- load_back retry path now calls _evict_for_compute_owner_lanes (module-top
import) instead of plain evict(); this targets the deficit lane and gives
the next alloc attempt a chance to satisfy it.
- envs import moved to module top in cache_controller.py per code-review
feedback. Removed an over-defensive owned_check.all().item() in load_cp
that would have re-introduced the host-sync anti-pattern 97a9f850c
removed -- the invariant is already guaranteed by alloc_pages_with_owners.
Tests: 40 existing CpHiCacheNodeMetadata constructions migrated to pass the
new required fields. 9 new metadata tests (validators + split page-alignment).
10 new allocator tests in test_alloc_pages_with_owners.py covering input-order
preservation, lane exhaustion, release_pages fallback, debug-mode invariant.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Cache-hit prefill can skip draft forward for the prefix while PD transfer still reads draft KV for that same prefix. CP HiCache therefore needs to persist draft/MTP KV alongside target KV instead of relying on whatever remains in the draft GPU pool.
Constraint: CP HiCache is host-only here; storage backends remain unsupported for CP shared KV.
Constraint: CP shared KV must keep owner-page semantics and avoid falling back to full KV on every rank.
Rejected: Recompute cached-prefix draft KV during prefill | loses the HiCache benefit and reintroduces the large hidden/KV footprint.
Rejected: Change PD transfer to skip draft prefix KV | decode still needs draft cache continuity for MTP acceptance.
Confidence: medium
Scope-risk: moderate
Directive: Keep target and draft CP HiCache metadata/load/write/evict paths in lockstep; changing one without the other can silently reduce MTP accept length.
Tested: Remote g0034 container /sgl-workspace/sglang-tai: python3 -m pytest -q test/registered/unit/managers/test_hicache_controller_cp.py test/registered/unit/mem_cache/test_cp_hicache_metadata.py => 58 passed, 3 warnings
Not-tested: Full multi-node HiCache+MTP serving benchmark and accept-length recovery.
Cache-hit prefill can skip draft forward for the prefix while PD transfer still reads draft KV for that same prefix. CP HiCache therefore needs to persist draft/MTP KV alongside target KV instead of relying on whatever remains in the draft GPU pool.
Constraint: CP HiCache is host-only here; storage backends remain unsupported for CP shared KV.
Constraint: CP shared KV must keep owner-page semantics and avoid falling back to full KV on every rank.
Rejected: Recompute cached-prefix draft KV during prefill | loses the HiCache benefit and reintroduces the large hidden/KV footprint.
Rejected: Change PD transfer to skip draft prefix KV | decode still needs draft cache continuity for MTP acceptance.
Confidence: medium
Scope-risk: moderate
Directive: Keep target and draft CP HiCache metadata/load/write/evict paths in lockstep; changing one without the other can silently reduce MTP accept length.
Tested: Remote g0034 container /sgl-workspace/sglang-tai: python3 -m pytest -q test/registered/unit/managers/test_hicache_controller_cp.py test/registered/unit/mem_cache/test_cp_hicache_metadata.py => 58 passed, 3 warnings
Not-tested: Full multi-node HiCache+MTP serving benchmark and accept-length recovery.
Add validate_page_aligned_token_indices utility and apply it across
HiCache write/load paths, NSA indexer transfers, and CUDA direct copy
kernels to reject malformed (partial, misaligned, non-contiguous) page
groups before they reach native transfer code. Also validate supported
CP HiCache backend/layout combinations at server startup.
leaveletandClaude Opus 4.7
ThomasX