A bs=1 cache-hit prefill produced deterministically wrong output (e.g. "0.5,0.5,0.5").
Root cause: regression a24111a5f4 changed the bs=1 cache-hit call sites to pass
prefix_slot_spans=[] (get_or_build_batch_slot_spans want_prefix=False) together with
prefix_pages>0. In materialize_prefix_and_reuse_current_kv_page_slots and its index twin,
the guard `if prefix_slot_spans is not None:` let the empty list shadow the prefix_pages
fallback -> prefix_spans=[] -> the cached prefix dense slots were never materialized
(both IPC and local paths gate on `if prefix_spans:`) -> attention read zero KV over the
entire reused prefix. The indexer compose dropped its prefix the same way. bs=1 only;
bs>1 (non-empty per-request spans) and fresh prefill (no prefix) were unaffected.
Fix: make the canonical per-request slot-span list the sole description of the
prefix/current regions and fail loud on a missing list. Remove all four
span-reconstruction fallbacks: prefix_slot_span (singular, dead), prefix_pages->span
(the bug), current_slot_spans=None->span (dead), and the prefetcher's copy. Both twins
now require prefix_slot_spans + current_slot_spans (raise on None; [] = genuine
no-prefix). All call sites build canonical spans via want_prefix=True (cached per-forward,
so a24111a5f4's per-layer-CPU goal is preserved by the cache, not by skipping the build);
the MLA current-only path also uses want_prefix=True to keep want_prefix uniform and the
span cache thrash-free.
Tests: migrate unit tests off the removed prefix_pages param (drop it where spans were
already passed; supply canonical spans otherwise); fix two source-string/captured-kwarg
assertions; add test_materialize_prefix_requires_explicit_prefix_slot_spans (None->raise,
explicit spans -> non-zero prefix). test_cp_shared_kv_runtime.py: 158 passed on the
g0033 container.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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