Tiny extend requests can leave most CP lanes without query work, which has been tied to hangs and accept-length regressions. This change introduces a dual valid/compute metadata contract: forward paths may materialize compute-padded rows, while cache, current reuse, direct write, HiCache backup, and load remain valid/page based.
The implementation keeps radix/HiCache/device allocation on real page extents, filters dummy compute rows before MLA/index cache writes and current reuse, makes top-k/index consume compute rows while compacting valid rows, and opens tiny CP shared-KV in-seq split through compute padding. The accompanying plan document records the contract and P1-P7 evidence.
Constraint: CP shared KV and HiCache must stay page-granular; dummy compute rows must not allocate, write, backup, or load KV cache.
Constraint: Avoid silent fallback and avoid adding collectives on hot paths.
Rejected: Pad cache allocations to cp_size pages | would waste KV capacity and pollute radix/HiCache state.
Rejected: Keep tiny suffixes out of CP split | preserves the zero-lane behavior that compute padding is meant to remove.
Confidence: medium
Scope-risk: broad
Directive: Do not route compute-padded dummy rows into out_cache_loc, current reuse, HiCache reservation, or backup descriptors; keep valid/cache metadata explicit.
Tested: Remote g0034 container targeted P7 tests: 3 passed, 3 warnings.
Tested: Remote g0034 container full unit slice: PYTHONPATH=python python -m pytest -q test/registered/unit/layers/test_nsa_cp_utils.py test/registered/unit/mem_cache/test_cp_shared_kv_runtime.py test/registered/unit/mem_cache/test_cp_shared_kv_layout.py => 214 passed, 5 warnings, 2 subtests passed.
Tested: Local py_compile for touched P7 test file.
Not-tested: Latest CUDA/ETE traffic validation for dummy top-k rows, accept len, output len, and detokenizer hang behavior.
3e3f1b776b