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[OMNIML-6177] [Draft, not for merge] GPU CI speed-up series (runtime measurement) - #2730

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@shengliangxu shengliangxu commented Oct 10, 2026 •

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What does this PR do?

Type of change: CI and test runtime (reference draft for runtime measurement, not for merge)

This branch holds the whole GPU-CI speed-up series (34 commits, 193 added lines of non-test source, no modelopt/ library code touched), rebased on main 786b84e4a5, so that real runner runs could measure it. It is now split into 11 stacked draft PRs (stack #2859), each a small functional change that stands on its own. Three changes of this draft that saved nothing measurable (the coverage.xml-only report, mmlu_limit=1 for test_qwen3_eval_fp8, the vLLM KV-pool sizing) are not in the stack; this branch still has them. A separate PR based on main, #2858, makes the required checks run in GitHub's merge queue.

  1. [OMNIML-6178] [1/11] Run the unit tests in parallel with pytest-xdist #2845 [OMNIML-6178] [1/11] Run the unit tests in parallel with pytest-xdist
  2. [OMNIML-6178] [2/11] Use the sysmon coverage core in CI #2846 [OMNIML-6178] [2/11] Use the sysmon coverage core in CI
  3. [OMNIML-6179] [3/11] Run manual-marked tests on nightly and on-demand GPU runs #2847 [OMNIML-6179] [3/11] Run release-marked tests on nightly and on-demand GPU runs
  4. [OMNIML-6181] [4/11] Give gpu_megatron's slow cold starts more time #2848 [OMNIML-6181] [4/11] Give gpu_megatron's slow cold starts more time
  5. [OMNIML-6179] [5/11] Make the ONNX tests cheaper: CPU-only ones to the unit lane, small models #2849 [OMNIML-6179] [5/11] Make the ONNX tests cheaper: CPU-only ones to the unit lane, small models
  6. [OMNIML-6179] [6/11] Use local tokenizers and calibration text in GPU tests, shrink puzzletron data #2850 [OMNIML-6179] [6/11] Use local tokenizers and calibration text in GPU tests, shrink puzzletron data
  7. [OMNIML-6180] [7/11] Trim the llm_eval, llm_qat, EAGLE and megatron_bridge example tests #2851 [OMNIML-6180] [7/11] Trim the llm_eval, llm_qat, EAGLE and megatron_bridge example tests
  8. [OMNIML-6180] [8/11] Trim the DFlash regression test #2852 [OMNIML-6180] [8/11] Trim the DFlash regression test
  9. [OMNIML-6180] [9/11] Trim the torch_onnx example lane #2853 [OMNIML-6180] [9/11] Trim the torch_onnx example lane
  10. [OMNIML-6181] [10/11] Make the distributed worker pool fail fast when a worker dies #2854 [OMNIML-6181] [10/11] Make the distributed worker pool fail fast when a worker dies
  11. [OMNIML-6181] [11/11] Share one Megatron worker pool across the gpu_megatron modules #2855 [OMNIML-6181] [11/11] Share one Megatron worker pool across the gpu_megatron modules

Where the time goes today (successful PR runs, 2026-09-25 to 2026-10-09): the median GPU run of a PR takes 59 min, of which 13.8 min is waiting for the unit linux job and 33.5 min is pytest; gpu_megatron starts its worker pool 15 times (about 76 s each); the gpu lane compiles three CUDA packages in every job (about 7 min); the nightly 2-GPU gpu job hit its 60-min cap on 15 of 15 nights.

What the stack leaves out, on purpose. #2836 (open) also caches the source-built wheels of the gpu job, saves the JIT cache when a job fails, and destroys every non-default NCCL group in the Megatron teardown; its wheelhouse is the more complete one (pinned wheels, C++20 patch, saved from any run). So this draft's wheel-cache and JIT-save commits are not in the stack, and neither are the Triton cache and per-lane cache keys, which build on #2836's save action and can follow once it lands. The group cleanup in #2855 is the same loop as #2836's, so whichever lands second sees an identical hunk. ExampleRunner (a worker runner for the torch_onnx lane, +1,100 lines with its tests) is a third in-process example runner next to Megatron's and the diffusers one (#2728): it is not in the stack until #2728's runner has been compared on torch_onnx. The numbers below therefore include pieces the stack does not carry (the wheel and Triton caches, the runner).

Stack results (2026-10-17). Every PR of the stack was green on all required checks (Unit, Code Quality, GPU, Example, Regression, DCO and the four aggregate checks; Docs where it runs) on its previous head. Dropping the three changes rewrote the heads of #2846-#2855. All of them ran again on the new heads and are green (Unit, Code Quality, GPU, Example, Regression, DCO); the table below and the measurements are from the earlier runs, whose only difference to the new heads is those three changes. build-docs, which the ruleset also requires, is reported on #2845 but not on #2846-#2855: the Docs workflow did not trigger when their branches were force-pushed and re-stacked. codecov/project fails on #2851 only because that PR changes example tests alone, so path gating skips the GPU lanes and Codecov compares a partial upload against a full base; it is not a required check. Minutes of each PR's own CI run (one run per PR, - = lane skipped by path gating); the stack is cumulative, so #2855 contains all the others:

lane baseline median #2845 (1) #2846 (2) #2849 (5) #2850 (6) #2853 (9) #2854 (10) #2855 (11)
unit linux job 14.8 10.9 7.9 7.0 7.5 7.8 6.6 5.6
gpu job 39.1 47.1 33.0 43.1 45.8 - 30.7 29.9
gpu_megatron job 41.2 44.7 26.8 25.9 30.5 - 23.2 19.7
example/llm_qat 21.8 19.1 14.2 18.4 20.3 - 12.9 11.8
example/llm_eval 22.5 11.8 10.9 11.3 11.6 - 8.7 13.8
example/torch_onnx 28.4 21.5 18.8 22.3 18.1 12.7 11.7 12.2
GPU workflow, wall 59.0 59.2 39.6 50.0 n/a (one job re-run) - 40.2 36.3
Example workflow, wall 64.2 32.8 25.4 29.0 28.3 19.0 29.2 21.2

Read the table above as a trend, not as per-PR attribution: single runs are noisy (the gpu lane swings between 30 and 47 min with whether the JIT caches hit, which depends on the PR branch and the container image), and the Example lanes include other contributors' changes on main since the baseline (hf_ptq, diffusers). The per-PR attribution is measured in the next table.

Measured improvement per PR (from the stack's own CI runs, with the PR below as the control, speed-scaled medians; each PR's description has its table, the control runs and the method; one test varies by 15-30% from run to run):

PR change measured improvement
#2845 unit tests under xdist linux job 12.9 min median serial (27 runs of other PRs) to 7.0 min median over the stack's runs (with sysmon from #2846; this PR's own run: 10.9 min); unit workflow 24.1 to 17.2 min
#2846 sysmon coverage core lane pytest gpu -38%, gpu_megatron -46% (Megatron pool start 76 s to 23 s in each of 14 modules), regression -27%, vLLM -17% / -23%
#2847 release-marked tests -22 s gpu_megatron, -19 s gpu per PR run
#2848 gpu_megatron timeouts none in a passing run; avoids 2,328 job-minutes of failed jobs per two weeks
#2849 ONNX tests -53 s gpu
#2850 local data -170 s gpu, -14 s gpu_megatron
#2851 example trims lane pytest: llm_eval -120 s, llm_qat -116 s, speculative_decoding -66 s, megatron -123 s
#2852 DFlash regression regression lane -98 s
#2853 torch_onnx lane -419 s (-48%), the job 18.6 to 12.2 min
#2854 pool fail-fast a dead worker is noticed in 4 s instead of 33 s (30 s job timeout) or 603 s (the default), a failed start in 5 s instead of 300 s (measured locally on CPU); the new tests add 15 s to the gpu lane
#2855 Megatron session pool -216 s (-21%) of the gpu_megatron lane on top of sysmon (2,240 s on main, 1,212 s with #2846, 822 s with everything)

The first version of the PR descriptions estimated more than the runs show in some places and less in others. Three changes saved nothing measurable and were dropped from the stack on 2026-10-17: the coverage.xml-only report (no CI effect, the pytest summary line comes 1-4 s after the last test either way), mmlu_limit=1 for test_qwen3_eval_fp8 (187 to 176 s, noise) and the vLLM KV-pool sizing (about 5 s per vLLM version, noise). The sysmon core of #2846 had also made the ONNX tests of #2849 cheaper than first estimated (53 s instead of 97-107 s) while the local-data tests of #2850 saved more (170 s instead of 94 s). The descriptions now carry the measured numbers. The second set of runs (the rebuilt heads) is a replicate of the same code. It reproduces the direction of every effect, and two of them to a percent: the torch_onnx lane (-48% in the first runs, -49% in the second) and the Megatron session pool (-21%, -22%). The example-lane trims of #2851 and the DFlash lane of #2852 come out smaller in the second set (llm_qat -20% and -19%, megatron_bridge -21% and -24%, llm_eval -36% and -18%, speculative_decoding -16% and -8%, DFlash -38% and -24%): the later runs landed on slower hosts, and the same lane varies by up to 50% between the two sets, so the lane numbers carry about +-20-30%. The merge queue PR #2858 is separate and not part of these measurements: a queued merge takes about as long as the GPU workflow (59 min today, 36-40 min with the series).

The first CI runs found one real problem: #2855 (the session-wide pool) failed in gpu_megatron twice, because a failed job's poisoned CUDA context was reused and because its teardown did not collect garbage after destroying the groups; both are fixed in that PR (see its description).

Usage

Nothing user-facing. The series is CI and test changes apart from examples/torch_onnx/torch_quant_to_onnx.py, whose calibration loaders now use num_workers=0 and whose build_trt_engine runs one benchmark iteration.

Testing

All six workflows are green on this head (Unit with 20 jobs, Docs, Code Quality, GPU, Example, Regression). Run locally, CPU only: pre-commit (every hook, including mypy) and actionlint over the range; tests/unit (without puzzletron, which needs hydra) in normal, reversed and shuffled file order, 5,047 passed and one failure in a file this series does not touch (fastgen/test_qwen_image_pdd_plugin.py::test_mr210_joint_mask_ignores_padded_token_values, local environment only), on the tip before the last rebase (same patches, one upstream commit older); collection of tests/unit with the POSIX-only signal/os names removed (Windows emulation).

Minutes. The first two runs are on the previous head of this branch (524d784d71, base af07754681); the third is this head on main 786b84e4a5, where the gpu lane moved to a new container image (#2809) and its JIT caches missed, and the other lanes' caches hit only in part:

baseline median first run (cold) second run (warm) this head
GPU workflow, wall 59.0 42.8 38.7 59.9
Example workflow, wall 64.2 52.2 43.8 34.5
Regression workflow, wall 26.4 19.4 22.0 25.8
unit linux job 14.8 7.0 10.2 6.5
gpu_megatron job 41.2 20.8 11.8 17.4
gpu job 39.1 29.0 21.9 40.3

The gpu lane did not improve on this head: it ran with missed JIT caches and still compiles the three CUDA packages, since the wheel cache can only be seeded from main (what #2836 addresses). The example lanes (hf_ptq, diffusers, llm_eval, torch_onnx and others) also include other contributors' changes on main since the baseline.

Before your PR is "Ready for review"

Draft, not for merge. Commits are signed (git commit -s -S).

  • Is this change backward compatible?: N/A (CI and tests)
  • If you copied code from any other sources or added a new PIP dependency, did you follow guidance in CONTRIBUTING.md: no new dependency (pytest-xdist is already in the dev-test extra on main)
  • Did you write any new necessary tests?: the pool and runner tests of this draft are replaced in the stack by three small tests in tests/gpu/torch/utils/test_distributed_worker_pool.py
  • Did you update Changelog?: N/A (CI and tests)
  • Did you get Claude approval on this PR?: N/A (draft)

Additional Information

Reference only. The reviewable PRs are the stack above.

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/ok to test 5064ef3

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PR Preview Action v1.8.1
Preview removed because the pull request was closed.
2026-10-19 06:07 UTC

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Codecov Report

✅ All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests.
✅ Project coverage is 80.67%. Comparing base (786b84e) to head (954ac75).

Additional details and impacted files
@@            Coverage Diff             @@
##             main    #2730      +/-   ##
==========================================
+ Coverage   76.89%   80.67%   +3.77%     
==========================================
  Files         658      646      -12     
  Lines       73649    70522    -3127     
==========================================
+ Hits        56636    56895     +259     
+ Misses      17013    13627    -3386     
Flag Coverage Δ
examples ?
examples-diffusers 20.09% <ø> (ø)
examples-gpt-oss 13.53% <ø> (ø)
examples-hf_ptq 23.24% <ø> (-0.04%) ⬇️
examples-llm_distill 13.61% <ø> (-0.01%) ⬇️
examples-llm_eval 17.27% <ø> (ø)
examples-llm_qat 17.52% <ø> (-0.01%) ⬇️
examples-llm_sparsity 15.79% <ø> (ø)
examples-megatron_bridge 26.47% <ø> (-0.18%) ⬇️
examples-specdec_bench 13.31% <ø> (ø)
examples-speculative_decoding 17.51% <ø> (-0.06%) ⬇️
examples-torch_onnx 21.44% <ø> (-0.02%) ⬇️
examples-torch_trt 15.26% <ø> (ø)
examples-vllm_serve 15.01% <ø> (ø)
gpu 58.89% <ø> (+8.00%) ⬆️
regression 15.12% <ø> (-0.01%) ⬇️
unit 60.40% <ø> (+0.07%) ⬆️

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shengliangxu added a commit that referenced this pull request Oct 10, 2026
The Windows unit job failed at collection: the parametrize decorator of
test_worker_death_fails_the_step_not_the_session evaluates -signal.SIGKILL when the module is
imported, and signal has no SIGKILL on Windows. The module's skip_on_windows fixture only runs
at test setup, so the AttributeError aborted the whole session ("Interrupted: 1 error during
collection") and no Windows test ran at all (PR #2730, Unit tests / windows).

Take the parameter from a module-level getattr(signal, "SIGKILL", 9). The script text that sends
the signal still names signal.SIGKILL; it only runs where the test runs, which is POSIX.

Testing: collecting the committed version with signal.SIGKILL, SIGHUP, SIGUSR1 and os.setsid,
killpg and getpgid removed reproduces the CI error. The fixed module, test_distributed_worker_pool.py
and test_example_run_command.py collect (41 tests) under the same conditions. Not run on Windows.
The collection error hid every other Windows result, so the job needs a re-run to show what else,
if anything, fails there.

Signed-off-by: Shengliang Xu <shengliangx@nvidia.com>
shengliangxu added a commit that referenced this pull request Oct 10, 2026
test_search_constraints replaced ConstraintsFunc._get_true_latency with a fake by plain
assignment and never put the original back, so the fake stayed in place for the rest of the
process. test_evaluate_constraints.py::test_evaluate_latency_constraints and ::test_percent_limits
use the real method through a fake runtime client (latency 100 and 200) and fail when they run
after it: the leaked fake returns 280.5 for the tiny resnet, so the 20% latency limit comes out
as 56.1 instead of 40, and a 200 limit is not met.

Serial runs never saw it, because test_evaluate_constraints.py sorts before
test_full_algorithms_vision.py. With pytest-xdist (-n 4 --dist loadfile) a worker can get the
files in the other order. In PR #2730 the same worker ran test_search_constraints and then the two
victims in the Python 3.10 and 3.14 legs, which failed; in the legs where they landed on different
workers, or in the other order, they passed.

Use monkeypatch, so the patch is undone after the test.

Testing: running test_search_constraints[False-True] and then test_evaluate_constraints.py in one
process failed both tests with the CI values before the change (56.10 against 40.0, and
assert False is True) and passes after it, and ConstraintsFunc._get_true_latency is the original
function again afterwards. The whole unit suite in reversed and in shuffled file order is run
next to look for other leaks of this kind.

Signed-off-by: Shengliang Xu <shengliangx@nvidia.com>
shengliangxu added a commit that referenced this pull request Oct 10, 2026
tests/unit/torch/quantization/test_dist.py::test_data_parallel hit the 60 s default cap in the
Python 3.12 / torch 2.13 leg of PR #2730. The test spawns two processes and takes 8-15 s in
serial runs. With pytest-xdist it takes 25-35 s in every other leg, and 60 s or more on the
slowest runner: four workers and the child processes of the multi-process tests (test_dist,
the three test_*data_parallel* autoquant tests, the worker-pool tests) share the four vCPUs of a
CI runner. A hung test is still reported, after 2 min instead of 1.

Windows already had 120 s.

Testing: the durations above come from the job logs of the PR run and of the serial run before
it. Not re-run on a runner: the cap only adds headroom.

Signed-off-by: Shengliang Xu <shengliangx@nvidia.com>
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/ok to test 524d784

The unit workflow's `linux` job gates every GPU and example workflow: their
pr-gate jobs wait for it (poseidon/wait-for-status-checks, `^linux$`). That
wait is a median 13.8 min, 23% of a PR's GPU run, and the job itself takes a
median 14.8 min. The tests are CPU-bound and run serially, so use the
runner's four vCPUs.

- unit_tests.yml: `PYTEST_ADDOPTS=-n 4 --dist loadfile` on the `linux` job and
  the multi-version matrix. One worker per vCPU (`-n auto` counts physical
  cores), whole files per worker, and `OMP_NUM_THREADS=1`: with torch's default
  threads per worker the runner is oversubscribed and the run is slower than
  serial (1,481 s and 41 failures in my local runs).
- noxfile.py: the second pytest process that runs the `manual` tests clears
  PYTEST_ADDOPTS, so it stays serial: those tests leak global state into each
  other, and a worker would run them in some order.
- tests/_test_utils/torch/quantization/onnx_export.py: TEST_MODELS was a set of
  classes, whose iteration order differs between processes, so xdist workers
  collected different test ids. Use a tuple.
- test_hf_dflash2.py: test_overfits_a_single_batch needs more than the default
  60 s call timeout when one thread runs it (about 53 s with torch's default
  threads). Give it 300 s.

pytest-xdist is already in the dev-test extra on main (#2771); uv.lock is
refreshed by the weekly bump_uv_lock workflow.

Testing: the full tests/unit suite, on 4 CPUs with coverage as in CI, on the
base before the unit-test cleanup of #2823. Serial 825 s; this configuration
332-344 s in three repeated runs (4,724 passed, 0 failed). The other matrix
entries (Python 3.10, 3.13, 3.14, torch 2.8, transformers min) take 4.5-5.3 min.

Signed-off-by: Shengliang Xu <shengliangx@nvidia.com>
pytest-cov builds the term-missing, html and xml reports at the end of the
session (inside its runtestloop wrapper), over about 640 modelopt files. CI
uploads only coverage.xml to Codecov, so the other two cost time and a 600-line
table in every log for nothing.

The cost shows up as ~45 s on the last test of every lane (gpu 46 s,
gpu_megatron 49 s, TRT-LLM 43.5 s, vLLM 43.8 s, hf_ptq, llm_qat, llm_eval) and
as a 71 s gap before the last result line of the unit `linux` job, which every
GPU and example workflow waits for. It also pushes jobs over their timeouts: 59
of 143 timed-out PR jobs in two weeks had already finished 95% or more of their
tests and died in the coverage tail or the post steps.

Timed on this tree: html 20.2 s, xml 6.2 s, term-missing 4.6 s. A 17-test run
takes 50.9 s with the old addopts and 25.1 s with this one. Developers who want
the other reports pass --cov-report=html or --cov-report=term-missing.

Testing: ran pytest with --cov before and after on a small test selection and
checked that only coverage.xml is written and the run is shorter. Not yet run
on a real CI runner.

Signed-off-by: Shengliang Xu <shengliangx@nvidia.com>
Python 3.12 defaults to coverage's C tracer, which slows every line of Python
that runs under it. Every lane starts coverage in each spawned worker and
subprocess through COVERAGE_PROCESS_START, so the import-heavy start-ups pay
for it: the 76 s Megatron worker-pool start, the 22 s hf_ptq processes of the
unified-export tests, the puzzletron spawns, the vLLM engine core.
COVERAGE_CORE=sysmon records the same lines through sys.monitoring at a
fraction of the overhead.

Measured (the first three here, the last by #2727 on its hf_ptq example lane):
- serial tests/unit run on 4 CPUs: 572 s without coverage, 825 s with the C
  tracer, 640 s with sysmon;
- `import modelopt.torch.quantization.extensions` with this repo's coverage
  config: 17.1 s native, 23.6 s with the C tracer, 18.3 s with sysmon, and the
  child process of a spawn writes its data file too, with the same 362 files
  and 13,821 executed lines;
- one TinyLlama fp8 plus TRT-LLM deploy test: 64.8 s without coverage, 103.3 s
  with the C tracer, 70.5 s with sysmon, identical covered lines.

Applies to the unit `linux` job (Python 3.12), gpu_tests.yml and
regression_tests.yml. The example runner is left to #2727, which makes the same
change there. sysmon needs Python 3.12 or newer; on an older interpreter
coverage warns and keeps its default core, so a lane that turns out to run an
older Python is slower, not broken. The gpu and gpu_megatron logs show 3.12.

Testing: actionlint is clean on all workflows. Not yet run on a real CI runner;
the first run should be compared against the previous coverage.xml.

Signed-off-by: Shengliang Xu <shengliangx@nvidia.com>
…kernels

The extension cache hardly ever helps, and nothing caches Triton at all.

Extension cache. Its key was `rtxpro6000-<container image>`, shared by every
job on an image, and `actions/cache` saves only when the job succeeds:
- gpu_megatron and the megatron_bridge example job share nemo:26.08. The
  example job, which builds fewer extensions, saved a 0.9 MB entry first. The
  gpu_megatron log then says "Cache hit ... 920,006 B ... not saving cache", so
  it compiles the CUDA extensions in every job and never saves them: test_cuda_ext
  has a 125 s setup in 92% of 334 PR jobs (median 132.7 s).
- main is never seeded for the PR branches: the 2-GPU nightly gpu job is
  cancelled at its 60-minute limit every night, and a cancelled job saves
  nothing. In the gpu lane 40-51% of PR jobs miss the cache (test_cuda_ext
  median 0.1 s, mean 18 s, p90 43 s); hf_ptq shows the same 25.7 s extension
  JIT in 18% of jobs.
- Triton-only edits under modelopt/torch/kernels/quantization invalidated the
  CUDA entry, because every file there was hashed.

Triton. Every container starts with an empty Triton cache, so each job
recompiles the same kernels: the GDN fixture 103 s (about 30 compiles), the Mamba
first calls 137 s, the FLA fixture 67 s, the NVFP4 FP8-sweep kernel about 93 s,
Qwen3.5 vision +24.6 s, the first vLLM 0.30 engine 102 s against 35 s warm.
Sibling parametrizations with the same shapes take 1-3 s. The open #2572
measured the Mamba compile at 97 s cold and 16.6 s with a warm cache.

Changes:
- cache-extensions now restores two entries (it no longer saves, because the
  composite action cannot run a step after the job): CUDA extensions under an
  exact key hashed over the .cu/.cuh/.cpp/.h sources, the conv loader and the two
  Python loaders only, and the Triton cache (TRITON_CACHE_DIR) under a key over
  modelopt/torch/kernels/**/*.py with a restore-keys prefix. Triton entries are
  content-addressed, so restoring an older one is harmless.
- New cache-extensions/save action, run with `if: always()` after the tests in
  gpu_tests.yml and _example_tests_runner.yml. It saves what was not an exact
  hit, also when the job failed or timed out.
- The cache key now includes the lane (`rtxpro6000-<lane>-<image>`).

Seeding main still needs the nightly to get through (separate change); until
then each PR branch saves its own entries on its first run.

Testing: actionlint is clean on all workflows, and with a deliberately broken
input or output name it reports the error, so the wiring of the new inputs and
outputs is checked. Assumes actions/cache/restore@v6 and /save@v6 exist next to
actions/cache@v6. Not yet run on a real CI runner: confirm the restored cache
sizes and that a second job on the same lane hits.

Signed-off-by: Shengliang Xu <shengliangx@nvidia.com>
Two timeouts in gpu_megatron fail PR jobs for reasons that are not bugs:

- test_mamba_search_space has a 74 s median call (the first Mamba/Triton kernel
  compile on a cold cache) against the 120 s default cap of tests/gpu_megatron.
  Of 330 PR jobs that reached its module, 38 (11.5%) have no result line for it
  and 5 more error out; it failed in 24 runs over two weeks (1,425 job-minutes),
  and runs missing its result line end as failures 16 times in 38 against 15 in
  292. The next test then absorbs 207-235 s (the rest of the setup plus the cap).
  Give it 240 s, like the other compile-heavy test in test_megatron.py.
- DistributedWorkerPool waited 120 s for its workers to import the Megatron/TE/
  modelopt stack and report ready. The start takes 75-77 s in 14 modules of the
  PR run I read and has a p90 of 94-98 s, so slow hosts time out and the whole
  module errors: 15 jobs (903 job-minutes) in two weeks. Wait 300 s.

Together they are 34 of the 63 failed gpu_megatron PR jobs in that period.

Testing: ruff check and format with the pinned ruff 0.15.20; py_compile. Not run
on a GPU runner. The open #2572 splits the Mamba compile into its own test, which
is compatible with this.

Signed-off-by: Shengliang Xu <shengliangx@nvidia.com>
main's DistributedWorkerPool (#2832) already kills its workers and marks itself
broken when a job is interrupted or a rank fails and its peers hang, and the
fixtures replace a broken pool through get_live_pool. Two gaps remain, and the
shared Megatron pool of a following change needs two helpers.

- A worker that exits (an illegal memory access aborts the process, an OOM kill)
  was only noticed when the 600 s result timeout ran out, and a start that failed
  waited out the ready timeout and left its workers behind. The pool now checks
  the workers' liveness once a second while it waits: a dead worker fails the run
  or the start within a second, the pool is marked broken and the other workers
  are killed with their stacks printed, as for any other abort.
- ready_timeout is a constructor argument (300 s by default, as set by the
  earlier timeout change).
- destroy_extra_process_groups() destroys every group but the default one.
  Libraries that create groups per model drop their references but not the
  groups, and each NCCL group keeps a communicator and a watchdog thread.
- reset_worker_state() restores the torch settings a fresh worker starts with
  (cudnn and TF32 flags, deterministic algorithms, RNG), which set_seed() and
  similar helpers change. Workers record them right after they start.

Testing: tests/unit/test_distributed_worker_pool.py runs a two-process gloo pool
on CPU: a job error keeps the workers; an interrupt raised by a signal handler,
as pytest-timeout does, kills them and breaks the pool; a worker that exits
fails the run in under 20 s and kills its peer; a start that fails raises
quickly and leaves no process behind; the group cleanup and the flag reset
work. 6 tests in 30 s. main's tests/gpu/torch/utils/test_distributed_worker_pool.py
(3 tests, gloo) passes against the merged pool, run on CPU. ruff 0.15.20 is
clean. Not covered here, and still needing GPU CI: NCCL, CUDA poisoning, real
Megatron jobs.

Signed-off-by: Shengliang Xu <shengliangx@nvidia.com>
Each of the 15 gpu_megatron modules that use `dist_workers` started its own
worker pool, about 19 of the lane's 36 minutes. Fourteen logged module starts
took 75-77 s each (the GDN module 179 s: 76 s pool plus 103 s Triton JIT), plus
3.6-10 s of shutdown, and the start has a p90 of 94-98 s.

The 76 s is not distributed init (an in-process init takes 0.1 s): the spawned
child unpickles megatron_worker_teardown by reference, which imports the heavy
tests/gpu_megatron/conftest.py (transformers, megatron.core, all of modelopt and
its plugins, TE) before it reaches init_process_group. The same import chain
takes pytest itself 89 s to start here against 17 s in the gpu lane, whose
session-scoped pool, with a light teardown function, starts in 1.7 s. Module scope
was chosen when a spawn cost about 10 s ("avoids cross-test state contamination");
the git history shows no contamination incident, and the cost has grown 7.6x.

_pool_cache is now session-scoped, so the pools are keyed by world size and
shared by every module. main's fixtures (#2832) are function-scoped and get their
pool from get_live_pool, which replaces a pool that a hang killed; both stay as
they are. What isolation the module scope gave is kept explicitly:
- megatron_worker_teardown, after every job: synchronizes CUDA first (an
  asynchronous CUDA error then surfaces in the test that caused it), destroys
  Megatron's model-parallel state as before, and now also the process groups it
  leaves behind (about 20 NCCL groups per dispatch, each with a communicator and a
  watchdog thread; test_megatron.py alone dispatches about 110 times) and runs gc;
- _reset_shared_pools, an autouse module-scoped fixture: when a module starts, it
  resets the process-global torch settings that helpers like set_seed change
  (cudnn and TF32 flags, deterministic algorithms, RNG) to what a fresh worker
  starts with, in the pools that already exist. It is not part of _get_pool, which
  runs once per test and would add a job and a gc to each;
- get_live_pool and the pool's abort handling (main's, plus the previous change
  for a dead worker): a job that times out, is interrupted or loses a worker kills
  the pool and the next test gets a fresh one, for the cost of one pool start. That
  also covers CUDA poisoning after the known Blackwell illegal-memory-access flake.

Expected saving: about 17 min of the gpu_megatron job (36 min of tests to about
19), and one pool start instead of 15 means fewer chances to hit the ready
timeout.

Testing: ruff 0.15.20. The pool, group-cleanup and flag-reset behaviour is
covered by the CPU tests of the previous change. The Megatron lane needs GPUs: in
draft PR #2730, before this rebase onto #2832, the gpu_megatron pytest step took
862 s on cold caches and 336 s on warm ones, against 2,022 s for a baseline run
(this change plus the JIT and Triton caches). The conflict resolution with main's
function-scoped fixtures and get_live_pool has not run on a GPU.

Signed-off-by: Shengliang Xu <shengliangx@nvidia.com>
Every gpu-lane job compiles three CUDA packages against the container's torch
before its first test: fast-hadamard-transform (171-172 s), mamba_ssm (185 s on
the nightly, 278 s on a PR runner) and causal-conv1d (5 s). That is 6-7.6 min of
the 31-min PR job; the session starts pytest 8.7 min after its first command
(PR run 37703177445, nightly run 37708492798). No other pip wheel build in the 67
job logs I read took more than 20 s.

A new `gpu_wheels` nox session builds the three wheels with
`pip wheel --no-build-isolation --no-deps` into $WHEELHOUSE, and the `gpu`
session installs the wheel files found there instead of compiling. Without
WHEELHOUSE, or with an empty one, `gpu` runs exactly the pip commands it ran
before.

In the workflow, for the gpu leg only:
- the wheelhouse is restored under wheelhouse-<image>-<ISO week>-<hash of
  noxfile.py>. The week keeps the "latest release" semantics of the unpinned
  mamba_ssm, causal-conv1d and fast-hadamard-transform HEAD within a week; the
  hash drops the entry when a requirement changes, so a stale wheel is never
  installed for a changed pin;
- only runs on main (the nightly, or a manual run) build and save. The build is
  its own step, so an entry is saved only when all three wheels exist and a
  failed build saves nothing. Runs on pull-request branches only restore: a PR
  entry (~600 MB: 50 + 343 + 212 MB) would count against the repo's cache budget
  and no other PR could read it;
- a miss (the first runs of a new week until the nightly has saved, or a PR
  whose noxfile.py differs from main's) compiles in the session as today. The
  step runs after "Setup environment variables" so the build sees the same
  environment the in-session build did.

Expected saving: most of the 6-8 min on every gpu-lane job that hits, less the
restore and install of ~600 MB (not measured).

Testing: ruff 0.15.20 and actionlint (a wrong step id is caught). The noxfile
was run against a fake session: without WHEELHOUSE and with an empty one it
issues the old pip commands, with wheels present it installs them by path and
falls back per package, and gpu_wheels refuses to run without WHEELHOUSE.
`pip wheel --no-build-isolation --no-deps -w <new dir>` on dummy projects
created the directory and wheels named causal_conv1d-*, fast_hadamard_transform-*
and mamba_ssm-*, which install and import. The real CUDA builds, the cache
sizes and the restore time have not been run: the first nightly after merging
does the build and save, the next run shows the hit.

Signed-off-by: Shengliang Xu <shengliangx@nvidia.com>
Tests marked `release` collect only when pytest gets --run-release, and no workflow
passes it, so a test marked `release` never runs in CI (the docs say the same of the
example release suite). Set PYTEST_ADDOPTS=--run-release in the "Run gpu tests" step for
every run that is not a pull-request run: the nightly schedule and manual dispatches.
That lets slow or network-heavy checks leave the pull-request jobs without leaving CI.
Pull-request runs are unchanged. Nothing under tests/gpu* is marked release yet; the
next commit marks the first test.

The release example suites (hf_ptq/test_deploy.py, gpt-oss QAT) belong to
example_tests.yml, which does not get the flag, so the docs sentence that said no
workflow passes it now says no example workflow does.

Testing: actionlint is clean. A stub test marked `release`, collected under the repo's
tests/conftest.py, is skipped with "Only run when --run-release is given" when
PYTEST_ADDOPTS is empty and runs when it is --run-release. The expression is
`!startsWith(github.ref, 'refs/heads/pull-request/') && '--run-release' || ''`, which
gives '' for a pull-request ref and '--run-release' otherwise. Not run on GitHub.

Signed-off-by: Shengliang Xu <shengliangx@nvidia.com>
test_megatron_generate_and_mmlu[tp] builds a 28-layer Qwen3-0.6B Megatron model,
downloads 1.2-1.5 GB of real weights into a fresh container cache and scores about
1,400 MMLU prompts: a 32 s call in every pull-request gpu_megatron job. It is the only
test in the lane that downloads real weights. Mark it `release` so pytest skips it
unless --run-release is given.

The importer shape and name tests and the generate control-flow tests in the same module
keep running on pull requests. This test is also the only one that checks real-weight
accuracy (0.36 < MMLU < 0.39), so a numeric regression in the import or generation path
is no longer caught on a pull request.

The previous commit passes --run-release on the nightly and on-demand runs, so the
real-weight accuracy check still runs there, a day after a change instead of on the
pull request.

Testing: ruff check and ruff format with the pinned ruff 0.15.20, and py_compile. Ran a
stub module with the same decorators under the repo's tests/conftest.py on CPU: without
the flag the four parametrized ids are skipped with "Only run when --run-release is
given", with it they all run. Not run: the test itself, because this machine has no GPU
and its Megatron is too old to import the module, and the flag on GitHub (the previous
commit checked it with a stub test only).

Signed-off-by: Shengliang Xu <shengliangx@nvidia.com>
The gpu_vllm lane boots a tiny vLLM engine per architecture. A 64-token request
with max_num_seqs=1 needs only a few KV blocks, but the defaults size the KV pool
from gpu_memory_utilization (millions of block objects) and the scheduler token
budget to thousands of tokens.

Pass num_gpu_blocks_override=32 and max_num_batched_tokens=64 to the Qwen3-MoE,
DeepSeek-V3 and DeepSeek-V3 fp8 engines. The sparse, GLM, DeepSeek-V4 and GPT-OSS
engines (other KV layouts) and the dense Llama engine are unchanged.

Estimated saving: 1-3 s per engine boot. The engine fixtures are function-scoped
on main, so that is four boots per vLLM version: 4-12 s.

Not done: the Llama engine could go (about 28 s per vLLM version: the Qwen3-MoE
and DeepSeek engines cover its linear types, and DeepSeek's shared expert has the
merged and row-parallel ones), but test_tiny_llama_quantize now also hosts the
amax and recipe reload checks of #2627, which would have to move first.

Testing: ruff check and ruff format with the pinned ruff 0.15.20. Read the vLLM
0.20.0 and 0.30.0 sources: EngineArgs accepts both arguments, kv_cache_utils
honours the override, and the scheduler rules (max_num_batched_tokens >=
max_num_seqs, and >= max_model_len without chunked prefill) hold at
max_model_len=64 and max_num_seqs=1. The same settings on these three engines
passed the gpu_vllm jobs of both vLLM versions in draft PR #2730, on the base
before #2627; the rebased file has not run on a GPU.

Signed-off-by: Shengliang Xu <shengliangx@nvidia.com>
test_dflash_training trained 3 epochs (1,500 steps) and test_dflash_resume then trained
a fourth epoch (500 more steps). On the 1-GPU pull-request runner the recorded call
durations solve to about 33 s of start-up plus 55-73 ms per step, so the two tests spend
roughly 115-140 s and 60-70 s. The loss assertion only needs a final loss below 3.0, and
the L40 baseline is already 1.78 at step 500.

Train for 500 steps and resume for 20 more (max_steps 520). The resume still goes
through the whole restore-and-train path; only its tail is shorter. It had no assertion
besides the exit status, so it now reads trainer_state.json and checks that global_step
is 520 and that a log entry follows step 500 (the training summary the resumed run
appends).

The step count is fixed with max_steps instead of num_train_epochs because the regression
job runs on 2 GPUs off pull requests, and `accelerate launch` starts one process per
visible GPU when there is no accelerate config. An epoch is then 250 steps, so
num_train_epochs=1 would train 250 steps with the last loss logged at step 200, which may
not clear the unchanged `< 3.0` bound, and 1.04 epochs would resume for 10 steps, not 20.

logging_steps and the loss assertions (final < first, final < 3.0) are unchanged. Only the
comment on the final-loss bound now cites the step-500 baseline.

Estimated saving: about 80 s per pull-request regression job (55 s in training, 25 s in
the resume) and about 30 s on the 2-GPU job.

Risk: the 1.78 baseline at step 500 comes from a 1,500-step run. With max_steps=500 the
linear learning-rate schedule now decays to zero at step 500, so the final loss can
differ from that baseline. The bound leaves 1.2 of margin on it.

Testing: ruff check and ruff format with the pinned ruff 0.15.20, and py_compile. Read
the transformers 4.57.1 sources (max_steps overrides num_train_epochs; with the steps
save strategy a checkpoint is saved at step 500 and again at the end of training) and the
accelerate 1.10.0 launcher defaults. The recipe's training schema accepts extra keys, and
launcher examples already pass training.max_steps. Not run: pytest, because this machine
has no GPU and the test downloads Qwen3-0.6B. GPU CI has to confirm that the final loss
stays below 3.0 after 500 steps and that the resume run ends at global_step 520.

Signed-off-by: Shengliang Xu <shengliangx@nvidia.com>
The megatron_bridge conftest resets Megatron's global state before and after every test:
destroy_model_parallel, destroy_rerun_state_machine, then gc.collect() and
torch.cuda.empty_cache(). With torch, Megatron and modelopt imported the collection
walks a large heap and costs about 1.3 s per test in the recorded durations. 77 tests in
this directory are pure Python (the mlflow wiring tests and the checkpoint-path tests),
never run an example step and leave nothing to reset, so the lane pays about 100 s per
job for nothing. The megatron_bridge job runs at 68-75 minutes against its 75-minute
nightly limit.

Reset the Megatron state only for tests that request `num_gpus`, which is how every test
that runs an example step reaches a GPU in this directory. The environment restore stays
for every test: it is cheap, and the NVTE_* leak it guards against does not depend on a
GPU. Tests that run steps keep both resets, and run_example_in_process and
run_torchrun_in_process already reset at the start of each step.

A future test that runs a step without taking `num_gpus` would lose the reset around
it, though its steps would still reset at their start.

Testing: ruff check and ruff format with the pinned ruff 0.15.20, and py_compile. Ran a
throwaway pytest module (not part of this change) on CPU against the patched conftest
with the real fixture, counting calls to reset_megatron_global_state: plain tests trigger
none, tests that request `num_gpus` directly or through another fixture trigger one
before and one after, and the environment is restored in both cases. The same module
fails against the old conftest. Not run: the megatron_bridge suite itself, because
megatron.bridge and the GPUs are not available on this machine. The next GPU CI run
should show the setup and teardown time of the mlflow tests drop to near zero.

Signed-off-by: Shengliang Xu <shengliangx@nvidia.com>
Six tests in test_megatron_preprocess_data.py tokenize with gpt2 from the Hugging Face
Hub. megatron_preprocess_data loads the tokenizer once for the vocabulary size and again
in every worker, so each test makes several hub round trips, and none of them depends on
gpt2's vocabulary: they check output naming, non-empty .bin and .idx files, and that
max_tokens shortens the output. Switch them to the tiny_tokenizer_path fixture, the
checked-in byte-level tokenizer that the blend test already uses.

Three of the six read only local data (the jsonl path, the jsonl max_tokens and the gzip
tests), so the tokenizer download was their only network access. The PR history lists the
jsonl max_tokens test, with the HF split max_tokens test, among the lane's 120 s timeouts
(3 failures each); it no longer has a network dependency to time out on. The other three
(HF split max_tokens, HF resume and the HF streaming warning) still read the real HF
dataset, which is the code path they exist to cover; only their tokenizer changes.

The Qwen3 tests keep their real tokenizer: they need its chat template and EOS handling.
The blend test already uses the tiny tokenizer, and its HF split source is the path it
covers, so it is unchanged. No test ids, assertions or markers change.

Measured on a CPU host with a cold Hugging Face cache, the nine tests in the module take
38.5 s before and 24.4 s after: jsonl path 3.3 s to 0.01 s, jsonl max_tokens 3.6 s to
0.13 s, gzip 1.6 s to 0.07 s, HF split max_tokens 7.0 s to 4.9 s, HF resume 5.0 s to
3.1 s, HF streaming warning 4.4 s to 2.8 s. CI jobs start without a warm hub cache, so a
similar saving is expected.

Testing: ruff check and ruff format with the pinned ruff 0.15.20, and py_compile. Ran the
module on CPU, next to a copy of the tiny_tokenizer_path fixture from
tests/gpu_megatron/conftest.py, with the Hub reachable: 4 passed and 5 xpassed before and
after, and the collected test ids are identical. Not run: the gpu_megatron lane itself,
which needs GPUs and prebuilds CUDA extensions in its conftest.

Signed-off-by: Shengliang Xu <shengliangx@nvidia.com>
The three ONNX test files added with #2678 (test_dla_qdq_rules.py,
test_dla_scalar_constants.py and test_quantization_initializer_names.py,
68 test cases) quantize with calibration_eps=["cpu"] and run the result
on the CPUExecutionProvider, so they need no GPU. They lived under
tests/gpu/onnx and ran in the `gpu` job, where they cost 26.8 s per job
(1.5 + 5.3 + 20.0 s in the CI logs). The `gpu` job is the second-longest
lane of a PR run; the unit job runs the same tests in a few seconds on its
xdist workers.

Move them to tests/unit/onnx/quantization/ without changing their content.

Testing: ran the three files on CPU with CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES empty and the
repository's own modelopt on the path. 68 passed in 7.1 s at the old
location and 68 passed in 13.3 s from the new one (this includes the unit
conftest's session setup) on Python 3.12 with onnx 1.21.0 and
onnxruntime 1.24.4. On Python 3.10.19 with onnxruntime 1.22.0, the oldest
runtime pyproject allows, 68 passed in 15.3 s. The whole tests/unit/onnx
directory still passes (756 passed, 12 xfailed). Not run: the Windows unit
job and the GPU lane; CI should show the `gpu` job losing about 27 s.

Signed-off-by: Shengliang Xu <shengliangx@nvidia.com>
test_concat_elim_int8 and test_concat_elim_fp8 take about 22 s each in the CI logs, and
their assertions only look at where the concat_elimination pass places Q/DQ nodes.
quantize() calibrated a (1, 128, 240, 64) three-conv model on the default
[cpu, cuda:0, trt] providers. It now calibrates a 32-channel 16x16 model on the CPU.
The Convs stay above the 16-channel limit that graph_selection.py applies to INT8 and
FP8, and both modes produce the same 8 Q and 8 DQ nodes as with the default size.

build_conv_concat_model takes optional channels, height and width arguments. Their
defaults are the old values, and with a seeded RNG the default model serializes to the
same bytes as before.

Testing: ruff check and format with the pinned ruff 0.15.20. With the repository's own
modelopt on CPU, the two tests pass in 1.3 s; quantizing the default and the small model
in both modes gives Q=8, DQ=8 each time. Not run: the gpu job. From the CI timings this
should save about 40 s per job.

Signed-off-by: Shengliang Xu <shengliangx@nvidia.com>
test_benchmark.py built the 64x32x224x224 autotune model for every integration test. For
the Python-API benchmark that means filling 103 M random floats and copying about 1.2 GB
per iteration, and the five tests that benchmark a model take 31 s in the PR run
(7.9, 7.9, 5.9, 4.8 and 4.8 s in run 37703177445). None of them looks at the latency
beyond "a positive float". The fixtures now build a 1x32x32x32 model.

The two trtexec tests also pass --duration=0: trtexec measures for at least 3 s by
default whatever the iteration count, and these tests ask for two iterations.

_create_simple_conv_onnx_model takes optional batch_size and spatial_size arguments with
the old values as defaults, so the unit autotuner tests that share it build the same
model (their 161 tests pass).

Testing: ruff check and format with the pinned ruff 0.15.20, and the unit autotune tests
with the repository's own modelopt on CPU. Not run: the TensorRT tests, because there is
no TensorRT here. Estimated saving is about 20 s per gpu job; the CI run will show it.

Signed-off-by: Shengliang Xu <shengliangx@nvidia.com>
test_export_quantized_model[True] takes 44 s in the PR run (run 37703177445), mostly
inside trtexec. trtexec measures for at least 3 s per run by default whatever
--iterations says, and the workflow builds and measures the baseline plus a number of
Q/DQ schemes with it. The test only needs a latency to rank the schemes by, so pass
--duration=0 and let trtexec stop after the 100 requested iterations. That is still 100
iterations per measurement; only the extra iterations the soak added are gone. The
Python-API parameter ignores trtexec_args.

The model keeps its size: the test asserts that the best scheme carries Q/DQ nodes, which
needs a model whose latency is well above launch noise, and timing_runs stays at 100 for
the same reason.

Testing: ruff check and format with the pinned ruff 0.15.20. Not run: the test, because
there is no TensorRT here. Expected saving is 3 s per measured scheme, probably 10-20 s
per gpu job; the CI run will show it.

Signed-off-by: Shengliang Xu <shengliangx@nvidia.com>
…other

- save_dummy_dataset wrote 2500 copies of one conversation into each of the
  train and valid splits. The tiny test tokenizer turns a conversation into
  1424 tokens, so that is 1738 blocks of 2048 tokens, while the pruning
  scores read 100 blocks and the scoring and realize steps 2 each. Every
  dataloader build tokenizes the whole split, and a run builds three of
  them. The 2500 came from an older 8192-token Llama-3 setup. Use 400
  conversations (278 blocks). On a CPU the three builds plus the dataset
  save took 2.8 s per test with 2500 conversations and 0.36 s with 400. The
  scoring step checks lm_loss with a tolerance of 0.15; on random-init toy
  Llamas the validation loss moved by at most 0.02 between the two sizes,
  because the same text repeats and only the choice of blocks changes.
- calc_subblock_stats ran 12 passes (batch sizes 64, 96 and 128 times four
  dtype sets), but the MIP and the teacher memory and parameter checks only
  read the entry for the batch_size in mip.subblock_stats_args, which is 96
  in all nine configs. batch_sizes: [96] gives 4 passes (0.56 s to 0.18 s
  for a toy Llama on a CPU; MoE configs have more subblocks per pass).
- test_nas_convert_ffn_pruning ran the same mtn.convert call on the same toy
  Llama and config as test_nas_search (21.6 s in the CI logs, with its own
  2-rank spawn). Its two assertions move into test_nas_search, which checks
  them with the other rank-0 assertions after the search.

Left alone: the Nemotron-3 toy keeps its 128 experts, because shrinking it
changes EXPECTED_TEACHER_MEMORY_MIB and EXPECTED_TEACHER_NUM_PARAMS, which
need a GPU runner with mamba_ssm to regenerate.

Testing: timed the dataloader builds, the subblock-stats passes and the
loss sensitivity on CPU with the repository's own helpers and dataloader
code, collected tests/gpu/torch/puzzletron (16 tests, one fewer than
before), and ran ruff. Not run: the puzzletron tests themselves, which need
GPUs and mamba_ssm. Expect the gpu job to lose roughly 50 s (the removed
test is 22 s of it); the CI run will show the real number.

Signed-off-by: Shengliang Xu <shengliangx@nvidia.com>
…or batch probing

Each of the 11 test_unified_hf_export_and_check_safetensors params starts a
fresh hf_ptq process, 22 s per param in the CI logs. The test only checks the
structure of the exported safetensors, so three parts of that run are not
needed:

- Calibration text came from cnn_dailymail on the Hub, a network round trip
  per param. Use a local jsonl of 64 random-word texts instead, written by a
  new helper, write_calib_jsonl, in _test_utils/torch/calib_data.py. Each text
  fills the 512-token calibration window and differs from the others, so the
  activation statistics stay varied.
- hf_ptq probed for the largest calibration batch. --batch_size 64 puts the
  whole calibration set (calib_size 64) in one batch.
- hf_ptq ran model.generate() before and after quantization. --skip_generate
  skips those previews; the export is not affected.

Testing: no GPU here, so I ran the test on a CPU host through a python shim
that lets hf_ptq pass its GPU guard and passes --device cpu. 8 of the 11
params pass with the new command line, scale-equality assertions included:
fp8, nvfp4, int4_awq, w4a8_awq_beta, int8_weight_only, w4a16_nvfp4, the
Qwen3 MoE nvfp4 and the GPT-OSS fp8. The other three (nvfp4 AWQ-lite,
SVDQuant and the MSE sweep) need CUDA or Triton and did not run. The
dataloader returns one (64, 512) batch with a full attention mask from the
helper's file. Not run: the GPU job itself. From the per-param CI timings
this should save about 38 s per `gpu` job.

Signed-off-by: Shengliang Xu <shengliangx@nvidia.com>
test_gptq_e2e_flow streamed cnn_dailymail from the Hub for each of its three params, a
network round trip per param (about 6 s per job in the CI logs) and a test that can fail
on a Hub hiccup. The GPTQ calibration only needs some text, and the test has no accuracy
assertion, so it now reads 8 texts from the local jsonl that write_calib_jsonl (added with
the unified-export change) creates.

Testing: ruff check and format with the pinned ruff 0.15.20. On a CPU host the GPTQ flow
completes on that jsonl for the FP8 and INT4 blockwise configs; the NVFP4 config needs
CUDA. Not run: the GPU test itself. Expected saving is a few seconds per gpu job.

Signed-off-by: Shengliang Xu <shengliangx@nvidia.com>
@shengliangxu

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/ok to test 954ac75

@shengliangxu shengliangxu changed the title [Draft, not for merge] GPU CI speed-up series (runtime measurement) [OMNIML-6177] [Draft, not for merge] GPU CI speed-up series (runtime measurement) Oct 18, 2026
@shengliangxu
shengliangxu deleted the shengliangx/ci-speed branch October 19, 2026 06:10
shengliangxu added a commit that referenced this pull request Oct 20, 2026
…#2845)

### What does this PR do?

Type of change: CI (unit-test runtime)

The unit `linux` job gates every GPU and example workflow (their pr-gate
jobs wait for it), and its tests are CPU-bound but run serially. This
runs them under pytest-xdist on the runner's four vCPUs. The `linux` job
and the multi-version matrix get `PYTEST_ADDOPTS=-n 4 --dist loadfile`
and `OMP_NUM_THREADS=1`: one worker per vCPU (`-n auto` counts physical
cores), whole files per worker, and one thread per worker, because with
torch's default threads the runner is oversubscribed and slower than
serial (1,481 s and 41 failures in my local runs).

What else changes so the suite passes under xdist:

- `noxfile.py`: the second pytest process that runs the `manual` tests
clears `PYTEST_ADDOPTS`, so it stays serial. Those tests leak global
state into each other, and a worker would run them in some order.
- `tests/_test_utils/torch/quantization/onnx_export.py`: `TEST_MODELS`
was a set of classes, whose iteration order differs between processes,
so workers collected different test ids. It is a tuple now.
- `test_hf_dflash2.py::test_overfits_a_single_batch` takes about 30 s on
one thread on main (53 s before #2836 halved its loop to 30 steps; that
version hit the 60 s default call timeout in the nightly on main on
2026-10-20). Its tiny model is built in bf16, and a CPU without native
bf16 support emulates bf16 matmuls (about 0.9 s per step, 0.1 s in
float32). The model is float32 now, which takes the test to about 4 s on
one thread, so it needs no timeout override; the loop and both
assertions are unchanged.
- `test_full_algorithms_vision.py::test_search_constraints` assigned
`ConstraintsFunc._get_true_latency` and never restored it. Serial runs
never noticed, because `test_evaluate_constraints.py` sorts first. Under
xdist a worker can get the files in the other order, and the Python 3.10
and 3.14 legs failed two tests after it. It uses `monkeypatch` now.
- `tests/conftest.py`: the unit per-test cap is 120 s on every platform.
`test_dist.py::test_data_parallel` takes 8-15 s serial and 25-35 s with
four workers sharing four vCPUs, and went over 60 s on the slowest
runner. A hung test is still reported, after 2 min instead of 1.

Why: on current main the `linux` job has a median of 12.9 min (27 runs
of other PRs since #2823 merged), and a pull request's GPU run waits a
median 14.5 min for it (125 runs of 33 PRs).

### Time improvement (measured in CI)

Unit `linux` job: serial on current main (27 runs of other PRs since
#2823 merged) against the runs of this series with `-n 4`.

| | before (serial) | with this PR |
|---|---|---|
| pytest | 630 s median (355-709 s) | 479 s in this PR's own run; 294 s
median over the 11 runs of the series (166-479 s) |
| whole job | 12.9 min median (8.8-14.8) | 10.9 min in this PR's own
run; 7.0 min median over the 11 runs (5.0-10.9) |
| unit workflow: `linux`, then the multi-version and Windows legs | 24.1
min median (12 runs) | 17.2 min median (the 7 runs that ran every leg) |

- The runs of #2846 and above also carry the sysmon core of #2846 (about
22% off the unit suite on its own, measured locally), so the 294 s
median is xdist plus sysmon; this PR's own run is the xdist-only number.
It was the slowest of the 11 (166-479 s for nearly the same tests:
runner variance), so it understates the gain. Locally on 4 CPUs with
coverage as in CI, the base took 825 s serial and 332-344 s with this
configuration (3 runs).
- The GPU, Example and Regression workflows hold their jobs until the
unit `linux` check is done (`pr-gate / wait-checks`, at least 5 min).
That wait is a median 14.5 min (IQR 12.9-15.8) on 125 GPU runs of 33 PRs
since #2823; in this PR's own GPU run it was 9.7 min (its `linux` job
took 10.9 min). With a 7 min `linux` job instead of 12.9 min, a GPU run
requested right after a push starts about 6 min earlier. That figure is
derived from the job times: the later runs of the series were requested
after their unit check had finished (the wait sat at its 5.2 min floor
in 7 of the 9 GPU runs), so they cannot show it.

Method: every PR of the series has its own CI run, so "before" is the
run of the PR(s) below that lack the change and "after" the runs that
carry it. Times come from the job logs (`--durations`, or the gap
between consecutive result lines). Where runner speed matters, the tests
that no PR of the series touches scale each run, and the raw and the
scaled medians are both shown. One test varies by 15-30% from run to run
on its own, so smaller differences are not evidence.

### Usage

Nothing user-facing. Locally: `OMP_NUM_THREADS=1 pytest tests/unit -n 4
--dist loadfile`.

### Testing

- Full `tests/unit` on 4 CPUs with coverage as in CI, on the base before
#2823: serial 825 s, this configuration 332-344 s in three repeated runs
(4,724 passed, 0 failed).
- This PR's own CI run: the `linux` job took 10.9 min (479 s of pytest)
against the 12.9 min serial median; see the time section above for the
later runs of the series.
- `tests/unit` without `puzzletron` (it needs `hydra`, absent from my
local environment) in reversed and in shuffled file order shows no other
order dependence; `test_search_constraints` followed by
`test_evaluate_constraints.py` in one process failed before the fix and
passes after it.
- `test_hf_dflash2.py` (33 tests) on one CPU thread: 13.5 s, of which
`test_overfits_a_single_batch` takes about 4 s (30 s with the bf16 model
on main; the next slowest test takes about 1.3 s).
- Pre-commit (all hooks) passes.

### Before your PR is "*Ready for review*"

Make sure you read and follow [Contributor
guidelines](https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md)
and your commits are signed (`git commit -s -S`).

Make sure you read and follow the [Security Best
Practices](https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer/blob/main/SECURITY.md#security-coding-practices-for-contributors)
(e.g. avoiding hardcoded `trust_remote_code=True`, `torch.load(...,
weights_only=False)`, `pickle`, etc.).

- Is this change backward compatible?: N/A (CI and tests)
- If you copied code from any other sources or added a new PIP
dependency, did you follow guidance in `CONTRIBUTING.md`: no new
dependency (`pytest-xdist` is already in the `dev-test` extra on main)
- Did you write any new necessary tests?: N/A (two existing tests fixed
or sped up so they pass under xdist)
- Did you update
[Changelog](https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer/blob/main/CHANGELOG.rst)?:
N/A (CI and tests)
- Did you get Claude approval on this PR?: N/A (optional, not run)

### Additional Information

Slice 1 of 11 of the GPU-CI speed-up work, split out of the reference
draft #2730 (not for merge; it holds the whole series with its
measurements). Merge in order; each PR stands on its own and passes CI
without the later ones.

1. #2845 [OMNIML-6178] [1/11] Run the unit tests in parallel with
pytest-xdist **(this PR)**
2. #2846 [OMNIML-6178] [2/11] Use the sysmon coverage core in CI
3. #2847 [OMNIML-6179] [3/11] Run manual-marked tests on nightly and
on-demand GPU runs
4. #2848 [OMNIML-6181] [4/11] Give gpu_megatron's slow cold starts more
time
5. #2849 [OMNIML-6179] [5/11] Make the ONNX tests cheaper: CPU-only ones
to the unit lane, small models
6. #2850 [OMNIML-6179] [6/11] Use local tokenizers and calibration text
in GPU tests, shrink puzzletron data
7. #2851 [OMNIML-6180] [7/11] Trim the llm_eval, llm_qat, EAGLE and
megatron_bridge example tests
8. #2852 [OMNIML-6180] [8/11] Trim the DFlash regression test
9. #2853 [OMNIML-6180] [9/11] Trim the torch_onnx example lane
10. #2854 [OMNIML-6181] [10/11] Make the distributed worker pool fail
fast when a worker dies
11. #2855 [OMNIML-6181] [11/11] Share one Megatron worker pool across
the gpu_megatron modules


<!-- This is an auto-generated comment: release notes by coderabbit.ai
-->
## Summary by CodeRabbit

* **Tests**
* Improved consistency and performance of automated test runs across
platforms and Python configurations through controlled parallel
execution.
* Preserved predictable model-check ordering and isolated temporary test
changes.
* Increased unit-test time limits to better support process-spawning and
slower runs.
* Improved test reliability by explicitly controlling numeric precision
and ensuring serial execution for manual CPU tests.
  * No end-user functionality or product behavior changed.
<!-- end of auto-generated comment: release notes by coderabbit.ai -->

---------

Signed-off-by: Shengliang Xu <shengliangx@nvidia.com>
shengliangxu added a commit that referenced this pull request Oct 21, 2026
### What does this PR do?

Type of change: CI (test runtime)

Sets `COVERAGE_CORE=sysmon` on the unit `linux` job, `gpu_tests.yml` and
`regression_tests.yml`. Python 3.12 defaults to coverage's C tracer,
which slows every line of Python run under it, and every lane starts
coverage in each spawned worker and subprocess through
`COVERAGE_PROCESS_START`, so import-heavy start-ups pay for it (the 76 s
Megatron pool start, the 22 s hf_ptq processes of the unified-export
tests, the puzzletron spawns, the vLLM engine core). sysmon records the
same lines through `sys.monitoring`. The example runner is left to
#2727, which makes the same change there. On a Python older than 3.12
coverage warns and keeps its default core, so a lane that turned out to
run an older Python would be slower, not broken (the gpu and
gpu_megatron logs show 3.12).

### Time improvement (measured in CI)

pytest time of each lane in the run of #2845 (the base of this PR) and
in this PR's run, one run each:

| lane | #2845 | this PR | change |
|---|---|---|---|
| gpu | 2,093 s | 1,289 s | -38% |
| gpu_megatron | 2,240 s | 1,212 s | -46% |
| gpu_vllm v0.20.0 | 204 s | 170 s | -17% |
| gpu_vllm v0.30.0 | 426 s | 328 s | -23% |
| regression | 366 s | 268 s | -27% |
| unit `linux` (xdist) | 479 s | 305 s | -36% |

Workflow wall time: GPU tests 59.2 -> 39.6 min, Regression 21.3 -> 15.2
min.

- **How much of that is this PR.** Two single runs of the same code
differ by 15-30% on their own: the eight example lanes that run over 100
s, which this PR does not touch, moved by -4% to -31% (llm_sparsity
+38%) between the same two runs. The deterministic part is the Megatron
worker-pool start, the setup of the first test of each gpu_megatron
module: 75-77 s in each of 14 modules before (all setups of 12 s or more
add up to 1,365 s) and 22-27 s after (575 s), which is 790 s of the
lane's 1,028 s. Locally the unit suite takes 825 s with the C tracer,
640 s with sysmon and 572 s without coverage (4 CPUs, serial).
- **A `coverage.xml`-only report change was dropped from this PR.** The
runs above are of its earlier head, which also had it. It showed no CI
effect: the pytest summary line came 1-4 s after the last test in the
#2845 runs, which still wrote the html report, and 0-3 s in this PR's
runs (median 1.1 s over the 82 lane runs of the series), so the table is
the sysmon core's. It would only have saved developers' local runs
(about 25 s per pytest session).

Method: every PR of the series has its own CI run, so "before" is the
run of the PR(s) below that lack the change and "after" the runs that
carry it. Times come from the job logs (`--durations`, or the gap
between consecutive result lines). Where runner speed matters, the tests
that no PR of the series touches scale each run, and the raw and the
scaled medians are both shown. One test varies by 15-30% from run to run
on its own, so smaller differences are not evidence.

### Usage

Nothing user-facing.

### Testing

Measured on this tree (tests/unit on 4 CPUs serial: 572 s without
coverage, 825 s with the C tracer, 640 s with sysmon; `import
modelopt.torch.quantization.extensions`: 17.1 s native, 23.6 s with the
C tracer, 18.3 s with sysmon, with the same 362 files and 13,821
executed lines in the spawned child's data file; one TinyLlama fp8 plus
TRT-LLM deploy test: 64.8 s without coverage, 103.3 s with the C tracer,
70.5 s with sysmon, identical covered lines). Pre-commit and actionlint
pass. The CI runs of the series are the check on real runners (time
section above).

### Before your PR is "*Ready for review*"

Make sure you read and follow [Contributor
guidelines](https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md)
and your commits are signed (`git commit -s -S`).

Make sure you read and follow the [Security Best
Practices](https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer/blob/main/SECURITY.md#security-coding-practices-for-contributors)
(e.g. avoiding hardcoded `trust_remote_code=True`, `torch.load(...,
weights_only=False)`, `pickle`, etc.).

- Is this change backward compatible?: N/A (CI and tests)
- If you copied code from any other sources or added a new PIP
dependency, did you follow guidance in `CONTRIBUTING.md`: no new
dependency
- Did you write any new necessary tests?: N/A (CI configuration)
- Did you update
[Changelog](https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer/blob/main/CHANGELOG.rst)?:
N/A (CI and tests)
- Did you get Claude approval on this PR?: N/A (optional, not run)

### Additional Information

Slice 2 of 11 of the GPU-CI speed-up work, split out of the reference
draft #2730 (not for merge; it holds the whole series with its
measurements). Slices 5, 8 and 10 (#2849, #2852, #2854) target main and
merge independently; the other open slices form a stack and merge
bottom-up. Each PR stands on its own and passes CI without the later
ones.

1. #2845 [OMNIML-6178] [1/11] Run the unit tests in parallel with
pytest-xdist (merged)
2. #2846 [OMNIML-6178] [2/11] Use the sysmon coverage core in CI **(this
PR)**
3. #2847 [OMNIML-6179] [3/11] Run manual-marked tests on nightly and
on-demand GPU runs
4. #2848 [OMNIML-6181] [4/11] Give gpu_megatron's slow cold starts more
time
5. #2849 [OMNIML-6179] [5/11] Make the ONNX tests cheaper: CPU-only ones
to the unit lane, small models (targets main)
6. #2850 [OMNIML-6179] [6/11] Use local tokenizers and calibration text
in GPU tests, shrink puzzletron data
7. #2851 [OMNIML-6180] [7/11] Trim the llm_eval, llm_qat, EAGLE and
megatron_bridge example tests
8. #2852 [OMNIML-6180] [8/11] Trim the DFlash regression test (targets
main)
9. #2853 [OMNIML-6180] [9/11] Trim the torch_onnx example lane
10. #2854 [OMNIML-6181] [10/11] Make the distributed worker pool fail
fast when a worker dies (targets main)
11. #2855 [OMNIML-6181] [11/11] Share one Megatron worker pool across
the gpu_megatron modules


<!-- This is an auto-generated comment: release notes by coderabbit.ai
-->
## Summary by CodeRabbit

* **Tests**
* Updated coverage collection for GPU, regression, and Linux unit-test
runs to use Python’s monitoring-based coverage core on supported Python
3.12+ environments.
* This configuration reduces overhead during coverage-enabled test
execution, particularly for import-heavy worker processes.
* No changes to application functionality or public interfaces are
included.
<!-- end of auto-generated comment: release notes by coderabbit.ai -->

Signed-off-by: Shengliang Xu <shengliangx@nvidia.com>
shengliangxu added a commit that referenced this pull request Oct 21, 2026
### What does this PR do?

Type of change: CI (test runtime, tests only)

**The DFlash regression trains 500 steps and resumes for 20.**
`test_dflash_training` trained 3 epochs (1,500 steps) and
`test_dflash_resume` then a fourth epoch (500 more). On the 1-GPU PR
runner the recorded durations solve to about 33 s of start-up plus 55-73
ms per step, so the two tests spend roughly 115-140 s and 60-70 s. The
loss assertion only needs a final loss below 3.0, and the L40 baseline
is already 1.78 at step 500. The resume still goes through the whole
restore-and-train path, and it now reads `trainer_state.json` and checks
that `global_step` is 520 and that a log entry follows step 500 (it had
no assertion besides the exit status). The step count is fixed with
`max_steps` rather than `num_train_epochs`, because the regression job
runs on 2 GPUs off pull requests, where `accelerate launch` starts one
process per visible GPU and an epoch is 250 steps. Measured: 81 s per PR
regression job. Risk: the 1.78 baseline comes from a 1,500-step run, and
with `max_steps=500` the linear schedule decays to zero at step 500, so
the final loss can differ from it; the bound leaves 1.2 of margin.

### Time improvement (measured in CI)

| lane | | before | after | change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| regression | `test_dflash_training` | 118 s | 62 s | -56 s |
| regression | `test_dflash_resume` | 56 s | 31 s | -25 s |
| regression | **lane pytest** | 268 s | 170 s | **-98 s (-37%)** |

DFlash: before = #2846, #2848 and #2850 (#2849 ran on a slower runner),
after = #2852, #2854 and #2855 (median; the lane took 168 and 170 s on
the normal-speed runners and 243 s on the slow one).

On its own, on main (2026-10-21): this PR's regression job against
#2854's, which has the same base and lacks this change. The unchanged
DFlash tests took the same time within about 3% (equally fast runners).
`test_dflash_training` takes 144 s before and 83 s after,
`test_dflash_resume` 73 s and 47 s, and the lane's pytest time goes from
374 s to 291 s (-83 s). The lane passes (5 passed), so the loss stays
below 3.0 after 500 steps and the resume ends at `global_step` 520.

A vLLM change that sized the KV pool of the Qwen3-MoE and DeepSeek
engines down was dropped from this PR. The runs above are of its earlier
head, which had it: the engines it touched booted 5-6 s per vLLM version
faster than the ones it left alone, in line with the 1-3 s per boot
expected and below the boot-to-boot noise (the unchanged Llama engine
took 84-99 s on v0.30.0), so it saved nothing measurable.

Method: every PR of the series has its own CI run, so "before" is the
run of the PR(s) below that lack the change and "after" the runs that
carry it. Times come from the job logs (`--durations`, or the gap
between consecutive result lines). Where runner speed matters, the tests
that no PR of the series touches scale each run, and the raw and the
scaled medians are both shown. One test varies by 15-30% from run to run
on its own, so smaller differences are not evidence.

### Usage

Nothing user-facing.

### Testing

I read the transformers 4.57.1 sources (`max_steps` overrides
`num_train_epochs`; with the steps save strategy a checkpoint is saved
at step 500 and again at the end) and the accelerate 1.10.0 launcher
defaults. Not run on a GPU here: this PR's regression job is the check,
in particular that the final DFlash loss stays below 3.0 after 500 steps
and that the resume ends at `global_step` 520. Pre-commit passes.

### Before your PR is "*Ready for review*"

Make sure you read and follow [Contributor
guidelines](https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md)
and your commits are signed (`git commit -s -S`).

Make sure you read and follow the [Security Best
Practices](https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer/blob/main/SECURITY.md#security-coding-practices-for-contributors)
(e.g. avoiding hardcoded `trust_remote_code=True`, `torch.load(...,
weights_only=False)`, `pickle`, etc.).

- Is this change backward compatible?: N/A (CI and tests)
- If you copied code from any other sources or added a new PIP
dependency, did you follow guidance in `CONTRIBUTING.md`: no new
dependency
- Did you write any new necessary tests?: N/A (existing tests made
cheaper; the DFlash resume test now also asserts on its result)
- Did you update
[Changelog](https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer/blob/main/CHANGELOG.rst)?:
N/A (CI and tests)
- Did you get Claude approval on this PR?: N/A (optional, not run)

### Additional Information

Slice 8 of 11 of the GPU-CI speed-up work, split out of the reference
draft #2730 (not for merge; it holds the whole series with its
measurements). Slices 5, 8 and 10 (#2849, #2852, #2854) target main and
merge independently; the other open slices form a stack and merge
bottom-up. Each PR stands on its own and passes CI without the later
ones. The times above are from the series' CI runs before 2026-10-21,
when all slices formed one linear stack; a PR number in a method note
names that PR's run from then.

1. #2845 [OMNIML-6178] [1/11] Run the unit tests in parallel with
pytest-xdist (merged)
2. #2846 [OMNIML-6178] [2/11] Use the sysmon coverage core in CI
3. #2847 [OMNIML-6179] [3/11] Run manual-marked tests on nightly and
on-demand GPU runs
4. #2848 [OMNIML-6181] [4/11] Give gpu_megatron's slow cold starts more
time
5. #2849 [OMNIML-6179] [5/11] Make the ONNX tests cheaper: CPU-only ones
to the unit lane, small models (targets main)
6. #2850 [OMNIML-6179] [6/11] Use local tokenizers and calibration text
in GPU tests, shrink puzzletron data
7. #2851 [OMNIML-6180] [7/11] Trim the llm_eval, llm_qat, EAGLE and
megatron_bridge example tests
8. #2852 [OMNIML-6180] [8/11] Trim the DFlash regression test (targets
main) **(this PR)**
9. #2853 [OMNIML-6180] [9/11] Trim the torch_onnx example lane
10. #2854 [OMNIML-6181] [10/11] Make the distributed worker pool fail
fast when a worker dies (targets main)
11. #2855 [OMNIML-6181] [11/11] Share one Megatron worker pool across
the gpu_megatron modules


<!-- This is an auto-generated comment: release notes by coderabbit.ai
-->
## Summary by CodeRabbit

* **Tests**
* Updated regression coverage to use fixed training limits of 500 steps,
with resumed runs extending to step 520.
* Improved checkpoint and resume validation to confirm the final
training step and expected post-resume progress logs.
* Updated loss expectations to reflect the result at the 500-step
training milestone.
<!-- end of auto-generated comment: release notes by coderabbit.ai -->

Signed-off-by: Shengliang Xu <shengliangx@nvidia.com>
shengliangxu added a commit that referenced this pull request Oct 21, 2026
… a worker dies (#2854)

### What does this PR do?

Type of change: CI (test reliability); changes `tests/_test_utils` only

A worker that exits without reporting (an illegal memory access aborts
the process, or an OOM kill) was only noticed when the result timeout
ran out: 600 s for a job, 120 s for the start. Until then the parent
waits on a queue nobody writes to, and the other workers wait in the
job, typically in a collective, for their dead peer. A start that fails,
for example on a bad backend, also waited out the whole ready timeout
and left the workers it had spawned behind.

`DistributedWorkerPool` now checks the workers' liveness once a second
while it waits. A dead worker is noticed within a second and fails the
run, or the start, naming its rank and exit code (about 4 s after the
death, which includes the 3 s the pool already waits for the other
workers' stack dumps). If another rank had already reported an
exception, its traceback is kept in that error. The pool is marked
`broken` and the other workers are killed with their stacks printed, the
way a hung job or a failed rank already ends in main (`get_live_pool`
then hands out a new pool). A start that fails kills the workers it had
spawned. `ready_timeout` is a constructor argument (120 s by default, as
before), so a test can reach the start timeout without waiting for it.

This builds on the hang handling of #2832 (`broken`, `get_live_pool`,
the stack dump) and does not change it.

### Time improvement (measured locally, not in CI)

No lane time changes in a passing run, and no worker died in this
series' CI runs, so CI cannot show it. What changes is how long a dead
worker costs. CPU, gloo, two ranks, the pool test's own job (rank 0
exits with code 13, rank 1 keeps waiting), seconds from `pool.run(...)`
(or the constructor) to the exception, on main and on this PR:

| scenario | before | after |
|---|---|---|
| a rank dies mid-job, its peer is stuck in a wait, `job_timeout` 30 s
(as in the test) | 33.1 s, `queue.Empty` | 4.0 s, `Worker process(es)
died (rank, exit code): [(0, 13)]` |
| the same with the default `job_timeout` of 600 s | 603.1 s,
`queue.Empty` | 4.0 s |
| the same, the peer waits in `dist.barrier()` | 33.3 s (the 30 s
`failure_grace`) | 4.3 s |
| the start fails (`backend="not-a-backend"`), default `ready_timeout`
of 120 s | 120.1 s, `queue.Empty` | 5.0 s |
| rank 0 dies at the start, rank 1 hangs in the rendezvous | 120.0 s,
one live worker left behind | 5.0 s, no worker left |

The after time is the 1 s liveness poll plus the 3 s the pool waits for
the other workers' stack dumps before it kills them. At the production
timeouts (120 s for the start, 600 s for a job) a dead worker therefore
costs 4-5 s instead of 2-10 minutes of a CI job: the test fails at once
and the next one gets a fresh pool from `get_live_pool`, instead of
waiting for a queue nobody writes to.

Cost: the four new cases add about 27 s to the `gpu` lane: the pool test
module takes 43 s in this PR's run and 17 s in #2849's run, which has
the same base (main) and lacks them (both from the job logs).

Method: a small script (not part of this PR) builds the pool the way the
repo's test does and times each scenario with `time.monotonic()` around
the call, once per commit, on a CPU host.

### Usage

```python
pool = DistributedWorkerPool(world_size=2, backend="nccl", ready_timeout=300)  # new argument, default 120
```

### Testing

`tests/gpu/torch/utils/test_distributed_worker_pool.py` runs the pool
with gloo on CPU (it extends main's three tests; the new cases take 24 s
together):

- a rank that exits with code 13 while its peer waits fails the run in
about 5 s and kills the peer. The test sets `job_timeout = 30`, so a
regression fails there with `queue.Empty` instead of at the test's own
cap. With the liveness check disabled it fails exactly that way.
- the same test with a second job: rank 0 raises an exception and rank 1
exits with code 13 two seconds later, after rank 0 has reported. The
error carries the exit code and rank 0's traceback. Without the change
it carries only the exit code, and the case fails.
- a start that fails raises and leaves no worker, both when every worker
dies (a bad backend) and when the wait times out while they are still
starting (`ready_timeout=0.01`). With `_abort()` removed from the
failed-start path, the second case fails ("workers left behind"); the
first passes either way, since all its workers die on their own, so it
covers the liveness wiring only.

Main's three tests (as reworked by #2836) still pass, and the three new
cases fail against main's unmodified pool. Pre-commit passes. This PR is
rebased onto #2836, which also edited the pool (reporting a failed rank
before its teardown, retiring a pool after any failed job); the changes
are in different places. The default start timeout stays 120 s here;
#2848 raises it to 300 s, so whichever of the two merges second resolves
that one line.

### Before your PR is "*Ready for review*"

Make sure you read and follow [Contributor
guidelines](https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md)
and your commits are signed (`git commit -s -S`).

Make sure you read and follow the [Security Best
Practices](https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer/blob/main/SECURITY.md#security-coding-practices-for-contributors)
(e.g. avoiding hardcoded `trust_remote_code=True`, `torch.load(...,
weights_only=False)`, `pickle`, etc.).

- Is this change backward compatible?: N/A (CI and tests)
- If you copied code from any other sources or added a new PIP
dependency, did you follow guidance in `CONTRIBUTING.md`: no new
dependency
- Did you write any new necessary tests?: ✅ 2 test functions (4 cases)
in `tests/gpu/torch/utils/test_distributed_worker_pool.py`, run on CPU
with gloo; each fails without its fix
- Did you update
[Changelog](https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer/blob/main/CHANGELOG.rst)?:
N/A (CI and tests)
- Did you get Claude approval on this PR?: N/A (optional, not run)

### Additional Information

Slice 10 of 11 of the GPU-CI speed-up work, split out of the reference
draft #2730 (not for merge; it holds the whole series with its
measurements). Slices 5, 8 and 10 (#2849, #2852, #2854) target main and
merge independently; the other open slices form a stack and merge
bottom-up. Each PR stands on its own and passes CI without the later
ones. The times above are from the series' CI runs before 2026-10-21,
when all slices formed one linear stack; a PR number in a method note
names that PR's run from then.

1. #2845 [OMNIML-6178] [1/11] Run the unit tests in parallel with
pytest-xdist (merged)
2. #2846 [OMNIML-6178] [2/11] Use the sysmon coverage core in CI
3. #2847 [OMNIML-6179] [3/11] Run manual-marked tests on nightly and
on-demand GPU runs
4. #2848 [OMNIML-6181] [4/11] Give gpu_megatron's slow cold starts more
time
5. #2849 [OMNIML-6179] [5/11] Make the ONNX tests cheaper: CPU-only ones
to the unit lane, small models (targets main)
6. #2850 [OMNIML-6179] [6/11] Use local tokenizers and calibration text
in GPU tests, shrink puzzletron data
7. #2851 [OMNIML-6180] [7/11] Trim the llm_eval, llm_qat, EAGLE and
megatron_bridge example tests
8. #2852 [OMNIML-6180] [8/11] Trim the DFlash regression test (targets
main)
9. #2853 [OMNIML-6180] [9/11] Trim the torch_onnx example lane
10. #2854 [OMNIML-6181] [10/11] Make the distributed worker pool fail
fast when a worker dies (targets main) **(this PR)**
11. #2855 [OMNIML-6181] [11/11] Share one Megatron worker pool across
the gpu_megatron modules


<!-- This is an auto-generated comment: release notes by coderabbit.ai
-->
## Summary by CodeRabbit

* **Bug Fixes**
* Distributed worker pools now detect workers that exit during startup
or job execution and report failures instead of waiting for the full job
timeout.
* Worker startup supports a configurable readiness timeout with prompt
timeout handling.
* Failed or timed-out initialization now cleans up spawned worker
processes, preventing orphaned processes and leaving the pool in a
consistent state.
  * Job result retrieval now responds promptly when a worker fails.
<!-- end of auto-generated comment: release notes by coderabbit.ai -->

---------

Signed-off-by: Shengliang Xu <shengliangx@nvidia.com>
shengliangxu added a commit that referenced this pull request Oct 21, 2026
…e unit lane, small models (#2849)

### What does this PR do?

Type of change: CI (test runtime, tests only)

Four changes to the ONNX tests of the `gpu` job:

- **Three CPU-only files move to the unit lane**
(`tests/gpu/onnx/quantization/` to `tests/unit/onnx/quantization/`,
content unchanged): `test_dla_qdq_rules.py`,
`test_dla_scalar_constants.py` and
`test_quantization_initializer_names.py` (added with #2678, 68 cases).
They quantize with `calibration_eps=["cpu"]` and run the result on the
CPUExecutionProvider, so they need no GPU, but they cost 26.8 s per
`gpu` job (1.5 + 5.3 + 20.0 s in the CI logs); the unit job runs them in
a few seconds on its xdist workers.
- **`test_concat_elim` calibrates a 32-channel 16x16 model on the CPU**
instead of the (1, 128, 240, 64) three-conv model on `[cpu, cuda:0,
trt]`: the two tests took about 22 s each on the base (15 s together in
the series' CI runs with the sysmon core of #2846), and their assertions
only look at where the pass places Q/DQ nodes. The convs stay above the
16-channel limit of `graph_selection.py`, and both modes produce the
same 8 Q and 8 DQ nodes as with the default size.
`build_conv_concat_model` takes optional `channels`, `height` and
`width` (defaults: the old values; with a seeded RNG the default model
serializes to the same bytes).
- **The autotune benchmark tests build a 1x32x32x32 model** instead of
the 64x32x224x224 one (103 M random floats and about 1.2 GB copied per
iteration; the five tests took 31 s, and none looks at the latency
beyond "a positive float"). The two trtexec tests also pass
`--duration=0`, because trtexec measures for at least 3 s whatever the
iteration count. `_create_simple_conv_onnx_model` takes optional
`batch_size` and `spatial_size` with the old defaults, so the unit
autotuner tests that share it build the same model (their 161 tests
pass).
- **The autotune workflow test passes `--duration=0` to trtexec**:
`test_export_quantized_model[True]` took 44 s, mostly inside trtexec's 3
s minimum measurement per scheme. It still runs the 100 requested
iterations per measurement; the model and `timing_runs` keep their size,
because the test asserts the best scheme carries Q/DQ nodes.

### Time improvement (measured in CI)

gpu lane, time per file from the per-test timestamps; before = the runs
of #2846-#2848, after = this PR's run and the 4 runs above it (median):

| | before | after | change |
|---|---|---|---|
| three CPU-only files (68 cases), moved to the unit lane | 7.4 s | 0 |
-7.4 s |
| `test_concat_elim.py` | 15.2 s | 1.2 s | -14.0 s |
| `autotune/test_benchmark.py` (36 cases) | 37.1 s | 21.0 s | -16.0 s |
| `autotune/test_workflow.py` | 44.4 s | 28.5 s | -15.9 s |
| **sum** | 104 s | 51 s | **-53 s per gpu job** (-59 s after speed
scaling) |

The whole `tests/gpu/onnx` directory takes 110-120 s before and 58 s in
the three later runs on normal-speed runners (81 s and 74 s in #2849 and
#2850, which ran on 1.3x slower runners). The 68 moved cases cost the
unit job 7-13 s of CPU, spread over four xdist workers (below the unit
job's run-to-run spread). My first estimate of the gpu saving (97-107 s)
came from base runs without sysmon, where these files were slower.

On its own, on main as of 07:06 UTC on 2026-10-21 (before #2846 added
the sysmon core): the `gpu` lane's `tests/gpu/onnx` directory takes 145
s in #2854's run, which has the same base and lacks this change, and 66
s in this PR's run (-79 s). The runners were equally fast (median ratio
0.99 over the 17 untouched files above 20 s). `test_concat_elim.py` goes
from 35 s to 2.7 s, `autotune/test_benchmark.py` from 39 s to 24 s and
`autotune/test_workflow.py` from 46 s to 28 s, and the three moved files
cost 14 s there. Times are the gaps between consecutive result lines in
the job logs.

Method: every PR of the series has its own CI run, so "before" is the
run of the PR(s) below that lack the change and "after" the runs that
carry it. Times come from the job logs (`--durations`, or the gap
between consecutive result lines). Where runner speed matters, the tests
that no PR of the series touches scale each run, and the raw and the
scaled medians are both shown. One test varies by 15-30% from run to run
on its own, so smaller differences are not evidence.

### Usage

Nothing user-facing.

### Testing

- The three moved files: 68 passed in 7.1 s at the old location and in
13.3 s from the new one (this includes the unit conftest's session
setup) on Python 3.12 with onnx 1.21.0 and onnxruntime 1.24.4, and 68
passed in 15.3 s on Python 3.10.19 with onnxruntime 1.22.0, the oldest
runtime `pyproject` allows. The whole `tests/unit/onnx` directory passes
(756 passed, 12 xfailed).
- `test_concat_elim`: the two tests pass in 1.3 s on CPU; quantizing the
default and the small model in both modes gives Q=8, DQ=8.
- The shared helper changes: the unit autotune tests (161) pass.
- Not run: the TensorRT tests, because there is no TensorRT here; this
PR's `gpu` job is the check. Pre-commit passes.

### Before your PR is "*Ready for review*"

Make sure you read and follow [Contributor
guidelines](https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md)
and your commits are signed (`git commit -s -S`).

Make sure you read and follow the [Security Best
Practices](https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer/blob/main/SECURITY.md#security-coding-practices-for-contributors)
(e.g. avoiding hardcoded `trust_remote_code=True`, `torch.load(...,
weights_only=False)`, `pickle`, etc.).

- Is this change backward compatible?: N/A (CI and tests)
- If you copied code from any other sources or added a new PIP
dependency, did you follow guidance in `CONTRIBUTING.md`: no new
dependency
- Did you write any new necessary tests?: N/A (existing tests moved or
made smaller; the 68 moved cases are unchanged)
- Did you update
[Changelog](https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer/blob/main/CHANGELOG.rst)?:
N/A (CI and tests)
- Did you get Claude approval on this PR?: N/A (optional, not run)

### Additional Information

Slice 5 of 11 of the GPU-CI speed-up work, split out of the reference
draft #2730 (not for merge; it holds the whole series with its
measurements). Slices 1, 2, 8 and 10 (#2845, #2846, #2852, #2854) have
merged. Slice 5 (#2849) targets main and merges independently; the other
open slices form a stack and merge bottom-up. Each PR stands on its own
and passes CI without the later ones. The times above are from the
series' CI runs before 2026-10-21, when all slices formed one linear
stack; a PR number in a method note names that PR's run from then.

1. #2845 [OMNIML-6178] [1/11] Run the unit tests in parallel with
pytest-xdist (merged)
2. #2846 [OMNIML-6178] [2/11] Use the sysmon coverage core in CI
(merged)
3. #2847 [OMNIML-6179] [3/11] Run manual-marked tests on nightly and
on-demand GPU runs
4. #2848 [OMNIML-6181] [4/11] Give gpu_megatron's slow cold starts more
time
5. #2849 [OMNIML-6179] [5/11] Make the ONNX tests cheaper: CPU-only ones
to the unit lane, small models (targets main) **(this PR)**
6. #2850 [OMNIML-6179] [6/11] Use local tokenizers and calibration text
in GPU tests, shrink puzzletron data
7. #2851 [OMNIML-6180] [7/11] Trim the llm_eval, llm_qat, EAGLE and
megatron_bridge example tests
8. #2852 [OMNIML-6180] [8/11] Trim the DFlash regression test (merged)
9. #2853 [OMNIML-6180] [9/11] Trim the torch_onnx example lane
10. #2854 [OMNIML-6181] [10/11] Make the distributed worker pool fail
fast when a worker dies (merged)
11. #2855 [OMNIML-6181] [11/11] Share one Megatron worker pool across
the gpu_megatron modules


<!-- This is an auto-generated comment: release notes by coderabbit.ai
-->
<!-- coderabbit-ai-generated:v1 -->

## Summary by CodeRabbit

* **Tests**
* Added configurable dimensions to ONNX test models and smaller inputs
for selected scenarios.
* Streamlined GPU benchmark timing while retaining configured
measurement runs.
* Updated INT8 and FP8 concat-elimination coverage to use CPU
calibration and smaller model shapes.
* Reorganized DLA and quantization checks as unit tests instead of GPU
tests.
<!-- end of auto-generated comment: release notes by coderabbit.ai -->

---------

Signed-off-by: Shengliang Xu <shengliangx@nvidia.com>
shengliangxu added a commit that referenced this pull request Oct 21, 2026
### What does this PR do?

Type of change: CI (test runtime); the only non-test file is
`examples/torch_onnx/torch_quant_to_onnx.py`

Three cuts to the torch_onnx example lane:

- **No DataLoader workers in the calibration loaders.**
`load_calibration_data` builds its DataLoaders over lists of tensors
that are already on the GPU, so the four workers load nothing, and since
the script forced the `spawn` start method (CUDA cannot be used in
forked workers), every loader pass spawned four processes that
re-imported torch, timm and modelopt and received the dataset over CUDA
IPC: about 14 s per pass and about 300 s per torch_onnx CI job. Both
loaders use `num_workers=0`, and the module-level
`mp.set_start_method("spawn", force=True)` is dropped, which also stops
importing the script from changing the start method of the importing
process (two tests import it inside the pytest process). Nothing else in
the script uses multiprocessing. The `--evaluate` path keeps the
CPU-only DataLoader workers of `examples/onnx_ptq/evaluation.py`, now
under the default start method, exactly as in the `onnx_ptq` example
that calls the same function.
- **swinv2 int8, mxfp8 and auto are skipped on pull requests.**
`swinv2_tiny` runs all five formats on top of `swin_tiny`, which already
covers every format through the same exporter and TensorRT path; swinv2
only adds its cosine attention and post-norm blocks. On PRs
(`GITHUB_REF` under `refs/heads/pull-request/`) fp8 and nvfp4 still run
and exercise those blocks; scheduled and local runs keep every
combination, and test ids are unchanged. `swinv2_tiny[auto]` alone
averages 121 s over 304 CI runs; the three skipped cases cost about 110
s of every PR run.
- **`build_trt_engine` runs trtexec for one iteration.** It let trtexec
run its default benchmark after the build (200 ms warm-up, then at least
3 s and 10 iterations) and discarded the output. `--warmUp=0
--duration=0 --iterations=1` still executes the engine once and removes
about 3 s per engine, roughly 40 s per lane run. `--trt_build` users see
no difference besides it returning sooner.

### Time improvement (measured in CI)

torch_onnx lane; before = #2846, #2848 and #2850 (875-880 s; #2849 ran
on a slower runner: 1,060 s), after = #2853, #2854 and #2855 (452-463
s).

| | before | after | change |
|---|---|---|---|
| **lane pytest** | 877 s | 458 s | **-419 s (-48%)** |
| of which: the three swinv2 cases skipped on PRs | 143 s | 0 | -143 s |
| of which: the cases that still run (no DataLoader workers, trtexec
runs once) | | | -277 s |
| whole job | 18.6 min | 12.2 min | -6.4 min |

This lane repeats to within 1% (875-880 s before, 452-463 s after), so
it is the cleanest measurement of the series. For example `swin_tiny`
with auto quantization goes from 66 s to 24 s and `vit_tiny` with auto
from 60 s to 17 s.

Method: every PR of the series has its own CI run, so "before" is the
run of the PR(s) below that lack the change and "after" the runs that
carry it. Times come from the job logs (`--durations`, or the gap
between consecutive result lines). Where runner speed matters, the tests
that no PR of the series touches scale each run, and the raw and the
scaled medians are both shown. One test varies by 15-30% from run to run
on its own, so smaller differences are not evidence.

### Usage

No API change. The skip is keyed on `GITHUB_REF`, so a local run keeps
every combination.

### Testing

`py_compile`, ruff 0.15.20 and `pytest --collect-only` on CPU (24 tests,
ids unchanged). With the example command stubbed,
`GITHUB_REF=refs/heads/pull-request/123` skips exactly swinv2 int8,
mxfp8 and auto, and any other ref skips none; the two in-process mapping
tests that import the script pass on CPU, and `build_trt_engine` passes
the three flags to a fake trtexec. Not run: the lane itself (it needs a
GPU, TensorRT and model downloads) and the flags against a real trtexec,
so this PR's torch_onnx job is the check. Pre-commit passes. #2685
(open) also edits this example; the changes touch different lines.

### Before your PR is "*Ready for review*"

Make sure you read and follow [Contributor
guidelines](https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md)
and your commits are signed (`git commit -s -S`).

Make sure you read and follow the [Security Best
Practices](https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer/blob/main/SECURITY.md#security-coding-practices-for-contributors)
(e.g. avoiding hardcoded `trust_remote_code=True`, `torch.load(...,
weights_only=False)`, `pickle`, etc.).

- Is this change backward compatible?: N/A (CI and tests)
- If you copied code from any other sources or added a new PIP
dependency, did you follow guidance in `CONTRIBUTING.md`: no new
dependency
- Did you write any new necessary tests?: N/A (existing tests; the
PR-only skip keeps test ids)
- Did you update
[Changelog](https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer/blob/main/CHANGELOG.rst)?:
N/A (CI and tests)
- Did you get Claude approval on this PR?: N/A (optional, not run)

### Additional Information

Slice 9 of 11 of the GPU-CI speed-up work, split out of the reference
draft #2730 (not for merge; it holds the whole series with its
measurements). Slices 1, 2, 5, 8 and 10 (#2845, #2846, #2849, #2852,
#2854) have merged. The remaining slices (#2847, #2848, #2850, #2851,
#2853, #2855) are independent PRs on main: each applies to main on its
own, and merging all six onto main in different orders gives the same
tree. The times above are from the series' CI runs before 2026-10-21,
when all slices formed one linear stack; a PR number in a method note
names that PR's run from then.

1. #2845 [OMNIML-6178] [1/11] Run the unit tests in parallel with
pytest-xdist (merged)
2. #2846 [OMNIML-6178] [2/11] Use the sysmon coverage core in CI
(merged)
3. #2847 [OMNIML-6179] [3/11] Run manual-marked tests on nightly and
on-demand GPU runs
4. #2848 [OMNIML-6181] [4/11] Give gpu_megatron's slow cold starts more
time
5. #2849 [OMNIML-6179] [5/11] Make the ONNX tests cheaper: CPU-only ones
to the unit lane, small models (merged)
6. #2850 [OMNIML-6179] [6/11] Use local tokenizers and calibration text
in GPU tests, shrink puzzletron data
7. #2851 [OMNIML-6180] [7/11] Trim the llm_eval, llm_qat, EAGLE and
megatron_bridge example tests
8. #2852 [OMNIML-6180] [8/11] Trim the DFlash regression test (merged)
9. #2853 [OMNIML-6180] [9/11] Trim the torch_onnx example lane **(this
PR)**
10. #2854 [OMNIML-6181] [10/11] Make the distributed worker pool fail
fast when a worker dies (merged)
11. #2855 [OMNIML-6181] [11/11] Share one Megatron worker pool across
the gpu_megatron modules


<!-- This is an auto-generated comment: release notes by coderabbit.ai
-->
## Summary by CodeRabbit

* **Updates**
* Quantization examples now use zero-worker calibration loading with
device-resident samples.
* TensorRT example builds perform a single inference iteration without
warmup or timing.
* **Tests**
* Pull-request validation skips selected SwinV2 Tiny formats, while
scheduled validation continues to cover them.
* Pull-request detection uses the repository’s CI reference environment.
* **Impact**
* These changes affect example workflows and validation coverage only;
no application user-facing functionality is changed.
<!-- end of auto-generated comment: release notes by coderabbit.ai -->

---------

Signed-off-by: Shengliang Xu <shengliangx@nvidia.com>
shengliangxu added a commit that referenced this pull request Oct 21, 2026
… tests, shrink puzzletron data (#2850)

### What does this PR do?

Type of change: CI (test runtime and reliability, tests only)

Less data and fewer Hub round trips in four GPU-lane tests:

- **Six `preprocess_data` tests use the tiny local tokenizer**
(`tests/gpu_megatron`). They tokenized with `gpt2` from the Hub, and
`megatron_preprocess_data` loads the tokenizer once for the vocabulary
size and again in every worker, so each test made several round trips;
none depends on gpt2's vocabulary. They use the checked-in byte-level
`tiny_tokenizer_path` fixture that the blend test already uses. Three of
the six read only local data, so the tokenizer download was their only
network access (the jsonl `max_tokens` test is among the lane's 120 s
timeouts, 3 failures). Measured on a CPU host with a cold Hub cache, the
11 tests of the module take 42.8 and 44.0 s before and 35.0 and 36.1 s
after (two runs each; the nine tests of the earlier base took 38.5 s and
24.4 s, and 37 s and 23 s in CI). The Qwen3 tests keep their real
tokenizer (chat template and EOS handling).
- **The puzzletron test data shrinks, and a duplicate NAS test is folded
into another.** `save_dummy_dataset` wrote 2500 copies of one
conversation into each split (1738 blocks of 2048 tokens), while the
pruning scores read 100 blocks and the later steps 2 each; 400
conversations (278 blocks) take the three dataloader builds plus the
save from 2.8 s to 0.36 s per test, and the validation loss moved by at
most 0.02 on random-init toy Llamas (the scoring tolerance is 0.15).
`calc_subblock_stats` ran 12 passes where only the entry for
`batch_size` 96 is read: `batch_sizes: [96]` runs 4.
`test_nas_convert_ffn_pruning` ran the same `mtn.convert` on the same
toy Llama and config as `test_nas_search` (21.6 s with its own 2-rank
spawn); its two assertions move into `test_nas_search`.
- **The unified HF export test calibrates on local text, with no
previews or batch probing.** Each of its 11 params starts a fresh
`hf_ptq` process (22 s per param). It now reads a local jsonl of 64
random-word texts (new helper `write_calib_jsonl`, shared through the
session-wide `calib_jsonl` fixture in `tests/gpu/conftest.py`, which
fails the session if a test writes into its directory) instead of
`cnn_dailymail` from the Hub, passes `--batch_size 64` (the whole
calibration set in one batch instead of probing for the largest batch)
and `--skip_generate`. The test only checks the structure of the
exported safetensors.
- **The GPTQ end-to-end test reads 8 texts from the same local jsonl**
instead of streaming `cnn_dailymail` for each of its three params (and a
test that could fail on a Hub hiccup).

### Time improvement (measured in CI)

Time of the changed tests; before = the runs of #2846-#2849, after =
#2850, #2852, #2854 and #2855 (median). #2849 and #2850 ran on runners
1.26x and 1.29x slower for every test, so the change after speed scaling
is in brackets.

| lane | tests | before | after | change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| gpu | `tests/gpu/torch/puzzletron` (18 tests, 17 after the folded NAS
test) | 290 s | 202 s | -88 s (-70 s, -26%) |
| gpu | unified HF export, 11 params | 228 s | 153 s | -75 s (-67 s,
-30%) |
| gpu | GPTQ end-to-end, 3 params | 7.2 s | 1.1 s | -6 s |
| gpu_megatron | `preprocess_data` module | 37 s | 23 s | -14 s (-10 s,
-27%) |

So about 170 s (144 s after scaling) off the gpu job and 14 s off the
gpu_megatron job. This PR's own run was on a slow runner (puzzletron 310
s); the three later runs agree with each other (199-203 s). My first
estimates were 50 s, 38 s and 6 s for the first three rows.

Method: every PR of the series has its own CI run, so "before" is the
run of the PR(s) below that lack the change and "after" the runs that
carry it. Times come from the job logs (`--durations`, or the gap
between consecutive result lines). Where runner speed matters, the tests
that no PR of the series touches scale each run, and the raw and the
scaled medians are both shown. One test varies by 15-30% from run to run
on its own, so smaller differences are not evidence.

### Usage

Nothing user-facing.

### Testing

- `preprocess_data`: ran the module on CPU next to a copy of the
`tiny_tokenizer_path` fixture with the Hub reachable: 11 passed before
and after (main has dropped the HF xfail marks), with identical test
ids.
- `calib_jsonl`: with the real fixture and the repo's
`get_dataset_dataloader` on a CPU host, the 8 samples read from the
shared 64-text file equal those of the old 8-text file, and two reads
leave the directory unmodified (the fixture's teardown check passes).
`--setup-plan` shows the unified export test using the conftest fixture;
the GPTQ and export tests themselves need a GPU.
- puzzletron: timed the dataloader builds, the subblock-stats passes and
the loss sensitivity on CPU with the repo's own helpers; collected
`tests/gpu/torch/puzzletron` (16 tests, one fewer than before). The
Nemotron-3 toy keeps its 128 experts, because shrinking it changes
`EXPECTED_TEACHER_MEMORY_MIB` and `EXPECTED_TEACHER_NUM_PARAMS`, which
need a GPU runner with `mamba_ssm` to regenerate.
- unified export: no GPU here, so I ran the test on a CPU host through a
shim that lets `hf_ptq` pass its GPU guard and passes `--device cpu`. 8
of the 11 params pass with the new command line, scale-equality
assertions included (fp8, nvfp4, int4_awq, w4a8_awq_beta,
int8_weight_only, w4a16_nvfp4, the Qwen3 MoE nvfp4 and the GPT-OSS fp8);
the other three need CUDA or Triton. GPTQ: the flow completes on the
jsonl for the FP8 and INT4 blockwise configs (NVFP4 needs CUDA).
- Not run: the GPU tests themselves; this PR's gpu and gpu_megatron jobs
are the check. Pre-commit passes.

### Before your PR is "*Ready for review*"

Make sure you read and follow [Contributor
guidelines](https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md)
and your commits are signed (`git commit -s -S`).

Make sure you read and follow the [Security Best
Practices](https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer/blob/main/SECURITY.md#security-coding-practices-for-contributors)
(e.g. avoiding hardcoded `trust_remote_code=True`, `torch.load(...,
weights_only=False)`, `pickle`, etc.).

- Is this change backward compatible?: N/A (CI and tests)
- If you copied code from any other sources or added a new PIP
dependency, did you follow guidance in `CONTRIBUTING.md`: no new
dependency
- Did you write any new necessary tests?: ✅ one small helper,
`write_calib_jsonl` (`tests/_test_utils/torch/calib_data.py`), and one
session fixture, `calib_jsonl` (`tests/gpu/conftest.py`), used by two
tests; no new test functions
- Did you update
[Changelog](https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer/blob/main/CHANGELOG.rst)?:
N/A (CI and tests)
- Did you get Claude approval on this PR?: N/A (optional, not run)

### Additional Information

Slice 6 of 11 of the GPU-CI speed-up work, split out of the reference
draft #2730 (not for merge; it holds the whole series with its
measurements). Slices 1, 2, 5, 8, 9 and 10 (#2845, #2846, #2849, #2852,
#2853, #2854) have merged. The remaining slices (#2847, #2848, #2850,
#2851, #2855) are independent PRs on main: each applies to main on its
own, and merging all of them onto main in different orders gives the
same tree. The times above are from the series' CI runs before
2026-10-21, when all slices formed one linear stack; a PR number in a
method note names that PR's run from then.

1. #2845 [OMNIML-6178] [1/11] Run the unit tests in parallel with
pytest-xdist (merged)
2. #2846 [OMNIML-6178] [2/11] Use the sysmon coverage core in CI
(merged)
3. #2847 [OMNIML-6179] [3/11] Run manual-marked tests on nightly and
on-demand GPU runs
4. #2848 [OMNIML-6181] [4/11] Give gpu_megatron's slow cold starts more
time
5. #2849 [OMNIML-6179] [5/11] Make the ONNX tests cheaper: CPU-only ones
to the unit lane, small models (merged)
6. #2850 [OMNIML-6179] [6/11] Use local tokenizers and calibration text
in GPU tests, shrink puzzletron data **(this PR)**
7. #2851 [OMNIML-6180] [7/11] Trim the llm_eval, llm_qat, EAGLE and
megatron_bridge example tests
8. #2852 [OMNIML-6180] [8/11] Trim the DFlash regression test (merged)
9. #2853 [OMNIML-6180] [9/11] Trim the torch_onnx example lane (merged)
10. #2854 [OMNIML-6181] [10/11] Make the distributed worker pool fail
fast when a worker dies (merged)
11. #2855 [OMNIML-6181] [11/11] Share one Megatron worker pool across
the gpu_megatron modules


<!-- This is an auto-generated comment: release notes by coderabbit.ai
-->
<!-- coderabbit-ai-generated:v1 -->

## Summary by CodeRabbit

* **Tests**
* Updated model export and quantization checks to use locally generated
calibration data.
  * Standardized preprocessing tests on a small local tokenizer.
  * Restricted model analysis configurations to a batch size of 96.
  * Reduced sample dataset sizes for pruning-related checks.
* Strengthened conversion verification by checking generated pruning
outputs.
* Removed the FFN pruning conversion test while retaining
attention-pruning coverage.
<!-- end of auto-generated comment: release notes by coderabbit.ai -->

---------

Signed-off-by: Shengliang Xu <shengliangx@nvidia.com>
shengliangxu added a commit that referenced this pull request Oct 21, 2026
…ridge example tests (#2851)

### What does this PR do?

Type of change: CI (test runtime, tests only)

Five cuts to the example lanes, each with its reasoning:

- **`test_lm_eval_hf` evaluates one MMLU subtask.** It ran `--tasks mmlu
--limit 0.1`: the 57-subtask group, about 5.6k loglikelihood requests,
on a tiny Qwen3 whose `max_position_embeddings` is 32, so its runtime is
dominated by loading one HF dataset config per subtask (over 331 CI
runs: min 198.9 s, median 212.5 s). It runs `mmlu_abstract_algebra` (100
test documents, 5-shot) through the same `lm_eval_hf.py` path and the
same accuracy gate (exactly one task, lower bound 0.1 unchanged; the
label distribution of that split is 22/26/31/21, so even a model that
always predicts one letter scores at least 0.21).
- **The llm_qat QAT and QAD tests quantize once per module.**
`test_qwen3_qat_nvfp4` (3 backends), `test_qwen3_qad_nvfp4` (2) and
`test_qwen3_qlora_nvfp4` ran 6 `quantize.py` and 12 cold
tokenized-dataset builds per module (104-121 s each, qlora 169 s). A
module-scoped fixture runs `quantize.py` once (guarded by
`assert_unmodified_tree`, like the other shared tiny-model fixtures) and
all quantize and train calls share one dataset cache; the qlora test
keeps its own PTQ because it passes `--compress True`.
- **The 1-GPU EAGLE3 compile smoke test skips the Triton GEMM autotune**
(`TORCHINDUCTOR_MAX_AUTOTUNE_GEMM_BACKENDS=ATEN`, the mechanism
`test_diffusers.py` already uses). `test_llama_eagle3[1-False]` takes
175.5 s against 40.6 s for `[1-True]` (the same flow without compile),
about 135 s of it `torch.compile` benchmarking Triton GEMM templates for
a draft model that is one tiny decoder layer. The mode stays
`max-autotune`, and the shortcut applies only when the run has one GPU:
`[2-False]` and any run on more GPUs (the nightly) keep the full
autotune.
- **The duplicate tiny-llama offline EAGLE3 training test is dropped**
(`test_offline_eagle3_training[tinyllama]`, 34.9 s per job, almost all
launcher start-up). `test_offline_eagle_training` already runs that mode
on the same model with hidden states from `compute_hidden_states_hf.py`,
and the FakeBaseModel case keeps the synthetic path. The one thing the
dropped case covered that stage 2 did not, the collator truncating
dumps, moves there (`training_seq_len=16`, so 28-token dumps are
truncated), and the collator is also unit tested on CPU.
- **`megatron_bridge` tests that use no GPU skip the Megatron state
reset.** The conftest resets Megatron's global state around every test
(`destroy_model_parallel`, `gc.collect()`, `empty_cache`), about 1.3 s
per test; 77 tests in the directory are pure Python (the mlflow wiring
and checkpoint-path tests) and leave nothing to reset (the 82 tests that
took under 3 s each add up to 118 s in the series' runs before this PR
and to 0.3 s after it). The reset now runs only for tests that request
`num_gpus`; the environment restore stays for every test. The job runs
at 68-75 minutes against its 75-minute nightly limit.

### Time improvement (measured in CI)

Example lanes, pytest time of the changed tests and of the lane; before
= #2846 (plus #2848 where its runner was as fast), after = #2851, #2854
and #2855 (median). #2849 and #2850 ran on runners 1.3-1.5x slower for
every test and are left out of the before column.

| lane | | before | after | change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| llm_eval | `test_lm_eval_hf` | 130 s | 19 s | -111 s |
| llm_eval | **lane** | 332 s | 212 s | **-120 s (-36%)** |
| llm_qat | six QAT, QAD and QLoRA tests (call time) | 563 s | 428 s |
-135 s (the shared quantize adds 20 s to the first test's setup) |
| llm_qat | **lane** | 591 s | 475 s | **-116 s (-20%)** |
| speculative_decoding | `test_llama_eagle3[1-False]` | 131 s | 87 s |
-44 s |
| speculative_decoding | dropped
`test_offline_eagle3_training[tinyllama]` | 20 s | - | -20 s |
| speculative_decoding | **lane** | 407 s | 341 s | **-66 s (-16%)** |
| megatron | the 82 megatron_bridge tests that use no GPU (the state
reset) | 118 s | 0.3 s | -118 s |
| megatron | **lane** | 583 s | 460 s | **-123 s (-21%)** |

- A `mmlu_limit=1` change for `test_qwen3_eval_fp8` was dropped from
this PR. The runs above are of its earlier head, which had it: the test
took 175-246 s in all 7 runs, before and after (187 s against 176 s on
comparable runners), so the CI history it was based on (mean 723.7 s,
2026-09-25 to 10-09) is not reproduced by the current lane and the
change saved nothing measurable. The llm_eval lane figure above is
`test_lm_eval_hf`'s.
- That is 425 s of lane time per PR run. The Example workflow ends with
its slowest lane, torch_onnx (18.1-18.8 min of job time) until #2853, so
the gain reaches the workflow's wall time only with that PR.

Method: every PR of the series has its own CI run, so "before" is the
run of the PR(s) below that lack the change and "after" the runs that
carry it. Times come from the job logs (`--durations`, or the gap
between consecutive result lines). Where runner speed matters, the tests
that no PR of the series touches scale each run, and the raw and the
scaled medians are both shown. One test varies by 15-30% from run to run
on its own, so smaller differences are not evidence.

### Usage

Nothing user-facing.

### Testing

- llm_eval: ran the test's command on CPU with the tiny Qwen3 it builds:
old configuration 223.4 s, `mmlu/acc` 0.2343; new 22.4-24.0 s,
`mmlu_abstract_algebra/acc` 0.27, gate passes.
- llm_qat: with `run_example_command` faked, `quantize.py` runs 6 -> 2
times and cold dataset builds go 12 -> 2; real `quantize.py` and
`train.py` (QAT, then QAD from the checkpoint) ran on CPU with the int4
and fp8 recipes (NVFP4 needs CUDA) and left the checkpoint unmodified.
- EAGLE: stage 1 and 2 of the offline flow ran on CPU with
`training_seq_len` 64 and 16 (the collator pads 28 -> 64 and truncates
28 -> 16); with `run_example_command` faked, only `[1-False]` on one GPU
gets the autotune variable (that case on 2 GPUs and every other case
keep the full autotune) and the only removed test id is
`test_offline_eagle3_training[tinyllama]`.
- megatron_bridge: a throwaway pytest module (not in this PR) against
the patched conftest counts the resets: plain tests trigger none, tests
that request `num_gpus` trigger one before and one after; it fails
against the old conftest.
- Not run: the example lanes themselves (they need GPUs, TRT-LLM and
model downloads), so the accuracy with CUDA bf16 numerics, the savings
and the autotune variable are checked by this PR's example jobs.
Pre-commit passes.
- `trust_remote_code=True` in `test_offline_eagle3_training` is not new:
it is the line on main (the Kimi and MiniMax repos it loads need remote
code), and this PR only renames its variable after dropping the
tinyllama case.

### Before your PR is "*Ready for review*"

Make sure you read and follow [Contributor
guidelines](https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md)
and your commits are signed (`git commit -s -S`).

Make sure you read and follow the [Security Best
Practices](https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer/blob/main/SECURITY.md#security-coding-practices-for-contributors)
(e.g. avoiding hardcoded `trust_remote_code=True`, `torch.load(...,
weights_only=False)`, `pickle`, etc.).

- Is this change backward compatible?: N/A (CI and tests)
- If you copied code from any other sources or added a new PIP
dependency, did you follow guidance in `CONTRIBUTING.md`: no new
dependency
- Did you write any new necessary tests?: N/A (existing tests made
cheaper; one duplicate test dropped, see the description)
- Did you update
[Changelog](https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer/blob/main/CHANGELOG.rst)?:
N/A (CI and tests)
- Did you get Claude approval on this PR?: N/A (optional, not run)

### Additional Information

Slice 7 of 11 of the GPU-CI speed-up work, split out of the reference
draft #2730 (not for merge; it holds the whole series with its
measurements). Slices 1, 2, 5, 8, 9 and 10 (#2845, #2846, #2849, #2852,
#2853, #2854) have merged. The remaining slices (#2847, #2848, #2850,
#2851, #2855) are independent PRs on main: each applies to main on its
own, and merging all of them onto main in different orders gives the
same tree. The times above are from the series' CI runs before
2026-10-21, when all slices formed one linear stack; a PR number in a
method note names that PR's run from then.

1. #2845 [OMNIML-6178] [1/11] Run the unit tests in parallel with
pytest-xdist (merged)
2. #2846 [OMNIML-6178] [2/11] Use the sysmon coverage core in CI
(merged)
3. #2847 [OMNIML-6179] [3/11] Run manual-marked tests on nightly and
on-demand GPU runs
4. #2848 [OMNIML-6181] [4/11] Give gpu_megatron's slow cold starts more
time
5. #2849 [OMNIML-6179] [5/11] Make the ONNX tests cheaper: CPU-only ones
to the unit lane, small models (merged)
6. #2850 [OMNIML-6179] [6/11] Use local tokenizers and calibration text
in GPU tests, shrink puzzletron data
7. #2851 [OMNIML-6180] [7/11] Trim the llm_eval, llm_qat, EAGLE and
megatron_bridge example tests **(this PR)**
8. #2852 [OMNIML-6180] [8/11] Trim the DFlash regression test (merged)
9. #2853 [OMNIML-6180] [9/11] Trim the torch_onnx example lane (merged)
10. #2854 [OMNIML-6181] [10/11] Make the distributed worker pool fail
fast when a worker dies (merged)
11. #2855 [OMNIML-6181] [11/11] Share one Megatron worker pool across
the gpu_megatron modules


<!-- This is an auto-generated comment: release notes by coderabbit.ai
-->
<!-- coderabbit-ai-generated:v1 -->

## Summary by CodeRabbit

* **Tests**
* Focused language-model evaluation coverage on the abstract algebra
task while retaining five-shot evaluation.
* Streamlined quantization-aware training scenarios by reusing cached
datasets and checkpoints, reducing repeated setup.
* Improved Megatron test isolation by applying state cleanup only where
needed.
* Refined EAGLE test configurations for single-GPU runs, remote model
coverage, and offline training with shorter sequence lengths.
<!-- end of auto-generated comment: release notes by coderabbit.ai -->

---------

Signed-off-by: Shengliang Xu <shengliangx@nvidia.com>
shengliangxu added a commit that referenced this pull request Oct 21, 2026
…2848)

### What does this PR do?

Type of change: CI (test reliability)

`DistributedWorkerPool` waited 120 s for its workers to import the
Megatron/TE/modelopt stack and report ready. The start takes 75-77 s in
14 modules of the PR run I read and has a p90 of 94-98 s, so slow hosts
time out and the whole module errors: 15 jobs (903 job-minutes) in two
weeks, 15 of the 63 failed gpu_megatron PR jobs in that period. It waits
300 s.

An earlier version of this PR also gave `test_mamba_search_space` more
time. Main's #2836 has since set its cap to 150 s, and that holds: in 58
gpu_megatron jobs from the last six days the test took 64-132 s (median
73 s, none above 150 s), so nothing is left to change there.

### Time improvement (measured in CI)

None in a passing run: this PR raises one limit that only failing runs
reach.

- In the 9 gpu_megatron runs of this series, the worker-pool start took
75-77 s before #2846 and 18-27 s after it, against the old 120 s ready
timeout. No run came near the limit, so the series cannot show the
failures this PR prevents (the sysmon core of #2846 also takes most
starts out of reach of the old ready timeout).
- What it prevents, from the CI history of the two weeks before the
series: the ready timeout failed 15 jobs (903 job-minutes), 15 of the 63
failed gpu_megatron PR jobs. Each failed job costs the author a re-run
of the lane, 20-45 min of job time in this series.

Method: every PR of the series has its own CI run, so "before" is the
run of the PR(s) below that lack the change and "after" the runs that
carry it. Times come from the job logs (`--durations`, or the gap
between consecutive result lines). Where runner speed matters, the tests
that no PR of the series touches scale each run, and the raw and the
scaled medians are both shown. One test varies by 15-30% from run to run
on its own, so smaller differences are not evidence.

### Usage

Nothing user-facing.

### Testing

Pre-commit passes. Not run on a GPU here: the effect is on cold-cache
runs, so this PR's gpu_megatron job can only show that nothing
regresses.

### Before your PR is "*Ready for review*"

Make sure you read and follow [Contributor
guidelines](https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md)
and your commits are signed (`git commit -s -S`).

Make sure you read and follow the [Security Best
Practices](https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer/blob/main/SECURITY.md#security-coding-practices-for-contributors)
(e.g. avoiding hardcoded `trust_remote_code=True`, `torch.load(...,
weights_only=False)`, `pickle`, etc.).

- Is this change backward compatible?: N/A (CI and tests)
- If you copied code from any other sources or added a new PIP
dependency, did you follow guidance in `CONTRIBUTING.md`: no new
dependency
- Did you write any new necessary tests?: N/A (a timeout in the shared
test utilities)
- Did you update
[Changelog](https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer/blob/main/CHANGELOG.rst)?:
N/A (CI and tests)
- Did you get Claude approval on this PR?: N/A (optional, not run)

### Additional Information

Slice 4 of 11 of the GPU-CI speed-up work, split out of the reference
draft #2730 (not for merge; it holds the whole series with its
measurements). Slices 1, 2, 5, 8, 9 and 10 (#2845, #2846, #2849, #2852,
#2853, #2854) have merged. The remaining slices (#2847, #2848, #2850,
#2851, #2855) are independent PRs on main: each applies to main on its
own, and merging all of them onto main in different orders gives the
same tree. The times above are from the series' CI runs before
2026-10-21, when all slices formed one linear stack; a PR number in a
method note names that PR's run from then.

1. #2845 [OMNIML-6178] [1/11] Run the unit tests in parallel with
pytest-xdist (merged)
2. #2846 [OMNIML-6178] [2/11] Use the sysmon coverage core in CI
(merged)
3. #2847 [OMNIML-6179] [3/11] Run manual-marked tests on nightly and
on-demand GPU runs
4. #2848 [OMNIML-6181] [4/11] Give gpu_megatron's slow cold starts more
time **(this PR)**
5. #2849 [OMNIML-6179] [5/11] Make the ONNX tests cheaper: CPU-only ones
to the unit lane, small models (merged)
6. #2850 [OMNIML-6179] [6/11] Use local tokenizers and calibration text
in GPU tests, shrink puzzletron data
7. #2851 [OMNIML-6180] [7/11] Trim the llm_eval, llm_qat, EAGLE and
megatron_bridge example tests
8. #2852 [OMNIML-6180] [8/11] Trim the DFlash regression test (merged)
9. #2853 [OMNIML-6180] [9/11] Trim the torch_onnx example lane (merged)
10. #2854 [OMNIML-6181] [10/11] Make the distributed worker pool fail
fast when a worker dies (merged)
11. #2855 [OMNIML-6181] [11/11] Share one Megatron worker pool across
the gpu_megatron modules


<!-- This is an auto-generated comment: release notes by coderabbit.ai
-->
<!-- coderabbit-ai-generated:v1 -->

## Summary by CodeRabbit

* **Bug Fixes**
* Increased the wait time for distributed worker initialization to
improve reliability during startup.
<!-- end of auto-generated comment: release notes by coderabbit.ai -->

Signed-off-by: Shengliang Xu <shengliangx@nvidia.com>
shengliangxu added a commit that referenced this pull request Oct 21, 2026
…egatron modules (#2855)

### What does this PR do?

Type of change: CI (test runtime); changes `tests/gpu_megatron` and
`tests/_test_utils` only

Each of the 15 gpu_megatron modules that use `dist_workers` started its
own worker pool: about 19 of the lane's 36 minutes. Fourteen logged
module starts took 75-77 s each (the GDN module 179 s: 76 s pool plus
103 s Triton JIT), plus 3.6-10 s of shutdown, and the start has a p90 of
94-98 s.

The 76 s is not distributed init (an in-process init takes 0.1 s): the
spawned child unpickles `megatron_worker_teardown` by reference, which
imports the heavy `tests/gpu_megatron/conftest.py` (transformers,
megatron.core, all of modelopt and its plugins, TE) before it reaches
`init_process_group`. The same import chain takes pytest itself 89 s to
start here against 17 s in the gpu lane, whose session-scoped pool, with
a light teardown function, starts in 1.7 s. Module scope was chosen when
a spawn cost about 10 s ("avoids cross-test state contamination"); the
git history shows no contamination incident, and the cost has grown
7.6x.

`_pool_cache` is now session-scoped, so the pools are keyed by world
size and shared by every module. The `dist_workers` fixtures stay
function-scoped and get their pool from `get_live_pool`, which replaces
a pool that a hang killed. What isolation the module scope gave is kept
explicitly:

- `megatron_worker_teardown`, after every job: synchronizes CUDA first
(an asynchronous CUDA error then surfaces in the test that caused it),
destroys Megatron's model-parallel state as before, and now also the
process groups it leaves behind (about 20 NCCL groups per dispatch, each
with a communicator and a watchdog thread; `test_megatron.py` alone
dispatches about 110 times). A pool that lives through the whole session
needs it more than a per-module pool did.
- `_reset_shared_pools`, an autouse module-scoped fixture: when a module
starts, it resets the process-global torch settings that helpers like
`set_seed` change (cudnn and TF32 flags, deterministic algorithms, RNG)
to what a fresh worker starts with (`reset_worker_state`; the workers
record those settings right after they start), in the pools that already
exist. It is not part of `_get_pool`, which runs once per test and would
add a job to each.
- `get_live_pool` and the pool's abort handling: a job that times out,
is interrupted, loses a worker **or fails on any rank** retires the
pool, and the next test gets a fresh one, for the cost of one pool
start. `DistributedWorkerPool.run` has retired a pool after a plain
failed job since #2836, which matters more with a session-wide pool: a
CUDA error such as the known Blackwell illegal memory access is sticky,
the workers stay poisoned, and every later test would fail with it.
`_reset_shared_pools` no longer lets a failed reset error the module's
tests (they may not use a pool at all).

Measured saving on top of #2846's sysmon core: 216 s of the gpu_megatron
lane (1,038 s to 822 s; see the time section). Without sysmon a pool
start costs 76 s, and the saving would be about 17 min (an estimate; the
series was not run that way). One pool start instead of 15 also means
fewer chances to hit the ready timeout.

### Time improvement (measured in CI)

gpu_megatron lane, pytest time:

| main (#2845) | + #2846 | slices 1-10 (the earlier base) | + this PR |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2,240 s | 1,212 s | 1,038 s (1,029 s in #2852) | **822 s** |

This PR on its own: 1,038 s -> 822 s, **-216 s (-21%)**, against the two
earlier runs (#2852: 1,029 s, #2854: 1,038 s). This PR's run was on a
slightly slower runner (the heavy `call` phases of the tests it does not
change took 6% longer than in #2854), so the gain is not runner luck.
The setups of 12 s or more, which are the pool starts and the
module-level compiles, fall from 16 (489 s) to 3 (246 s): the pool
starts once instead of in each of 14 modules, and what remains is the
extension build (124 s), the GDN module's Triton JIT (105 s) and one 18
s pool start.

With sysmon (#2846) a pool start takes 18-27 s instead of 75-77 s, so
each avoided start saves less than the 76 s this PR was designed around.
Without #2846 the saving would be 14 starts of 76 s plus the 3.6-10 s
shutdowns, about 17 min; that is an estimate, because the series was
never run without sysmon on this PR.

This is one CI run of the final head: the two runs before it failed on
the sticky CUDA error and on the missing `gc.collect()` described below.

Method: every PR of the series has its own CI run, so "before" is the
run of the PR(s) below that lack the change and "after" the runs that
carry it. Times come from the job logs (`--durations`, or the gap
between consecutive result lines). Where runner speed matters, the tests
that no PR of the series touches scale each run, and the raw and the
scaled medians are both shown. One test varies by 15-30% from run to run
on its own, so smaller differences are not evidence.

### Usage

Nothing user-facing (test fixtures).

### Testing

- `reset_worker_state` has a gloo test next to the other pool tests (it
runs on CPU): flags and seed changed in a job are back at their
spawn-time values afterwards; it fails when the helper forgets one of
the settings.
- The Megatron lane needs GPUs, so this PR's gpu_megatron job is the
check: 822 s of pytest on the final head, against 1,038 s for the
earlier base, #2854's run (381 passed, 129 skipped, as before).
- The first CI run of this PR failed in gpu_megatron: the Blackwell
illegal-memory-access flake hit `test_lora_then_quantize` and poisoned
the shared pool, and every later module errored (3 failed, 180 errors),
because the pool was reused after a failed job and `_reset_shared_pools`
ran a job in it at each module start. The second commit retired a pool
after any failed job and made a failed reset harmless; with it the lane
ended with 1 failure instead of 183, in
`test_forward_with_one_lora[lora_config1]` (the same CUDA error).
Re-running the job on that commit failed at the same test again, so it
was not a random flake: the teardown of this PR, unlike the draft's, did
not collect garbage after destroying the groups, and the draft passed
the lane three times. The third commit adds that `gc.collect()`; the
lane then passes. The cause is not established (the finished test's
Megatron and TE modules can still reference the destroyed groups, and
their finalizers then run at an arbitrary point of the next job). #2836
has since landed the retirement in `run()` for its own reasons (with its
own gloo test), so the second commit now only makes a failed reset
harmless; main's teardown has neither the process-group loop nor the
collection, and a session-wide pool needs both.
- Pre-commit passes.

### Before your PR is "*Ready for review*"

Make sure you read and follow [Contributor
guidelines](https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md)
and your commits are signed (`git commit -s -S`).

Make sure you read and follow the [Security Best
Practices](https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer/blob/main/SECURITY.md#security-coding-practices-for-contributors)
(e.g. avoiding hardcoded `trust_remote_code=True`, `torch.load(...,
weights_only=False)`, `pickle`, etc.).

- Is this change backward compatible?: N/A (CI and tests)
- If you copied code from any other sources or added a new PIP
dependency, did you follow guidance in `CONTRIBUTING.md`: no new
dependency
- Did you write any new necessary tests?: ✅ 1 test function in
`tests/gpu/torch/utils/test_distributed_worker_pool.py` (gloo, CPU) for
the new helper; the session pool itself is exercised by the whole
gpu_megatron lane
- Did you update
[Changelog](https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer/blob/main/CHANGELOG.rst)?:
N/A (CI and tests)
- Did you get Claude approval on this PR?: N/A (optional, not run)

### Additional Information

Slice 11 of 11 of the GPU-CI speed-up work, split out of the reference
draft #2730 (not for merge; it holds the whole series with its
measurements). Slices 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 (#2845, #2846,
#2848, #2849, #2850, #2851, #2852, #2853, #2854) have merged. The two
remaining slices (#2847, #2855) are independent PRs on main: each
applies to main on its own. The times above are from the series' CI runs
before 2026-10-21, when all slices formed one linear stack; a PR number
in a method note names that PR's run from then.

1. #2845 [OMNIML-6178] [1/11] Run the unit tests in parallel with
pytest-xdist (merged)
2. #2846 [OMNIML-6178] [2/11] Use the sysmon coverage core in CI
(merged)
3. #2847 [OMNIML-6179] [3/11] Run manual-marked tests on nightly and
on-demand GPU runs
4. #2848 [OMNIML-6181] [4/11] Give gpu_megatron's slow cold starts more
time (merged)
5. #2849 [OMNIML-6179] [5/11] Make the ONNX tests cheaper: CPU-only ones
to the unit lane, small models (merged)
6. #2850 [OMNIML-6179] [6/11] Use local tokenizers and calibration text
in GPU tests, shrink puzzletron data (merged)
7. #2851 [OMNIML-6180] [7/11] Trim the llm_eval, llm_qat, EAGLE and
megatron_bridge example tests (merged)
8. #2852 [OMNIML-6180] [8/11] Trim the DFlash regression test (merged)
9. #2853 [OMNIML-6180] [9/11] Trim the torch_onnx example lane (merged)
10. #2854 [OMNIML-6181] [10/11] Make the distributed worker pool fail
fast when a worker dies (merged)
11. #2855 [OMNIML-6181] [11/11] Share one Megatron worker pool across
the gpu_megatron modules **(this PR)**


<!-- This is an auto-generated comment: release notes by coderabbit.ai
-->
<!-- coderabbit-ai-generated:v1 -->

## Summary by CodeRabbit

* **Tests**
* Distributed GPU test workers now restore their initial PyTorch
settings and random seed between test modules.
* Worker teardown now synchronizes CUDA, removes non-default process
groups, and cleans up Python and GPU resources.
* Worker pools are shared across test modules and shut down at the end
of the test session for more consistent test execution.

<!-- end of auto-generated comment: release notes by coderabbit.ai -->

---------

Signed-off-by: Shengliang Xu <shengliangx@nvidia.com>
shengliangxu added a commit that referenced this pull request Oct 21, 2026
… GPU runs (#2847)

### What does this PR do?

Type of change: CI (test runtime)

Tests marked `manual` collect only when pytest gets `--run-manual`. The
unit workflow passes it for every run that is not a pull request, but
the GPU workflow never did, so a `manual` GPU test never ran in CI. This
sets `PYTEST_ADDOPTS=--run-manual` in the "Run gpu tests" step for every
run that is not a pull-request run (the nightly schedule and manual
dispatches), which lets slow or network-heavy checks leave the
pull-request jobs without leaving CI. Pull-request runs are unchanged by
the flag itself: copy-pr-bot runs them as `push` events, the workflow's
only `push` trigger, and the expression is `github.event_name != 'push'
&& '--run-manual' || ''`. An earlier version of this PR used the
`release` marker; review feedback pointed out that `release` is the QA
team's marker for long real-model runs in their own pipeline, while
`manual` is what the unit tests already use for nightly and on-demand
runs.

**Side effect:** `--run-manual` also runs the existing `manual`-marked
tests of `tests/gpu` on those runs, which no GPU run executed before: 12
NAS vision-model cases (`test_search_space_with_vision_models.py`), 6
puzzletron cases (about 40 s each by their marker) and the TRT client
benchmark models (they need TensorRT, so I could not count them on a CPU
host). The unit lane already runs its `manual` tests nightly the same
way. A `workflow_dispatch` run of the GPU workflow on this branch (run
39668011982: 2-GPU runners and `--run-manual`, the nightly's setup)
passed all four GPU jobs: `gpu` in 28 min (1,866 passed, 40 skipped; cap
60 min) and `gpu_megatron` in 27 min (403 passed, 87 skipped; cap 75
min). In `gpu` the six puzzletron params took 174 s (26-32 s each), the
14 NAS vision results 29 s in total and the Nemotron v3 test 20 s, about
4 min together; the TRT client tests are skipped in that container
(`libnvinfer.so.10` is missing), so they add nothing.

Two tests use it:

- `test_megatron_generate_and_mmlu[tp]` builds a 28-layer Qwen3-0.6B
Megatron model, downloads 1.2-1.5 GB of real weights into a fresh
container cache and scores about 1,400 MMLU prompts: a 21-39 s call in
every PR gpu_megatron job (21 s with the sysmon core of #2846, 39 s
without it), and the only test in the lane that downloads real weights.
- `test_get_dataset_dataloader_nemotron_v3_chat_template` streams the
seven gated Nemotron post-training v3 datasets from the Hub (a 17-24 s
call that needs an HF token and the network, and a source of Hub
flakes). The combo expansion and sample distribution it goes through are
covered by CPU unit tests that record the per-dataset calls.

**Trade-off:** these two checks no longer run on pull requests. The
real-weight accuracy check (0.36 < MMLU < 0.39) and the gated-data smoke
test run every night and on demand, a day after a change instead of on
the PR.

### Time improvement (measured in CI)

Time of the module that holds the skipped test, from the per-test
timestamps; before = the run of #2846, after = this PR's run and the
runs above it that carry the change (median):

| lane | skipped test (call time before) | module before | module after
| change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| gpu_megatron | `test_megatron_generate_and_mmlu[tp]` (21 s) | 64 s |
41 s (39 s in this PR's run) | -22 s (-35% after speed scaling) |
| gpu | `test_get_dataset_dataloader_nemotron_v3_chat_template` (17 s) |
32 s | 13.5 s (13 s in this PR's run) | -19 s (-62%) |

So 22 s off the gpu_megatron job and 19 s off the gpu job of every PR
run. The lane totals cannot show a change this small (gpu_megatron 1,212
-> 1,206 s, gpu 1,289 -> 1,351 s: their run-to-run spread is several
times larger). The price is that the two checks run only on the nightly
and on demand.

Method: every PR of the series has its own CI run, so "before" is the
run of the PR(s) below that lack the change and "after" the runs that
carry it. Times come from the job logs (`--durations`, or the gap
between consecutive result lines). Where runner speed matters, the tests
that no PR of the series touches scale each run, and the raw and the
scaled medians are both shown. One test varies by 15-30% from run to run
on its own, so smaller differences are not evidence.

### Usage

`pytest --run-manual` runs the manual-marked tests locally.

### Testing

On a CPU host the Nemotron v3 test is skipped with "Only run when
--run-manual is given" without the flag and runs with it, and `-m
manual` selects it. The expression `github.event_name != 'push'` is
false for the `push` events that run pull requests and true for the
nightly and manual dispatches. Pre-commit and actionlint pass. Run on
GPU runners with the flag (dispatch run 39668011982, the nightly's
setup): the Nemotron v3 test passed in 20 s and the four Megatron MMLU
cases in 145 s (tp 66 s, cp 39 s, pp 32 s, dp 8 s). This PR's own GPU
run shows both skipped on a pull request.

### Before your PR is "*Ready for review*"

Make sure you read and follow [Contributor
guidelines](https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md)
and your commits are signed (`git commit -s -S`).

Make sure you read and follow the [Security Best
Practices](https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer/blob/main/SECURITY.md#security-coding-practices-for-contributors)
(e.g. avoiding hardcoded `trust_remote_code=True`, `torch.load(...,
weights_only=False)`, `pickle`, etc.).

- Is this change backward compatible?: N/A (CI and tests)
- If you copied code from any other sources or added a new PIP
dependency, did you follow guidance in `CONTRIBUTING.md`: no new
dependency
- Did you write any new necessary tests?: N/A (marks two existing tests;
no new tests)
- Did you update
[Changelog](https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer/blob/main/CHANGELOG.rst)?:
N/A (CI and tests)
- Did you get Claude approval on this PR?: N/A (optional, not run)

### Additional Information

Slice 3 of 11 of the GPU-CI speed-up work, split out of the reference
draft #2730 (not for merge; it holds the whole series with its
measurements). Slices 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 (#2845, #2846,
#2848, #2849, #2850, #2851, #2852, #2853, #2854) have merged. The two
remaining slices (#2847, #2855) are independent PRs on main: each
applies to main on its own. The times above are from the series' CI runs
before 2026-10-21, when all slices formed one linear stack; a PR number
in a method note names that PR's run from then.

1. #2845 [OMNIML-6178] [1/11] Run the unit tests in parallel with
pytest-xdist (merged)
2. #2846 [OMNIML-6178] [2/11] Use the sysmon coverage core in CI
(merged)
3. #2847 [OMNIML-6179] [3/11] Run manual-marked tests on nightly and
on-demand GPU runs **(this PR)**
4. #2848 [OMNIML-6181] [4/11] Give gpu_megatron's slow cold starts more
time (merged)
5. #2849 [OMNIML-6179] [5/11] Make the ONNX tests cheaper: CPU-only ones
to the unit lane, small models (merged)
6. #2850 [OMNIML-6179] [6/11] Use local tokenizers and calibration text
in GPU tests, shrink puzzletron data (merged)
7. #2851 [OMNIML-6180] [7/11] Trim the llm_eval, llm_qat, EAGLE and
megatron_bridge example tests (merged)
8. #2852 [OMNIML-6180] [8/11] Trim the DFlash regression test (merged)
9. #2853 [OMNIML-6180] [9/11] Trim the torch_onnx example lane (merged)
10. #2854 [OMNIML-6181] [10/11] Make the distributed worker pool fail
fast when a worker dies (merged)
11. #2855 [OMNIML-6181] [11/11] Share one Megatron worker pool across
the gpu_megatron modules


<!-- This is an auto-generated comment: release notes by coderabbit.ai
-->
<!-- coderabbit-ai-generated:v1 -->

## Summary by CodeRabbit

- **Tests**
- GPU test coverage now includes selected manual tests during scheduled
and on-demand workflow runs.
- Tests requiring gated datasets or model downloads are excluded from
standard push-based runs to keep routine checks focused and efficient.

- **Chores**
- Updated GPU test execution settings to support explicitly enabled
manual test runs.
<!-- end of auto-generated comment: release notes by coderabbit.ai -->

---------

Signed-off-by: Shengliang Xu <shengliangx@nvidia.com>
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