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Fix mxfp8 param gather numerical issue when DP overlap is off#4769

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yaox12 merged 5 commits into
NVIDIA:devfrom
WanZzzzzz:qiyu/dev
May 19, 2026
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Fix mxfp8 param gather numerical issue when DP overlap is off#4769
yaox12 merged 5 commits into
NVIDIA:devfrom
WanZzzzzz:qiyu/dev

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@WanZzzzzz

@WanZzzzzz WanZzzzzz commented May 13, 2026

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What does this PR do ?

main: #4800

With MXFP8 grad-buffer reuse and non-overlap param gather, each DistOpt stages its own updated main-param shards into its param buffers during step. However, param sync is a DDP model-chunk operation: model_chunk.start_param_sync() gathers both dense and expert bucket groups, copies gathered values into model weights, and zeros the shared MXFP8 param/grad buffers. For MoE, dense and expert DistOpts may share the same model chunk, so defer param sync until all chained optimizers have staged their params, then sync each model chunk once. Otherwise the expert DistOpt may copy the zeroes into expert model weights.

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WanZzzzzz added 3 commits May 11, 2026 17:49
Signed-off-by: qiyuw <qiyuw@nvidia.com>
Signed-off-by: qiyuw <qiyuw@nvidia.com>
Signed-off-by: qiyuw <qiyuw@nvidia.com>
@WanZzzzzz WanZzzzzz requested review from a team as code owners May 13, 2026 00:17
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This pull request requires additional validation before any workflows can run on NVIDIA's runners.

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Signed-off-by: qiyuw <qiyuw@nvidia.com>
@WanZzzzzz

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@zhongbozhu @kunlunl

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LGTM, cc @kunlunl

@kunlunl

kunlunl commented May 13, 2026

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I understand the cause of this bug, and I think the fix is correct. However, is there a way we can refactor the code to make it less hacky? For example, if we can pass information via function args rather than using ._attribute?

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I understand the cause of this bug, and I think the fix is correct. However, is there a way we can refactor the code to make it less hacky? For example, if we can pass information via function args rather than using ._attribute?

Yeah I considered adding defer_param_sync to step_with_ready_grads(), but that method is part of the common MegatronOptimizer interface and is implemented by multiple optimizer wrappers. The flag is only meaningful for DistributedOptimizer’s non-overlap param-gather path. Adding this flag to the method would expand the public optimizer API for a very specific issue which I personally don't like that.

@kunlunl

kunlunl commented May 15, 2026

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/ok to test d68550d

@kunlunl

kunlunl commented May 18, 2026

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@WanZzzzzz Could you fix the CI?

@Victarry Do you think we can merge this one now?

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/ok to test 4dc3559

@yaox12 yaox12 added this pull request to the merge queue May 19, 2026
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🔄 Merge queue validation started!

You can track the progress here: https://github.com/NVIDIA/Megatron-LM/actions/runs/26072551439

@github-merge-queue github-merge-queue Bot removed this pull request from the merge queue due to failed status checks May 19, 2026
@yaox12 yaox12 added this pull request to the merge queue May 19, 2026
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🔄 Merge queue validation started!

You can track the progress here: https://github.com/NVIDIA/Megatron-LM/actions/runs/26083859497

Merged via the queue into NVIDIA:dev with commit ee3f1ff May 19, 2026
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5 participants