The three markers the README requires be checked — AUTOTUNE_REPLAY_FALLBACK,
BENCHMARK_DIRECT_NO_CUDAGRAPH, BENCHMARK_CAPTURE_POISONED — were only
reachable by grepping run.log afterwards, which happens when someone
remembers to. The NV run that reproduced PR763 wrote a per-cell status row
instead; a 6-round campaign here had no equivalent, so a missing cell, a
stalled cell, or a marker count going from 0 to nonzero was invisible until
the batch ended.
run_cell now writes round/op/side/switch/rc/elapsed_s/success/failed plus the
three marker counts to <root>/status.tsv as each cell completes, and wraps the
cell in CELL_TIMEOUT (default 2400s, matching the NV run) so one hung cell
cannot hold the batch. rc 124/137 is called out by name.
grep -c prints 0 and exits 1 when it finds nothing, so each count swallows its
status; without that the bookkeeping itself would mark a clean cell failed.
Two runs on different calibers produce a report that looks exactly like a
valid one — no step errors, the numbers just mean something else. This repo
has published three figures that were an artifact of such a difference:
router_gemm -8.2% (record vs record), mm "945 variants -> 33" (shared vs
inherited libtuner cache), replication_pad3d +43% vs +124.5% (timer).
batch_summary --ab / --ab-rounds now reads every participating run's
run_identity.json and compares backend/device/timer/bench_level/shape_mode/
tuner_cache/direct_repeat before parsing a single latency. Mismatch, or a
missing identity, prints !!! [caliber] and exits 4. autotune_mode is judged
separately: record pinning a replay is the normal shape, both sides record
is the exact trap above and is refused by name. --allow-caliber-mismatch
releases it, still printing what it found.
Recording on a *shared* tuner cache warns rather than refuses: the pinned
config depends on what else ran on the machine, which leaves relative
conclusions intact and absolute latencies unquotable. Refusing it would
reject the default every A/B here currently uses.
ab_repeat.sh closes the one axis that had no check: after round 1 it
fingerprints both sides' ttgir (relative path + content, so a changed
variant *set* counts too). Byte-identical means the switch changed no
generated code for this op, and the remaining N-1 rounds would measure
noise and report it as "no difference" — so the op is skipped with
SWITCH_NO_IR_DIFF unless SWITCH_ALLOW_NO_IR_DIFF=1.
README leads with a caliber table: each axis, its measured magnitude, what
pins it, and which code checks it. The fourth column is code because
documentation did not hold — the README already said "the B side must use
REPLAY_FROM" when the record-vs-record number was published.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A single pair cannot say whether its own verdict is stable, and on this device
that is not a theoretical gap. Measured on an S5000, topk eliminated 32
convert_layout ops yet 17 of its 42 shapes changed the SIGN of their delta
between two equally valid runs. The cause is not the timer: graph capture and
direct timing agree to 1.00x on that operator, and the verdict moved a median of
1.1pp between them, inside the 1.7pp noise floor a same-timer control
established. The deltas are simply near zero, and one measurement cannot orient
them.
ab_repeat.sh runs an A/B over N rounds in independent processes. Round 1's A
side records the autotune configs and every later run -- including A's own later
rounds -- replays that one set, so configs are pinned across rounds and sides and
only the switch under test and measurement noise remain. Round order alternates
to cancel one-directional drift. An operator with a failed round gets no report,
since a report missing rounds reads exactly like a complete one.
batch_summary --ab-rounds aggregates <root>/r<k>_<A|B>/run.log and separates the
two dispersions, which answer different questions and were previously conflated:
the spread within one side's samples says how noisy the machine was, while the
spread of the per-round deltas says whether the verdict holds. Shapes whose
delta changes sign across rounds are counted and called out, because their
direction is not a conclusion at any timer.
The path is already validated on NVIDIA: six rounds narrowed router_gemm to
-16.6% ~ -16.2% with 0.4% side noise, which is what turned a single pair into a
statement.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Aharrypotter
