SparkRing 2026.09.4-rc.3

SparkRing 2026.09.4-rc.3

Status: research-only prerelease. This opt-in ARM64/GB10 image is pullable by
Docker and has bounded Qwen3.8-Flash-Next NVFP4 QAD serving evidence. Stable
profile defaults remain unchanged.

docker pull ghcr.io/fujitsupolycom/sparkring:shared-2026.09.4-rc.3
docker pull ghcr.io/fujitsupolycom/sparkring@sha256:9450b6964aa87cdb44e3b190df9b6db12289a8850ee3513e5278241e70245a64

The image has two root filesystem layers. An anonymous pull into an empty Docker
27 daemon completed, and the pulled image verified all 235,690 files in its
installed-runtime receipt. The earlier shared-2026.09.4-rc.1 and temporary
shared-2026.09.4-rc.2 registry images exceed Docker's layer-depth limit and
must not be used.

Included changes

• LIL vLLM af9e4dca109e0348323c0182e98a3aaf7282bfc3 and B12X
  0f3a8cbfd1c11d27f04e3ab37a802d522f4f1c68, with SparkRing integrations retained.
• Separate scratch storage for concurrent GLM projection branches.
• MTP output-buffer sizing for each captured batch size.
• Shorter lifetimes for temporary startup and kernel-tuning allocations.
• Agreement between ranks before distributed tuning-cache reuse.
• Native NVFP4/BF16 kernels, route-packing updates and speculative-verification
  tuning inputs.
• CUDA Python 13.3 packages matched to the CUDA 13.3 foundation.
• QSA raw-ring bounds checks and prepared shared-pool validation programs.
• SparkCache request-scope isolation; unverified or incompatible entries remain
  cache misses.
• A prepared RoCEnante manifest bound to the installed Kraken B12X source tree.
• A flattened runtime filesystem that avoids Docker's registry-import depth limit.

Profile evidence

Profile	Evidence on this image filesystem
Qwen Flash-Next QAD TP2 + SparkCache	Bounded qualified: startup, READY generation, 33K-token chunked prefill, solid-color image/video check, RoCEnante and healthy SparkCache on two ranks
Qwen Flash-Next QAD TP4 + SparkCache	Bounded qualified: startup, READY generation, 33K-token chunked prefill, solid-color image/video check, HC prefill/decode, RoCEnante and healthy SparkCache on four ranks
Qwen Flash-Next QAD TP2 without SparkCache	Expected compatible; not checked on this prerelease
Qwen Flash-Next QAD TP4 without SparkCache	Expected compatible; not checked on this prerelease
GLM Flash SparkCache TP2	Pending; Spark and QAD checkpoints require separate checks
GLM Flash SparkCache TP4	Pending; Spark and QAD checkpoints require separate checks
DeepSeek SGLang	Isolated composition verifier passed 4,829 files and the server CLI imported; GPU startup and authenticated generation pending

The Qwen checks used 262,144-token context, 16 sequences, batch 8192, 24 GiB
FP8 KV per rank, MTP3, three-image/one-video limits and fresh SparkCache/compiler
namespaces. TP2 exposed 2,877,721 KV tokens; TP4 exposed 3,131,214. The final
published image differs from the tested runtime only in OCI labels; its root
filesystem layers and runtime configuration are otherwise identical.

The media fixture contained three 64×64 red/green/blue images and one one-second
224×224 red video. Both deployments returned the four colors in order. This is
bounded input/interpretation evidence, not arbitrary media accuracy.

The chunked-prefill fixture contained 33,042 prompt tokens and required the
model to retrieve one deterministic code. Both deployments returned the exact
code. The configured scheduling batch is 8,192 tokens; this check establishes
correct chunked execution for one bounded prompt, not throughput or full-context
stability.

Both deployments also returned SCORE_OK with finite selected-token and
top-token log probabilities. This is a bounded numerical sanity check, not a
model-quality evaluation.

Full-context pressure, retained restart/physical restore, arbitrary media,
matched performance, GLM model serving and isolated SGLang generation remain
unqualified. Experimental multi-sequence MTP compaction is excluded. Issue
#278 and separate long-duration collective failures remain unresolved.

Publication

The publication record, qualification record
and clean-pull verification bind the immutable image and
the stated evidence. Source archives and patches are byte-identical to the
attachments published with shared-2026.09.4-rc.1; their hashes are retained in
source-bundle.json.