0.1.45-poly.1

The Strata project's 0.1.45 is in: Qwen3.6 on Strata's engine reads pictures and answers several requests at once, and a model switch in the web app now runs the new model with its own settings.

What changed since 0.1.44.1-poly.6

• The Strata project's 0.1.45 is merged. Qwen3.8-Flash-Next, which runs on Strata's own engine, takes everything in it, from the faster decode kernels to the opt-in switches for servers with many users. Qwen3.6 on Strata's engine (--family qwen36-strata) now reads pictures (--vision) and answers several requests at once (--parallel), with faster decode kernels (docs/QWEN36.md).
• For every model, two things from 0.1.45's server: a long chat's prompt is encoded again only from where it differs from the last one, and when a request allows 1,024 tokens or more and sets no thinking budget, thinking is closed early enough to leave a quarter of max_tokens for the answer. "answer_room": false in strata-<model>.json turns the second one off. Strata's server also gives Qwen3.8-Flash-Next its model card's sampling when a request names none; the models on strata-poly keep their own defaults.
• A model switch in the web app runs the new model with its own strata-<model>.json: before, every key but the sampling, the aliases and the GPU stayed as the first model set them, and Ctrl+C after a switch closed the wrong engine. By arbitropy (PR 39, issue 37).
• AMD cards on Linux: the expert cache gives VRAM back to other programs and grows again when they free it, instead of only shrinking until a restart (PR 28, issue 13), and --kv q8_0 runs on AMD cards (PR 29). Both by donschen, measured on an RX 9070 XT.
• STRATA_FREEZE_EXPERTS=1 holds the split of the experts between the card and the CPU still, so the same request gives the same greedy answer bit for bit; with guesses on, add --window 1 for that everywhere (PR 32). The load now writes VRAM on the engine's own stream (PR 31). Both by smashdog; Tako88 checked the first on an AMD card.
• docs/DEEPSEEK.md: what a user measured with DeepSeek V4 Flash files larger than the RAM (issue 21).

The engine's shared kernels changed with the merge, so the zip below is a new ready-made Windows engine; the installer downloads it and checks its SHA-256. It gives the same greedy tokens as 0.1.44.1-poly.6's engine on an RTX 5090 with GLM 5.3 Flash, DeepSeek V4 Flash, Qwen3.6, LFM2.5 and MiniCPM-V, and on an RTX 4070 laptop with Gemma 4, and several requests at once still give each the tokens it gets alone.

Install

Download the source below, or git clone the repository. Then run START-HERE.bat on Windows or ./setup.sh on Linux. An earlier install updates with UPDATE.bat or ./update.sh.

Limits

• The eight added models are experimental.
• The ready-made engine is for Windows and CUDA 13 only; CUDA 12 and AMD cards compile on your PC.
• GLM 5.3 Flash and DeepSeek V4 Flash need 70 to 100 GB of RAM, and about 8 GB more than their files in a container. A DeepSeek file larger than the RAM runs several times slower than llama.cpp with the same file.
• AMD cards on Windows run Qwen3.8-Flash-Next only.

Most of this project is the work of Strata's author and contributors.