Ember 2026.8.22

Curated notes

• Resolved #2: Please add an option to specify the host to listen on: added --host and EMBER_HOST so trusted container/Kubernetes gateways can
  reach Ember while preserving the unauthenticated loopback default.
• Resolved #3: Add option to disable shasum check: added EMBER_VERIFY_EXISTING_SHA256=0 for trusted immutable model stores;
  downloaded artifacts remain pinned and checksum-verified before promotion.
• Integrated and documented the opt-in CPU/GPU/XDNA2 resident DSpark
  prototype. The XDNA Compose overlay now selects the measured two-session
  proposal pipeline instead of the slower target-expert placement experiment.
• Kept heterogeneous inference experimental: the fixed throughput fixture
  passed, while capture-graph output equivalence remains a promotion blocker.
• Linked README installation guidance to the current GitHub release instead of
  embedding a version that becomes stale after every release.
• Made candidate certification and release promotion fully unattended: trusted
  main commits proceed from immutable GHCR images through the dedicated
  gfx1151 runner to changelog generation, tagging, and package publication.
• Pinned the certification model pair to the published Hugging Face artifacts,
  added IOMMU/device preflight checks, and made the hardware job quiesce and
  restore production around exclusive GPU validation.
• Upgraded GitHub checkout steps to the pinned Node 24 release so routine CI
  and release logs no longer carry Node 20 deprecation warnings.
• Added persistent BuildKit, ccache, and Trivy database reuse across GitHub and
  Forgejo runners, including compiler cache mounts inside the ROCm Docker build.
• Kept periodic full model digest verification while caching unchanged results
  for seven days and using direct I/O on cache misses, preventing the 96 GiB
  checksum pass from consuming UMA and disabling monolithic DSpark validation.

Added

• release: automate gfx1151 certification (62205ed3)
• release: automate certified promotion (324956c7)
• ci: automate candidate release chain (a44a8205)
• ci: mirror GitHub issues to Forgejo (ad46d678)
• release: finish deployment controls and XDNA docs (4c37043a)
• xdna: validate asynchronous DSpark provider (1b439f8f)
• xdna: schedule weighted expert runlists (666c612d)
• xdna: add async DSpark draft provider seam (ac541642)
• xdna: package ROCMFP2 XRT prototype (e6f98a8d)
• engine: prototype XDNA2 expert offload (d41d2642)

Fixed

• release: compare sorted metadata paths (fff01830)
• ci: mount Forgejo CA in job containers (4f64a037)
• release: quiesce production supervisor (27a9effb)
• ci: make IOMMU preflight explicit (3803c075)
• release: avoid stale README version (9b918f43)
• ci: isolate release note permissions (39de69f2)
• ci: use native Forgejo push mirror (d0ddd613)
• engine: make XDNA corpus target-exact (7472ac92)
• engine: make resident XDNA acceptance target-exact (6d0cb138)
• engine: classify custom clamp types (83a7b839)
• engine: isolate resident graphs and XDNA context (115d3a79)
• xdna: validate mmap-backed model path (907d0064)
• ci: let the vulnerability scanner reach its database (0e57f256)
• docker: declare the image source so GHCR links the package (0c33af6b)
• ci: give the BuildKit container a working network (3df0939a)
• release: publish the container image where the docs promise it (3ab6fada)

Performance

• release: cache model verification and expose hits (a629fb25)
• release: cache builds and preserve UMA capacity (f2627063)
• engine: batch resident verification safely (06d15d7b)
• xdna: attribute resident pipeline phases (5a3171c1)
• xdna: gate resident promotion by confidence (d7d604b0)
• xdna: capture current design control (56c25ad2)
• xdna: pipeline resident draft proposals (6f8ba53c)
• xdna: vectorize draft routed experts on CPU (0c98d313)
• xdna: keep draft Q8 stages resident (cdec0696)
• engine: fuse DSpark context KV on GPU (4cbba655)
• xdna: unify draft projection overlay (358e1794)
• xdna: keep draft projections on fixed overlay (732be598)
• xdna: parallelize DSpark CPU reductions (3b830cab)
• engine: measure GPU DSpark preprojection (54270615)
• engine: stage DSpark main projection on GPU (f9f9d141)
• xdna: reuse weights across draft context (4fc7f551)
• xdna: measure task-blocked Q8 projections (a449b3ec)
• xdna: add compensated Q8 draft shared expert (efad17c8)
• xdna: mask routed rows in gen8 (5c97cd24)
• xdna: add five-row ROCMFP4 expert kernel (6d3b7acb)
• engine: measure fused verifier MoE budget (e888ef1a)
• xdna: batch shared experts in gen6 (de55413a)
• xdna: measure concurrent GPU load (f6e91bd7)
• xdna: validate zero-copy GPU buffers (76b9d3cf)
• xdna: batch gen5 draft blocks (8729f21b)
• xdna: fuse expert pipeline in gen5 (252b813f)
• xdna: expose provider phase timings (aaa0cf49)
• xdna: vectorize ROCMFP2 decode in gen4 (e811dfde)
• xdna: preserve projection outputs in fp32 (2de48a4f)
• xdna: prototype second-generation expert kernel (4d3c55a6)

Changed

• engine: prune unsupported backends and prototypes (eade92dd)

Build and CI

• xdna: refresh runtime for queued drafts (452c2e7d)

Documentation

• xdna: pin gen43 benchmark candidate (8d0c90fd)
• xdna: record whole-draft contention results (8a05387a)
• xdna: record AIE-RT queue rejection (571d5d8c)
• xdna: record gen5 validation scope (b50e00bb)
• ci: record the self-hosted builder and its fork-PR constraint (8b9c5f99)

Testing

• json: cover UTF-8 output boundary (48e0ca53)
• xdna: enforce resident speculation gate (37f7f6bf)
• xdna: reject bfp16 draft projections (9a8b0647)
• xdna: validate trained draft experts (41454f7f)

Maintenance

• ci: move checkout actions to Node 24 (7987558a)