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AutoXLA

AutoXLA is a library designed to automate the distribution, optimization, and quantization of large language models on TPUs using PyTorch/XLA. It extends the Hugging Face Transformers interface with TPU-aware features like automatic sharding, custom attention kernels, and quantization support — enabling efficient large-scale model deployment and training.

Note: This is an experimental repository and may have a lot of issues. Please open issues if you find errors in the code.

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Features

• Automatic Sharding Supports multiple parallelization strategies:

  • fsdp – Fully Sharded Data Parallel
  • dp / data_parallel – Data Parallel
  • mp / model_parallel – Model Parallel
  • 2d – Hybrid Data-Model Sharding
  • 3d – 3-Axis Parallelism (Data + FSDP + Model)

• Attention Kernel Patching Swap standard attention with TPU-optimized implementations:

  • xla_flash_attention – Flash Attention V2
  • splash_attention – Block-structured sparse attention
  • eager – Standard PyTorch attention
  • More to come in future versions

• Quantization Support Integrates with ModelQuantizer (alias LanguageModelQuantizer) via QuantizationConfig for parameter quantization before distribution. Three quantized-matmul backends are wired, in order of preference:

  • A Pallas TPU kernel (per-channel symmetric int8/int4, optional dynamic activation quantization)
  • torch_xla's fused torch.ops.xla.quantized_matmul kernel
  • A pure-torch dequantize+matmul fallback (also covers blockwise and asymmetric quantization)

• Image Segmentation Models AutoXLAModelForImageSegmentation loads Hugging Face segmentation checkpoints (SAM/SAM2/SAM3, Mask2Former, SegFormer, ...) with vision-aware sharding, and from_model applies the same quantize/shard/wrap pipeline to natively built models (e.g. MedSAM3's SAM3).

• Flexible FSDP Wrapping Integrates with torch_xla.experimental.SpmdFullyShardedDataParallel (FSDPv2) for efficient parameter and activation partitioning.

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Installation

AutoXLA depends on PyTorch/XLA and Transformers. Ensure a TPU runtime is available before installation.

Install from Source (Recommended)

Installing from source ensures all TPU-specific dependencies, including PyTorch/XLA with the correct build links, are properly configured:

git clone https://github.com/Locutusque/autoxla.git
cd AutoXLA
pip install -r requirements.txt
pip install -e .

Install from PyPI

If you prefer to install from PyPI, you'll need to manually install PyTorch/XLA first:

pip install torch~=2.8.0
pip install torch_xla[tpu]~=2.8.0 --find-links=https://storage.googleapis.com/libtpu-releases/index.html --find-links=https://storage.googleapis.com/libtpu-wheels/index.html
pip install torch_xla[pallas] --find-links=https://storage.googleapis.com/jax-releases/jax_nightly_releases.html --find-links=https://storage.googleapis.com/jax-releases/jaxlib_nightly_releases.html
pip install autoxla

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Quick Start

Below is a minimal example using AutoXLAModelForCausalLM to load and shard a Hugging Face model across TPU devices.

from AutoXLA.modeling import AutoXLAModelForCausalLM

# Create block sizes
sa_blocks = {
    "sa_block_q": 512,
    "sa_block_kv": 512,
    "sa_block_kv_compute": 512,
    "sa_block_q_dkv": 512,
    "sa_block_kv_dkv": 512,
    "sa_block_kv_dkv_compute": 512,
    "sa_block_q_dq": 512,
    "sa_block_kv_dq": 512,
    "mesh": str(mesh)
}

# Load a pretrained model with FSDP sharding and XLA Flash Attention
model = AutoXLAModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(
    "meta-llama/Llama-2-7b-hf",
    attn_implementation="splash_attention",
    sharding_strategy="fsdp"
)

# The model is now sharded and ready for TPU-based training or inference

Example Variants

Splash Attention:

model = AutoXLAModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(
    "meta-llama/Llama-2-7b-hf",
    attn_implementation="splash_attention",
    attention_config=sa_blocks,
)

3D Sharding (Data + FSDP + Model Parallelism):

model = AutoXLAModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(
    "meta-llama/Llama-2-7b-hf",
    sharding_strategy="3d"
)

Quantized Loading:

from AutoXLA.quantization import QuantizationConfig

quant_cfg = QuantizationConfig(bits=8, use_pallas=True, quantize_activation=True)

model = AutoXLAModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(
    "meta-llama/Llama-2-7b-hf",
    do_quant=True,
    quantization_config=quant_cfg
)

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Image Segmentation Models

AutoXLAModelForImageSegmentation brings the same automatic sharding and quantization to segmentation models. Checkpoints are resolved against the segmentation auto classes in priority order: mask generation (SAM/SAM2/SAM3), universal segmentation (Mask2Former/OneFormer), instance segmentation, and semantic segmentation (SegFormer/UperNet).

from AutoXLA import AutoXLAModelForImageSegmentation
from AutoXLA.quantization import QuantizationConfig

model = AutoXLAModelForImageSegmentation.from_pretrained(
    "facebook/sam3",
    sharding_strategy="fsdp",
    do_quant=True,
    quantization_config=QuantizationConfig(n_bits=8, use_pallas=True),
)

Wrapping a natively built model (e.g. MedSAM3):

Projects such as MedSAM3 build SAM3 through the native sam3 package instead of transformers. Use from_model to apply AutoXLA's quantize → shard → FSDPv2 pipeline to any already-instantiated nn.Module:

from sam3.model_builder import build_sam3_image_model
from AutoXLA import AutoXLAModelForImageSegmentation
from AutoXLA.quantization import QuantizationConfig

model = build_sam3_image_model(load_from_HF=True, eval_mode=False)

model = AutoXLAModelForImageSegmentation.from_model(
    model,
    sharding_strategy="fsdp",
    do_quant=True,
    quantization_config=QuantizationConfig(
        n_bits=8,
        use_pallas=True,
        # keep accuracy-sensitive heads in full precision
        exclude_layers=["iou_prediction_head", "output_upscaling"],
    ),
)

Notes for segmentation models:

• Layer biases are preserved in full precision by quantization (SAM/ViT linears all carry biases).
• Partition specs understand vision naming conventions (fused qkv, proj/out_proj, fc1/fc2, lin1/lin2, DETR's linear1/linear2) and conv kernels; tensors whose dimensions don't divide the mesh (e.g. relative position embeddings) are replicated automatically.
• attn_implementation other than "eager" is ignored for segmentation models — the splash/flash kernels implement causal decoder attention, which is incorrect for bidirectional vision attention.

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API Reference

AutoXLAModelForCausalLM

A TPU-optimized version of AutoModelForCausalLM with automatic model partitioning, quantization, and attention kernel patching.

Class Methods

from_pretrained(pretrained_model_name_or_path, **kwargs)

Load a pretrained model with XLA-specific optimizations.

Key Arguments:

• pretrained_model_name_or_path — Model identifier or path
• auto_shard (bool, default True) — Automatically create and apply sharding
• sharding_strategy (str) — One of "fsdp", "dp", "mp", "2d", "3d"
• do_quant (bool) — Enable quantization
• quantization_config — Instance of QuantizationConfig
• attn_implementation (str) — "eager", "xla_flash_attention", or "splash_attention"
• attention_config (dict) — Additional configuration for Splash Attention
• use_fsdp_wrap (bool) — Whether to wrap with FSDPv2 after sharding

Returns: A fully-loaded, sharded, and optionally quantized model ready for TPU execution.

AutoXLAModelForImageSegmentation

A TPU-optimized loader/wrapper for image segmentation models (also exported as AutoXLAModelForMaskGeneration).

Class Methods

from_pretrained(pretrained_model_name_or_path, **kwargs)

Load a Hugging Face segmentation checkpoint (e.g. facebook/sam3, facebook/sam2-hiera-large, facebook/sam-vit-huge, nvidia/segformer-b0-finetuned-ade-512-512) with automatic sharding and optional quantization. Accepts the same sharding/quantization arguments as AutoXLAModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained.

from_model(model, **kwargs)

Apply the quantize → shard → FSDPv2 pipeline to an already-instantiated nn.Module — the integration point for natively built models such as MedSAM3's SAM3.

Key Arguments (both methods):

• sharding_strategy (str) — One of "fsdp", "dp", "mp", "2d", "3d"
• do_quant (bool) — Enable quantization
• quantization_config — Instance of QuantizationConfig
• use_fsdp_wrap (bool) — Whether to wrap with FSDPv2 after sharding
• xla_patch_linear (bool) — Apply torch_xla's einsum-based nn.Linear patch

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Sharding Strategies

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Attention Implementations

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License

This repository is distributed under the apache-2.0 license. Credits go to IsNoobGrammer, vLLM, and torchprime for some of the kernels.

Research supported with Cloud TPUs from Google's TPU Research Cloud (TRC)