[Attention][DCP] Support DCP with query length > 1 (MTP) with FA3

[minosfuture]

Purpose

Combined with vllm-project/flash-attention#93, this is to enable MTP (multi-token prediction) with DCP (decode context parallelism). It also allows prefill/decode to be mixed in a batch.

See vllm-project/flash-attention#93 for the implementation and solution details. Here we just need to pass the cp world size and cp rank.

Test Plan

1. Benchmark output token throughput
2. Verify LM eval accuracy

Test Result

Benchmark

config	output token per second	speedup (relative to tp8)	speedup (relative to tp8+mtp)
tp8	2332.43	1x	0.77x
tp8,mtp	3038.71	1.30x	1x
tp8,dcp4	2983.08	1.28	0.98x
tp8,dcp8	3502.24	1.50	1.15x
tp8,mtp,dcp4	3722.81	1.60x	1.23x
tp8,mtp,dcp8	3600.58	1.54x	1.18x

Expand for details:

Metric Details

#### With MTP and TP8,DCP4

VLLM_ATTENTION_BACKEND=FLASH_ATTN_MLA vllm serve deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1-0528 --tensor-parallel-size 8 --speculative-config '{"num_speculative_tokens": 1, "method": "deepseek_mtp"}' -dcp 4

============ Serving Benchmark Result ============
Successful requests:                     4096
Maximum request concurrency:             4096
Benchmark duration (s):                  1126.65
Total input tokens:                      8373936
Total generated tokens:                  4194304
Request throughput (req/s):              3.64
Output token throughput (tok/s):         3722.81
Total Token throughput (tok/s):          11155.42
---------------Time to First Token----------------
Mean TTFT (ms):                          490816.57
Median TTFT (ms):                        434249.00
P99 TTFT (ms):                           1072761.55
-----Time per Output Token (excl. 1st token)------
Mean TPOT (ms):                          168.82
Median TPOT (ms):                        161.39
P99 TPOT (ms):                           262.88
---------------Inter-token Latency----------------
Mean ITL (ms):                           334.02
Median ITL (ms):                         208.86
P99 ITL (ms):                            824.69
==================================================
Benchmark completed for tp8_spec_dcp4

With MTP and TP8,DCP8

============ Serving Benchmark Result ============
Successful requests:                     4096
Maximum request concurrency:             4096
Benchmark duration (s):                  1164.90
Total input tokens:                      8373311
Total generated tokens:                  4194304
Request throughput (req/s):              3.52
Output token throughput (tok/s):         3600.58
Total Token throughput (tok/s):          10788.61
---------------Time to First Token----------------
Mean TTFT (ms):                          445652.28
Median TTFT (ms):                        448234.92
P99 TTFT (ms):                           896324.45
-----Time per Output Token (excl. 1st token)------
Mean TPOT (ms):                          321.94
Median TPOT (ms):                        319.65
P99 TPOT (ms):                           491.82
---------------Inter-token Latency----------------
Mean ITL (ms):                           636.99
Median ITL (ms):                         480.00
P99 ITL (ms):                            1087.89
==================================================
Benchmark completed for tp8_spec_dcp8

With MTP and TP8

============ Serving Benchmark Result ============
Successful requests:                     4096
Maximum request concurrency:             4096
Benchmark duration (s):                  1380.29
Total input tokens:                      8371302
Total generated tokens:                  4194304
Request throughput (req/s):              2.97
Output token throughput (tok/s):         3038.71
Total Token throughput (tok/s):          9103.59
---------------Time to First Token----------------
Mean TTFT (ms):                          661675.41
Median TTFT (ms):                        677812.47
P99 TTFT (ms):                           1347726.14
-----Time per Output Token (excl. 1st token)------
Mean TPOT (ms):                          57.12
Median TPOT (ms):                        52.00
P99 TPOT (ms):                           88.92
---------------Inter-token Latency----------------
Mean ITL (ms):                           113.07
Median ITL (ms):                         68.78
P99 ITL (ms):                            734.05
==================================================

With TP8, DCP8

============ Serving Benchmark Result ============
Successful requests:                     4096
Maximum request concurrency:             4096
Benchmark duration (s):                  1197.60
Total input tokens:                      8371375
Total generated tokens:                  4194304
Request throughput (req/s):              3.42
Output token throughput (tok/s):         3502.24
Total Token throughput (tok/s):          10492.34
---------------Time to First Token----------------
Mean TTFT (ms):                          456091.64
Median TTFT (ms):                        472464.37
P99 TTFT (ms):                           945354.75
-----Time per Output Token (excl. 1st token)------
Mean TPOT (ms):                          356.88
Median TPOT (ms):                        368.52
P99 TPOT (ms):                           565.14
---------------Inter-token Latency----------------
Mean ITL (ms):                           356.88
Median ITL (ms):                         253.01
P99 ITL (ms):                            853.34
==================================================
Benchmark completed for tp8_dcp8

With TP8, DCP4

============ Serving Benchmark Result ============
Successful requests:                     4096
Maximum request concurrency:             4096
Benchmark duration (s):                  1406.03
Total input tokens:                      8369181
Total generated tokens:                  4194304
Request throughput (req/s):              2.91
Output token throughput (tok/s):         2983.08
Total Token throughput (tok/s):          8935.43
---------------Time to First Token----------------
Mean TTFT (ms):                          597440.50
Median TTFT (ms):                        545819.80
P99 TTFT (ms):                           1262335.73
-----Time per Output Token (excl. 1st token)------
Mean TPOT (ms):                          236.80
Median TPOT (ms):                        224.94
P99 TPOT (ms):                           390.39
---------------Inter-token Latency----------------
Mean ITL (ms):                           236.80
Median ITL (ms):                         162.87
P99 ITL (ms):                            757.87
==================================================
Benchmark completed for tp8_dcp4

With TP8

VLLM_ATTENTION_BACKEND=FLASH_ATTN_MLA vllm serve deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1-0528 --tensor-parallel-size 8 --speculative-config '{"num_speculative_tokens": 1, "method": "deepseek_mtp"}' 

============ Serving Benchmark Result ============
Successful requests:                     4096
Maximum request concurrency:             4096
Benchmark duration (s):                  1798.26
Total input tokens:                      8373030
Total generated tokens:                  4194304
Request throughput (req/s):              2.28
Output token throughput (tok/s):         2332.43
Total Token throughput (tok/s):          6988.62
---------------Time to First Token----------------
Mean TTFT (ms):                          855856.29
Median TTFT (ms):                        876320.14
P99 TTFT (ms):                           1748166.55
-----Time per Output Token (excl. 1st token)------
Mean TPOT (ms):                          82.57
Median TPOT (ms):                        74.08
P99 TPOT (ms):                           134.68
---------------Inter-token Latency----------------
Mean ITL (ms):                           82.57
Median ITL (ms):                         56.14
P99 ITL (ms):                            704.71
==================================================
Benchmark completed for tp8

LM Eval

with tp8dcp8+mtp

local-completions (model=deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1-0528,base_url=http://127.0.0.1:8000/v1/completions,num_concurrent=32), gen_kwargs: (None), limit: 100.0, num_fewshot: None, batch_size: 1

Tasks	Version	Filter	n-shot	Metric		Value		Stderr
gsm8k	3	flexible-extract	5	exact_match	↑	0.96	±	0.0197
		strict-match	5	exact_match	↑	0.96	±	0.0197

---

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[gemini-code-assist]

Code Review

This pull request aims to enable multi-token prediction (MTP) with decode context parallelism (DCP) for FlashAttention-3. The changes involve removing a restriction on query length for DCP and passing cp_world_size and cp_rank to the attention kernel. While the changes in vllm/v1/worker/gpu_model_runner.py are correct, there is a critical issue in vllm/v1/attention/backends/mla/flashattn_mla.py. The newly used attributes self.dcp_world_size and self.dcp_rank are not properly initialized due to an issue in the MLACommonImpl base class, which will cause a TypeError at runtime. This must be addressed for the feature to function correctly.

[MatthewBonanni]

Thanks for this contribution! Just wanted to leave a reminder to update the FlashAttention GIT_TAG in cmake/external_projects/vllm_flash_attn.cmake after vllm-project/flash-attention#93 lands

[youzhedian]

since only flash_attn_mla support custom mask, we can't just remove this assert right now?

[minosfuture]

make sense. I'll make a whitelist here for FA3 MLA

[mergify]

This pull request has merge conflicts that must be resolved before it can be
merged. Please rebase the PR, @minosfuture.

https://docs.github.com/en/pull-requests/collaborating-with-pull-requests/working-with-forks/syncing-a-fork

[LucasWilkinson]

nit: can we maybe rename this to dcp_num_local_tokens or something like that? im worried this will clash with #25749 / #26133

[minosfuture]

sounds good. lemme keep the dcp prefix.

[minosfuture]

updated

[LucasWilkinson]

overall looks good to me; left one nit