Qwen3 is the latest generation of large language models in Qwen series, offering a comprehensive suite of dense and mixture-of-experts (MoE) models. Built upon extensive training, Qwen3 delivers groundbreaking advancements in reasoning, instruction-following, agent capabilities, and multilingual support.
This document will show the main verification steps of the model, including supported features, feature configuration, environment preparation, single-node and multi-node deployment, accuracy and performance evaluation.
The `Qwen3-235B-A22B` model is first supported in `vllm-ascend:v0.8.4rc2`.
## Supported Features
Refer to [supported features](../user_guide/support_matrix/supported_models.md) to get the model's supported feature matrix.
Refer to [feature guide](../user_guide/feature_guide/index.md) to get the feature's configuration.
-`Qwen3-235B-A22B-w8a8`(Quantized version): require 1 Atlas 800 A3 (64G × 16) node or 1 Atlas 800 A2 (64G × 8) node or 2 Atlas 800 A2(32G * 8)nodes. [Download model weight](https://modelscope.cn/models/vllm-ascend/Qwen3-235B-A22B-W8A8)
It is recommended to download the model weight to the shared directory of multiple nodes, such as `/root/.cache/`
### Verify Multi-node Communication(Optional)
If you want to deploy multi-node environment, you need to verify multi-node communication according to [verify multi-node communication environment](../installation.md#verify-multi-node-communication).
### Installation
:::::{tab-set}
::::{tab-item} Use docker image
For example, using images `quay.io/ascend/vllm-ascend:v0.11.0rc2`(for Atlas 800 A2) and `quay.io/ascend/vllm-ascend:v0.11.0rc2-a3`(for Atlas 800 A3).
Select an image based on your machine type and start the docker image on your node, refer to [using docker](../installation.md#set-up-using-docker).
```{code-block} bash
:substitutions:
# Update --device according to your device (Atlas A2: /dev/davinci[0-7] Atlas A3:/dev/davinci[0-15]).
# Update the vllm-ascend image according to your environment.
# Note you should download the weight to /root/.cache in advance.
- [Qwen3-235B-A22B](https://huggingface.co/Qwen/Qwen3-235B-A22B#processing-long-texts) originally only supports 40960 context(max_position_embeddings). If you want to use it and its related quantization weights to run long seqs (such as 128k context), it is required to use yarn rope-scaling technique.
- For vLLM version same as or new than `v0.12.0`, use parameter: `--hf-overrides '{"rope_parameters": {"rope_type":"yarn","rope_theta":1000000,"factor":4,"original_max_position_embeddings":32768}}' \`.
- For vllm version below `v0.12.0`, use parameter: `--rope_scaling '{"rope_type":"yarn","factor":4,"original_max_position_embeddings":32768}' \`.
If you are using weights like [Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507](https://huggingface.co/Qwen/Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507) which originally supports long contexts, there is no need to add this parameter.
-`--data-parallel-size` 1 and `--tensor-parallel-size` 8 are common settings for data parallelism (DP) and tensor parallelism (TP) sizes.
-`--max-model-len` represents the context length, which is the maximum value of the input plus output for a single request.
-`--max-num-seqs` indicates the maximum number of requests that each DP group is allowed to process. If the number of requests sent to the service exceeds this limit, the excess requests will remain in a waiting state and will not be scheduled. Note that the time spent in the waiting state is also counted in metrics such as TTFT and TPOT. Therefore, when testing performance, it is generally recommended that `--max-num-seqs` * `--data-parallel-size` >= the actual total concurrency.
-`--max-num-batched-tokens` represents the maximum number of tokens that the model can process in a single step. Currently, vLLM v1 scheduling enables ChunkPrefill/SplitFuse by default, which means:
- (1) If the input length of a request is greater than `--max-num-batched-tokens`, it will be divided into multiple rounds of computation according to `--max-num-batched-tokens`;
- (2) Decode requests are prioritized for scheduling, and prefill requests are scheduled only if there is available capacity.
- Generally, if `--max-num-batched-tokens` is set to a larger value, the overall latency will be lower, but the pressure on GPU memory (activation value usage) will be greater.
-`--gpu-memory-utilization` represents the proportion of HBM that vLLM will use for actual inference. Its essential function is to calculate the available kv_cache size. During the warm-up phase (referred to as profile run in vLLM), vLLM records the peak GPU memory usage during an inference process with an input size of `--max-num-batched-tokens`. The available kv_cache size is then calculated as: `--gpu-memory-utilization` * HBM size - peak GPU memory usage. Therefore, the larger the value of `--gpu-memory-utilization`, the more kv_cache can be used. However, since the GPU memory usage during the warm-up phase may differ from that during actual inference (e.g., due to uneven EP load), setting `--gpu-memory-utilization` too high may lead to OOM (Out of Memory) issues during actual inference. The default value is `0.9`.
-`--enable-expert-parallel` indicates that EP is enabled. Note that vLLM does not support a mixed approach of ETP and EP; that is, MoE can either use pure EP or pure TP.
-`--no-enable-prefix-caching` indicates that prefix caching is disabled. To enable it, remove this option.
-`--quantization` "ascend" indicates that quantization is used. To disable quantization, remove this option.
-`--compilation-config` contains configurations related to the aclgraph graph mode. The most significant configurations are "cudagraph_mode" and "cudagraph_capture_sizes", which have the following meanings:
"cudagraph_mode": represents the specific graph mode. Currently, "PIECEWISE" and "FULL_DECODE_ONLY" are supported. The graph mode is mainly used to reduce the cost of operator dispatch. Currently, "FULL_DECODE_ONLY" is recommended.
- "cudagraph_capture_sizes": represents different levels of graph modes. The default value is [1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 24, 32, 40,..., `--max-num-seqs`]. In the graph mode, the input for graphs at different levels is fixed, and inputs between levels are automatically padded to the next level. Currently, the default setting is recommended. Only in some scenarios is it necessary to set this separately to achieve optimal performance.
-`export VLLM_ASCEND_ENABLE_FLASHCOMM1=1` indicates that Flashcomm1 optimization is enabled. Currently, this optimization is only supported for MoE in scenarios where tp_size > 1.
In this section, we provide simple scripts to re-produce our latest performance. It is also recommended to read instructions above to understand basic concepts or options in vLLM && vLLM-Ascend.
### Environment
- vLLM v0.13.0
- vLLM-Ascend v0.13.0rc1
- CANN 8.3.RC2
- torch_npu 2.8.0
- HDK/driver 25.3.RC1
- triton_ascend 3.2.0.dev2025110717
**Notice:**
triton_ascend is required for reproducing best performance of Qwen3-235B in vLLM-Ascend. If it is not installed in your environment, please follow the instructions below:
1. Setting `export VLLM_ASCEND_ENABLE_FUSED_MC2=1` enables MoE fused operators that reduce time consumption of MoE in both prefill and decode. This is an experimental feature which only supports W8A8 quantization on Atlas A3 servers now. If you encounter any problems when using this feature, you can disable it by setting `export VLLM_ASCEND_ENABLE_FUSED_MC2=0` and update issues in vLLM-Ascend community.
2. Here we disable prefix cache because of random datasets. You can enable prefix cache if requests have long common prefix.
### Three Node A3 -- PD disaggregation
On three Atlas 800 A3(64G*16)server, we recommend to use one node as one prefill instance and two nodes as one decode instance. Example server scripts:
Prefill Node 1
```shell
#!/bin/sh
export HCCL_IF_IP=prefill_node_1_ip
# Set ifname according to your network setting
ifname=""
export GLOO_SOCKET_IFNAME=${ifname}
export TP_SOCKET_IFNAME=${ifname}
export HCCL_SOCKET_IFNAME=${ifname}
# Load model from ModelScope to speed up download
export VLLM_USE_MODELSCOPE=true
# To reduce memory fragmentation and avoid out of memory
1. We recommend to set `export VLLM_ASCEND_ENABLE_FUSED_MC2=2` on this scenario (typically EP32 for Qwen3-235B). This enables a different MoE fusion operator.