Context, not the claim: this change on dev itself (9b582f9f, a local commit on dev 01f32c06, 2026-10-05), without the embedding change it is stacked on, with a 64-token prompt only. The start gained (5.79 to 5.17 s) and the peak footprint fell by 0.9 GB. The 32 tokens generated after the prompt varied too much to compare (dev 0.76-1.56 tok/s, this change 0.97-1.21), and both versions wrote to swap in every run (dev 0.95-1.71 GB, this change 0.65-0.82 GB per run, system-wide counter). On the embedding change neither happens (manifest.json), which is why this change is measured on it.

## summary
model <model>; text promessi_sposi.txt; lengths 64; gen 32; runs 4; extra env: none
cooldown before every run: 60 seconds, after waiting for thermal state 0: yes, at most 900s; thermal states: 0 nominal, 1 fair, 2 serious, 3 critical
v0: bin-dev/qwen36-bench (commit 01f32c0671958a2a69309248dd6aa28a60213557 (CPU engine, make qwen36 flags on macOS))
v1: bin-pr/qwen36-bench (commit 9b582f9ffe02b203b0d42ad67cbb99570cc729d4 (CPU engine, make qwen36 flags on macOS))
order: the binaries' order turns at every round (ABBA)

v0: 4 runs (median, min-max)
tokens    new            prompt tok/s          first token ms        generation tok/s  experts read  fingerprint
    64     64        1.84 (1.83-1.85)         1012 (821-1206)     1.349 (0.758-1.557)         11180  a6454a25a196ce08
peak memory 5903 MB, model ready in 5.79 s (medians)

v1: 4 runs (median, min-max)
tokens    new            prompt tok/s          first token ms        generation tok/s  experts read  fingerprint
    64     64        1.83 (1.83-1.84)        1183 (1155-1202)     1.014 (0.971-1.206)         11180  a6454a25a196ce08
peak memory 5078 MB, model ready in 5.17 s (medians)

warm-up (does not count): 64 tokens: prompt 1.84 tok/s, generation 1.102 tok/s

v1 against v0 (medians):
    64 tokens: prompt -0.5%, first token -14.4%, generation -24.9%  (same results)
(positive = faster)
swap used 585.19M -> 531.50M; pages written to swap during the runs: 560700 (16 KB each)

Paths shortened: <model> is the model directory; bin-dev/ and bin-pr/ hold the two builds of the harness; promessi_sposi.txt is the text. Units: /usr/bin/time -l gives bytes; the engine's own lines ('[bench] peak RSS', '[dense-i8] ... GB f32 freed') are in GiB, and summary.txt's 'peak memory ... MB' is in MiB.

# The same change applied to dev directly (9b582f9f), against dev 01f32c06: prompt of 64 tokens, 32 generated tokens

model <model>; text promessi_sposi.txt; lengths 64; gen 32; runs 4; extra env: none
cooldown before every run: 60 seconds, after waiting for thermal state 0: yes, at most 900s; thermal states: 0 nominal, 1 fair, 2 serious, 3 critical
v0: bin-dev/qwen36-bench (commit 01f32c0671958a2a69309248dd6aa28a60213557 (CPU engine, make qwen36 flags on macOS))
v1: bin-pr/qwen36-bench (commit 9b582f9ffe02b203b0d42ad67cbb99570cc729d4 (CPU engine, make qwen36 flags on macOS))
order: the binaries' order turns at every round (ABBA)

host before the runs: 2026-10-05 18:35:46 chrome=0 System-wide memory free percentage: 82% swap_used=585.19M swapouts=20450076

host after the runs: 2026-10-05 18:55:20 chrome=0 System-wide memory free percentage: 79% swap_used=531.50M swapouts=21010776

## warmup (warm-up, discarded)
### before the run (date, thermal state, swap, wait)
2026-10-05 18:36:46
0
swap_used=569.19M swapouts=20450076
waited for state 0: 0s

### harness output
ctx_tokens,prefill_tokens,prefill_s,prefill_tps,gen_tokens,gen_first_ms,gen_steady_tps,expert_miss,disk_s,fingerprint,tokens,nll,top1
64,64,34.695,1.84,32,1135.0,1.102,11180,31.44,a6454a25a196ce08,0288d021ad431e5e,0.00000,0.000

### engine log and /usr/bin/time -l
[tok] loaded 248044 pieces (max id 248069) from <model>/tokenizer.json
[meta] loaded: q_heads=16 kv_heads=2 head_dim=256 q_head_dim=512 k_head_dim=256 v_head_dim=256 o_in=4096 rotary_dim=64 n_experts=256 topk=8 inter=512 shared_inter=512 n_group=1 topk_group=1 attn_output_gate=1 n_active=10
[meta] DeltaNet: vheads=32 kheads=16 kdim=128 vdim=128 convk=4 conv_dim=8192
[dense-i8] 291 matrices quantized during load, 7.2 GB f32 freed
[bench] CPU ready in 5.56 s; text 1765 tokens; lengths 64; gen 32; each length from an empty state
[qwen36] expert kernel: planar int4 in RAM (expert_ffn.h), QWEN_EXPERT_KERNEL=0 restores int8 unpack
[qwen36] int4 packed weights detected — kept int4, repacked planar for expert_ffn.h
[bench] peak RSS 2.80 GB
       69.78 real       201.40 user        40.66 sys
          3007856640  maximum resident set size
                   0  average shared memory size
                   0  average unshared data size
                   0  average unshared stack size
             2203846  page reclaims
                  43  page faults
                   0  swaps
                   0  block input operations
                   0  block output operations
                   0  messages sent
                   0  messages received
                   0  signals received
               14046  voluntary context switches
              775978  involuntary context switches
       1131422545834  instructions retired
        635741558004  cycles elapsed
          5893058688  peak memory footprint

### after the run
2026-10-05 18:37:56
0
swap_used=662.06M swapouts=20506188

## v0-run1
### before the run (date, thermal state, swap, wait)
2026-10-05 18:38:56
0
swap_used=632.75M swapouts=20506188
waited for state 0: 0s

### harness output
ctx_tokens,prefill_tokens,prefill_s,prefill_tps,gen_tokens,gen_first_ms,gen_steady_tps,expert_miss,disk_s,fingerprint,tokens,nll,top1
64,64,34.814,1.84,32,821.0,1.537,11180,28.56,a6454a25a196ce08,0288d021ad431e5e,0.00000,0.000

### engine log and /usr/bin/time -l
[tok] loaded 248044 pieces (max id 248069) from <model>/tokenizer.json
[meta] loaded: q_heads=16 kv_heads=2 head_dim=256 q_head_dim=512 k_head_dim=256 v_head_dim=256 o_in=4096 rotary_dim=64 n_experts=256 topk=8 inter=512 shared_inter=512 n_group=1 topk_group=1 attn_output_gate=1 n_active=10
[meta] DeltaNet: vheads=32 kheads=16 kdim=128 vdim=128 convk=4 conv_dim=8192
[dense-i8] 291 matrices quantized during load, 7.2 GB f32 freed
[bench] CPU ready in 5.66 s; text 1765 tokens; lengths 64; gen 32; each length from an empty state
[qwen36] expert kernel: planar int4 in RAM (expert_ffn.h), QWEN_EXPERT_KERNEL=0 restores int8 unpack
[qwen36] int4 packed weights detected — kept int4, repacked planar for expert_ffn.h
[bench] peak RSS 2.95 GB
       61.69 real       202.18 user        11.78 sys
          3166257152  maximum resident set size
                   0  average shared memory size
                   0  average unshared data size
                   0  average unshared stack size
              919700  page reclaims
                  21  page faults
                   0  swaps
                   0  block input operations
                   0  block output operations
                   0  messages sent
                   0  messages received
                   0  signals received
               13598  voluntary context switches
              475048  involuntary context switches
       1109762450556  instructions retired
        561532344310  cycles elapsed
          6357939200  peak memory footprint

### after the run
2026-10-05 18:39:58
0
swap_used=1097.12M swapouts=20598676

## v1-run1
### before the run (date, thermal state, swap, wait)
2026-10-05 18:40:58
0
swap_used=794.06M swapouts=20598676
waited for state 0: 0s

### harness output
ctx_tokens,prefill_tokens,prefill_s,prefill_tps,gen_tokens,gen_first_ms,gen_steady_tps,expert_miss,disk_s,fingerprint,tokens,nll,top1
64,64,35.007,1.83,32,1169.1,0.971,11180,32.11,a6454a25a196ce08,0288d021ad431e5e,0.00000,0.000

### engine log and /usr/bin/time -l
[tok] loaded 248044 pieces (max id 248069) from <model>/tokenizer.json
[meta] loaded: q_heads=16 kv_heads=2 head_dim=256 q_head_dim=512 k_head_dim=256 v_head_dim=256 o_in=4096 rotary_dim=64 n_experts=256 topk=8 inter=512 shared_inter=512 n_group=1 topk_group=1 attn_output_gate=1 n_active=10
[meta] DeltaNet: vheads=32 kheads=16 kdim=128 vdim=128 convk=4 conv_dim=8192
[qwen-dense] <model>/canonical.qc: 291 INT8 matrices (1941078016 bytes) checked in 0.144 s, read instead of converted
[dense-i8] 291 matrices quantized during load, 7.2 GB f32 freed
[bench] CPU ready in 5.05 s; text 1765 tokens; lengths 64; gen 32; each length from an empty state
[qwen36] expert kernel: planar int4 in RAM (expert_ffn.h), QWEN_EXPERT_KERNEL=0 restores int8 unpack
[qwen36] int4 packed weights detected — kept int4, repacked planar for expert_ffn.h
[bench] peak RSS 2.90 GB
       73.44 real       194.26 user        57.95 sys
          3109257216  maximum resident set size
                   0  average shared memory size
                   0  average unshared data size
                   0  average unshared stack size
             2705153  page reclaims
              118511  page faults
                   0  swaps
                   0  block input operations
                   0  block output operations
                   0  messages sent
                   0  messages received
                   0  signals received
               14367  voluntary context switches
              975825  involuntary context switches
       1084518095964  instructions retired
        661502167427  cycles elapsed
          5420035456  peak memory footprint

### after the run
2026-10-05 18:42:12
0
swap_used=696.50M swapouts=20638044

## v0-run2
### before the run (date, thermal state, swap, wait)
2026-10-05 18:45:20
0
swap_used=644.75M swapouts=20687820
waited for state 0: 0s

### harness output
ctx_tokens,prefill_tokens,prefill_s,prefill_tps,gen_tokens,gen_first_ms,gen_steady_tps,expert_miss,disk_s,fingerprint,tokens,nll,top1
64,64,34.662,1.85,32,1184.9,1.162,11180,30.25,a6454a25a196ce08,0288d021ad431e5e,0.00000,0.000

### engine log and /usr/bin/time -l
[tok] loaded 248044 pieces (max id 248069) from <model>/tokenizer.json
[meta] loaded: q_heads=16 kv_heads=2 head_dim=256 q_head_dim=512 k_head_dim=256 v_head_dim=256 o_in=4096 rotary_dim=64 n_experts=256 topk=8 inter=512 shared_inter=512 n_group=1 topk_group=1 attn_output_gate=1 n_active=10
[meta] DeltaNet: vheads=32 kheads=16 kdim=128 vdim=128 convk=4 conv_dim=8192
[dense-i8] 291 matrices quantized during load, 7.2 GB f32 freed
[bench] CPU ready in 6.09 s; text 1765 tokens; lengths 64; gen 32; each length from an empty state
[qwen36] expert kernel: planar int4 in RAM (expert_ffn.h), QWEN_EXPERT_KERNEL=0 restores int8 unpack
[qwen36] int4 packed weights detected — kept int4, repacked planar for expert_ffn.h
[bench] peak RSS 2.79 GB
       68.86 real       200.15 user        34.85 sys
          2990784512  maximum resident set size
                   0  average shared memory size
                   0  average unshared data size
                   0  average unshared stack size
             2064497  page reclaims
                  43  page faults
                   0  swaps
                   0  block input operations
                   0  block output operations
                   0  messages sent
                   0  messages received
                   0  signals received
               14184  voluntary context switches
              789240  involuntary context switches
       1129926002252  instructions retired
        620676837043  cycles elapsed
          6021312832  peak memory footprint

### after the run
2026-10-05 18:46:29
0
swap_used=605.62M swapouts=20763680

## v1-run2
### before the run (date, thermal state, swap, wait)
2026-10-05 18:43:12
0
swap_used=640.50M swapouts=20638044
waited for state 0: 0s

### harness output
ctx_tokens,prefill_tokens,prefill_s,prefill_tps,gen_tokens,gen_first_ms,gen_steady_tps,expert_miss,disk_s,fingerprint,tokens,nll,top1
64,64,34.762,1.84,32,1196.4,1.206,11180,30.79,a6454a25a196ce08,0288d021ad431e5e,0.00000,0.000

### engine log and /usr/bin/time -l
[tok] loaded 248044 pieces (max id 248069) from <model>/tokenizer.json
[meta] loaded: q_heads=16 kv_heads=2 head_dim=256 q_head_dim=512 k_head_dim=256 v_head_dim=256 o_in=4096 rotary_dim=64 n_experts=256 topk=8 inter=512 shared_inter=512 n_group=1 topk_group=1 attn_output_gate=1 n_active=10
[meta] DeltaNet: vheads=32 kheads=16 kdim=128 vdim=128 convk=4 conv_dim=8192
[qwen-dense] <model>/canonical.qc: 291 INT8 matrices (1941078016 bytes) checked in 0.144 s, read instead of converted
[dense-i8] 291 matrices quantized during load, 7.2 GB f32 freed
[bench] CPU ready in 5.28 s; text 1765 tokens; lengths 64; gen 32; each length from an empty state
[qwen36] expert kernel: planar int4 in RAM (expert_ffn.h), QWEN_EXPERT_KERNEL=0 restores int8 unpack
[qwen36] int4 packed weights detected — kept int4, repacked planar for expert_ffn.h
[bench] peak RSS 2.90 GB
       67.20 real       195.06 user        29.48 sys
          3110223872  maximum resident set size
                   0  average shared memory size
                   0  average unshared data size
                   0  average unshared stack size
             1571332  page reclaims
              118503  page faults
                   0  swaps
                   0  block input operations
                   0  block output operations
                   0  messages sent
                   0  messages received
                   0  signals received
               14040  voluntary context switches
              711944  involuntary context switches
       1066221916412  instructions retired
        589359217512  cycles elapsed
          5318749568  peak memory footprint

### after the run
2026-10-05 18:44:19
0
swap_used=676.75M swapouts=20687820

## v0-run3
### before the run (date, thermal state, swap, wait)
2026-10-05 18:47:29
0
swap_used=559.50M swapouts=20763680
waited for state 0: 0s

### harness output
ctx_tokens,prefill_tokens,prefill_s,prefill_tps,gen_tokens,gen_first_ms,gen_steady_tps,expert_miss,disk_s,fingerprint,tokens,nll,top1
64,64,34.832,1.84,32,838.8,1.557,11180,28.64,a6454a25a196ce08,0288d021ad431e5e,0.00000,0.000

### engine log and /usr/bin/time -l
[tok] loaded 248044 pieces (max id 248069) from <model>/tokenizer.json
[meta] loaded: q_heads=16 kv_heads=2 head_dim=256 q_head_dim=512 k_head_dim=256 v_head_dim=256 o_in=4096 rotary_dim=64 n_experts=256 topk=8 inter=512 shared_inter=512 n_group=1 topk_group=1 attn_output_gate=1 n_active=10
[meta] DeltaNet: vheads=32 kheads=16 kdim=128 vdim=128 convk=4 conv_dim=8192
[dense-i8] 291 matrices quantized during load, 7.2 GB f32 freed
[bench] CPU ready in 5.88 s; text 1765 tokens; lengths 64; gen 32; each length from an empty state
[qwen36] expert kernel: planar int4 in RAM (expert_ffn.h), QWEN_EXPERT_KERNEL=0 restores int8 unpack
[qwen36] int4 packed weights detected — kept int4, repacked planar for expert_ffn.h
[bench] peak RSS 2.95 GB
       61.68 real       202.35 user        10.71 sys
          3172384768  maximum resident set size
                   0  average shared memory size
                   0  average unshared data size
                   0  average unshared stack size
              883213  page reclaims
                  26  page faults
                   0  swaps
                   0  block input operations
                   0  block output operations
                   0  messages sent
                   0  messages received
                   0  signals received
               13412  voluntary context switches
              482232  involuntary context switches
       1109439611482  instructions retired
        558577884220  cycles elapsed
          6393033728  peak memory footprint

### after the run
2026-10-05 18:48:31
0
swap_used=739.44M swapouts=20867824

## v1-run3
### before the run (date, thermal state, swap, wait)
2026-10-05 18:49:31
0
swap_used=723.44M swapouts=20867824
waited for state 0: 0s

### harness output
ctx_tokens,prefill_tokens,prefill_s,prefill_tps,gen_tokens,gen_first_ms,gen_steady_tps,expert_miss,disk_s,fingerprint,tokens,nll,top1
64,64,34.923,1.83,32,1154.7,1.035,11180,32.32,a6454a25a196ce08,0288d021ad431e5e,0.00000,0.000

### engine log and /usr/bin/time -l
[tok] loaded 248044 pieces (max id 248069) from <model>/tokenizer.json
[meta] loaded: q_heads=16 kv_heads=2 head_dim=256 q_head_dim=512 k_head_dim=256 v_head_dim=256 o_in=4096 rotary_dim=64 n_experts=256 topk=8 inter=512 shared_inter=512 n_group=1 topk_group=1 attn_output_gate=1 n_active=10
[meta] DeltaNet: vheads=32 kheads=16 kdim=128 vdim=128 convk=4 conv_dim=8192
[qwen-dense] <model>/canonical.qc: 291 INT8 matrices (1941078016 bytes) checked in 0.128 s, read instead of converted
[dense-i8] 291 matrices quantized during load, 7.2 GB f32 freed
[bench] CPU ready in 4.96 s; text 1765 tokens; lengths 64; gen 32; each length from an empty state
[qwen36] expert kernel: planar int4 in RAM (expert_ffn.h), QWEN_EXPERT_KERNEL=0 restores int8 unpack
[qwen36] int4 packed weights detected — kept int4, repacked planar for expert_ffn.h
[bench] peak RSS 2.74 GB
       71.26 real       194.69 user        47.09 sys
          2945155072  maximum resident set size
                   0  average shared memory size
                   0  average unshared data size
                   0  average unshared stack size
             2210668  page reclaims
              118553  page faults
                   0  swaps
                   0  block input operations
                   0  block output operations
                   0  messages sent
                   0  messages received
                   0  signals received
               14140  voluntary context switches
              839347  involuntary context switches
       1076129817366  instructions retired
        633350301232  cycles elapsed
          5318766016  peak memory footprint

### after the run
2026-10-05 18:50:43
0
swap_used=739.38M swapouts=20913204

## v0-run4
### before the run (date, thermal state, swap, wait)
2026-10-05 18:53:56
0
swap_used=556.50M swapouts=20952876
waited for state 0: 0s

### harness output
ctx_tokens,prefill_tokens,prefill_s,prefill_tps,gen_tokens,gen_first_ms,gen_steady_tps,expert_miss,disk_s,fingerprint,tokens,nll,top1
64,64,34.937,1.83,32,1205.9,0.758,11180,32.77,a6454a25a196ce08,0288d021ad431e5e,0.00000,0.000

### engine log and /usr/bin/time -l
[tok] loaded 248044 pieces (max id 248069) from <model>/tokenizer.json
[meta] loaded: q_heads=16 kv_heads=2 head_dim=256 q_head_dim=512 k_head_dim=256 v_head_dim=256 o_in=4096 rotary_dim=64 n_experts=256 topk=8 inter=512 shared_inter=512 n_group=1 topk_group=1 attn_output_gate=1 n_active=10
[meta] DeltaNet: vheads=32 kheads=16 kdim=128 vdim=128 convk=4 conv_dim=8192
[dense-i8] 291 matrices quantized during load, 7.2 GB f32 freed
[bench] CPU ready in 5.71 s; text 1765 tokens; lengths 64; gen 32; each length from an empty state
[qwen36] expert kernel: planar int4 in RAM (expert_ffn.h), QWEN_EXPERT_KERNEL=0 restores int8 unpack
[qwen36] int4 packed weights detected — kept int4, repacked planar for expert_ffn.h
[bench] peak RSS 2.64 GB
       83.04 real       199.56 user        89.11 sys
          2837020672  maximum resident set size
                   0  average shared memory size
                   0  average unshared data size
                   0  average unshared stack size
             4286580  page reclaims
                  46  page faults
                   0  swaps
                   0  block input operations
                   0  block output operations
                   0  messages sent
                   0  messages received
                   0  signals received
               14336  voluntary context switches
             1338146  involuntary context switches
       1165685861339  instructions retired
        760251496621  cycles elapsed
          5692354304  peak memory footprint

### after the run
2026-10-05 18:55:20
0
swap_used=745.62M swapouts=21010776

## v1-run4
### before the run (date, thermal state, swap, wait)
2026-10-05 18:51:43
0
swap_used=675.38M swapouts=20913204
waited for state 0: 0s

### harness output
ctx_tokens,prefill_tokens,prefill_s,prefill_tps,gen_tokens,gen_first_ms,gen_steady_tps,expert_miss,disk_s,fingerprint,tokens,nll,top1
64,64,34.903,1.83,32,1202.0,0.992,11180,32.48,a6454a25a196ce08,0288d021ad431e5e,0.00000,0.000

### engine log and /usr/bin/time -l
[tok] loaded 248044 pieces (max id 248069) from <model>/tokenizer.json
[meta] loaded: q_heads=16 kv_heads=2 head_dim=256 q_head_dim=512 k_head_dim=256 v_head_dim=256 o_in=4096 rotary_dim=64 n_experts=256 topk=8 inter=512 shared_inter=512 n_group=1 topk_group=1 attn_output_gate=1 n_active=10
[meta] DeltaNet: vheads=32 kheads=16 kdim=128 vdim=128 convk=4 conv_dim=8192
[qwen-dense] <model>/canonical.qc: 291 INT8 matrices (1941078016 bytes) checked in 0.144 s, read instead of converted
[dense-i8] 291 matrices quantized during load, 7.2 GB f32 freed
[bench] CPU ready in 5.59 s; text 1765 tokens; lengths 64; gen 32; each length from an empty state
[qwen36] expert kernel: planar int4 in RAM (expert_ffn.h), QWEN_EXPERT_KERNEL=0 restores int8 unpack
[qwen36] int4 packed weights detected — kept int4, repacked planar for expert_ffn.h
[bench] peak RSS 2.83 GB
       73.20 real       194.69 user        54.28 sys
          3042344960  maximum resident set size
                   0  average shared memory size
                   0  average unshared data size
                   0  average unshared stack size
             2479933  page reclaims
              118499  page faults
                   0  swaps
                   0  block input operations
                   0  block output operations
                   0  messages sent
                   0  messages received
                   0  signals received
               14181  voluntary context switches
              887819  involuntary context switches
       1080030746432  instructions retired
        651613933276  cycles elapsed
          5329841600  peak memory footprint

### after the run
2026-10-05 18:52:56
0
swap_used=740.31M swapouts=20952876
