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Copy a tensor back from the device before ETDump writes it - #22095

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fix-etdump-device-tensor
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Copy a tensor back from the device before ETDump writes it#22095
shoumikhin merged 5 commits into
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fix-etdump-device-tensor

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@shoumikhin shoumikhin commented Aug 24, 2026

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Summary

ETDump records an intermediate tensor by handing the tensor's data pointer to a
data sink, and every sink reads those bytes with a plain host read:

memcpy(cur_data_begin, ptr, length);

When the tensor lives on an accelerator that pointer is not host memory, so the
read segfaults. A program placed on CUDA crashes as soon as tracing is turned
on, which is exactly when someone is trying to debug it.

Returning an error instead would not help. All four callers wrap the result in
ET_CHECK_MSG, so an error aborts the process rather than skipping the tensor.

This change brings the data back to host memory first. When the tensor is not on
CPU, ETDump looks up the allocator registered for that device type, stages the
bytes into a temporary host buffer with copy_device_to_host, writes that buffer
to the sink and frees it. A tensor on CPU keeps the old path and copies nothing
extra.

If no allocator is registered for the device, ETDump now reports NotFound and
logs the device type instead of reading the pointer anyway.

Test plan

Two new test files, each with a CMake target and a Buck target.

devtools/etdump/tests/etdump_device_test.cpp registers the existing
MockCudaAllocator, which backs its device memory with host memory, and has two
tests. One logs a tensor tagged as CUDA and checks both that ETDump went through
the allocator and that the bytes reached the debug buffer. The other logs a
tensor on CPU and checks that the allocator was not used at all, so the CPU path
is unchanged.

devtools/etdump/tests/etdump_device_no_allocator_test.cpp covers the case where
nothing is registered for the device. The registry is a process wide static with
no way to remove an entry, so that case needs a binary that never registers
anything, which is why it is a second file.

devtools/etdump/tests/CMakeLists.txt was not referenced by any parent
CMakeLists.txt, so nothing in that directory was built by CMake. This adds
add_subdirectory(tests) to devtools/etdump/CMakeLists.txt under
BUILD_TESTING, so both new tests are picked up by ctest, which is how the C++
tests run.

The pre-existing sdk_etdump_tests target stays out of the CMake build. It
compiles etdump_test.cpp, which includes etdump_filter.h, which needs re2,
and the devtools build does not pull re2 in. It is now guarded on re2 being
available rather than being silently unreachable.

With this change both new binaries pass under ctest:

1/2 Test #1: etdump_device_test ................   Passed
2/2 Test #2: etdump_device_no_allocator_test ...   Passed

With etdump_flatcc.cpp reverted to the old code and everything rebuilt, both
fail:

Expected equality of these values:
  g_mock_cuda.d2h_count_
    Which is: 0
  1

Death test: etdump_gen.log_evalue(EValue(tensor))
    Result: failed to die.

Also reproduced the real crash on one NVIDIA H100, with a small program that
allocates through cudaMalloc, tags a tensor as CUDA and logs it:

before: Segmentation fault (core dumped)
after:  debug buffer holds 1.5 2.5 3.5 4.5

Checked that etdump_flatcc.cpp still compiles with -DUSE_ATEN_LIB.

clang-format reports no changes needed on the four touched C++ files.

Landing order

#22058 adds device-planned arenas to the Python bindings that ETDump can be handed
pointers into, and without this change BufferDataSink::write would memcpy device
memory from the host. This should land before or together with it.

Not covered

The ATen mode branch of the device type conversion only compiles. There is no
ATen mode CMake build to run it in, so nothing here executes it. It is reachable
in principle: runtime/executor/tensor_parser_aten.cpp reads the serialized
device type and index, including CUDA, and builds the ATen tensor on that device.
An earlier version of this description said ATen tensors carry no device metadata,
which is wrong.

LogTensorOnCpuDoesNotStageThroughTheAllocator passes with the production change
reverted, since CPU tensors already went straight to the data sink. It documents
the CPU path rather than locking the fix; the other two tests are the ones that
require the new branch.

@shoumikhin
shoumikhin requested a review from Gasoonjia as a code owner August 24, 2026 18:28
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🔗 Helpful Links

🧪 See artifacts and rendered test results at hud.pytorch.org/pr/pytorch/executorch/22095

Note: Links to docs will display an error until the docs builds have been completed.

⏳ No Failures, 16 Pending

As of commit 74995b7 with merge base 381a30c (image):
💚 Looks good so far! There are no failures yet. 💚

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shoumikhin force-pushed the fix-etdump-device-tensor branch from 4dacc67 to 307b649 Compare August 24, 2026 19:00

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ETDump records an intermediate tensor by handing the tensor's data pointer to
a data sink, and every sink reads those bytes with a plain host read:

  memcpy(cur_data_begin, ptr, length);

When the tensor lives on an accelerator that pointer is not host memory, so
the read segfaults. A program placed on CUDA crashes as soon as tracing is
turned on, which is exactly when someone is trying to debug it.

Returning an error instead would not help. All four callers wrap the result in
ET_CHECK_MSG, so an error aborts the process rather than skipping the tensor.

This change brings the data back to host memory first. When the tensor is not
on CPU, ETDump looks up the allocator registered for that device type, stages
the bytes into a temporary host buffer with copy_device_to_host, writes that
buffer to the sink and frees it. A tensor on CPU keeps the old path and copies
nothing extra.

If no allocator is registered for the device, ETDump now reports NotFound and
logs the device type instead of reading the pointer anyway.

Test plan:

Two new test files, each with a CMake target and a Buck target.

devtools/etdump/tests/etdump_device_test.cpp registers the existing
MockCudaAllocator, which backs its device memory with host memory, and has two
tests. One logs a tensor tagged as CUDA and checks both that ETDump went
through the allocator and that the bytes reached the debug buffer. The other
logs a tensor on CPU and checks that the allocator was not used at all, so the
CPU path is unchanged.

devtools/etdump/tests/etdump_device_no_allocator_test.cpp covers the case
where nothing is registered for the device. The registry is a process wide
static with no way to remove an entry, so that case needs a binary that never
registers anything, which is why it is a second file.

devtools/etdump/tests/CMakeLists.txt was not referenced by any parent
CMakeLists, so nothing in that directory was built by CMake. This adds
add_subdirectory(tests) to devtools/etdump/CMakeLists.txt under BUILD_TESTING,
so both new tests are picked up by ctest, which is how the C++ tests run.

The pre-existing sdk_etdump_tests target stays out of the CMake build. It
compiles etdump_test.cpp, which includes etdump_filter.h, which needs re2, and
the devtools build does not pull re2 in. It is now guarded on re2 being
available rather than being silently unreachable.

With this change both new binaries pass under ctest:

  1/2 Test #1: etdump_device_test ................   Passed
  2/2 Test #2: etdump_device_no_allocator_test ...   Passed

With etdump_flatcc.cpp reverted to the old code and everything rebuilt, both
fail:

  Expected equality of these values:
    g_mock_cuda.d2h_count_
      Which is: 0
    1

  Death test: etdump_gen.log_evalue(EValue(tensor))
      Result: failed to die.

Also reproduced the real crash on one NVIDIA H100, with a small program that
allocates through cudaMalloc, tags a tensor as CUDA and logs it:

  before: Segmentation fault (core dumped)
  after:  debug buffer holds 1.5 2.5 3.5 4.5

Checked that etdump_flatcc.cpp still compiles with -DUSE_ATEN_LIB.

clang-format reports no changes needed on the four touched C++ files.

Not covered:

The ATen mode branch of the device type conversion only compiles. There is no
ATen mode CMake build to run it in, and an ATen mode tensor in ExecuTorch
carries no device metadata today, so the branch has no caller that can reach
it.
The re2-guarded suite links neither re2 nor etdump_filter.cpp, so it cannot link
where re2::re2 does exist. That predates this change, which only narrows when it
is attempted; say so rather than implying the branch is merely rare.

Also record why the two new tests do not call executorch_target_link_shared_runtime:
the root CMakeLists adds devtools before it defines executorch_shared, so the
target does not exist at that point. They run under Buck and the default static
CMake build, which have a single registry.
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shoumikhin force-pushed the fix-etdump-device-tensor branch from 9d41702 to 80bda29 Compare August 24, 2026 22:58

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Comment thread devtools/etdump/etdump_flatcc.cpp
Comment thread devtools/etdump/etdump_flatcc.cpp Outdated
…copy helper

Two changes from review feedback, no behavior change.

Reuse the existing device mapping. to_runtime_device_type had its own CPU/CUDA
switch in the USE_ATEN_LIB branch; that is exactly what
extension/aten_util/aten_bridge.h's torch_to_executorch_device already does, so
call it instead of duplicating the mapping. This pulls aten_bridge in as an
aten-only dependency of etdump_flatcc; the non-ATen build and the CMake build,
which never compile this branch, are unaffected.

Stop exposing the device-copy path. write_device_tensor_or_return_error was a
private member declared in the header. Nothing outside the class uses it, so move
it into the anonymous namespace as a free function that takes the DataSinkBase it
needs, and drop the declaration from etdump_flatcc.h. Only
write_tensor_or_return_error remains, which is the one entry point callers use;
it routes device tensors to the helper as before.
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@shoumikhin
shoumikhin merged commit adabd63 into main Aug 25, 2026
202 of 203 checks passed
@shoumikhin
shoumikhin deleted the fix-etdump-device-tensor branch August 25, 2026 01:02
shoumikhin added a commit that referenced this pull request Aug 25, 2026
…am (#22058)

# Fix device placement for memory-planned buffers in
Runtime.load_program

Replaces #22057. That pull request was force-pushed to a commit with no
history in common with main, which made GitHub close it permanently.
Same
branch, same change, correct history.

## The problem

ExecuTorch has two ways to load a model from Python. With the CUDA
backend, one
of them works and the other crashes. Same `.pte` file, same `.ptd`
weights file,
same default export settings. Only the loader differs.

```python
# works
_load_for_executorch(pte_path, ptd_path).forward([x])

# crashes
Runtime.get().load_program(pte_path, data_path=ptd_path) \
    .load_method("forward").execute([x])
```

The crash looks like this:

```
[cuda_backend.cpp:548] Tensor 0 has device_type=CUDA but its data pointer
0x... is not backed by CUDA device memory
(cudaPointerGetAttributes err=0, cudaMemoryType=0).
RuntimeError: method->execute() failed with error 0x12
```

## Why it happens

A `.pte` file records where each memory-planned buffer has to live, on
the host
or on an accelerator. That is the `non_const_buffer_device` field in the
plan.

`ProgramMemory` in `extension/pybindings/pybindings.cpp` never read that
field.
It allocated every planned buffer as host memory
(`std::vector<uint8_t>`). So a
program that asked for device memory received a host pointer. The CUDA
backend
checked the pointer, saw it was not device memory, and refused to run.

```
.pte says:  buffer 0 -> CUDA:0
before:     buffer 0 -> std::vector<uint8_t>        (host)   -> backend rejects
after:      buffer 0 -> DeviceMemoryBuffer::create  (device) -> backend accepts
```

## The fix

`extension/module/module.cpp` hits the same problem in the C++ `Module`
API and
answers it differently, because it has a `share_memory_arenas` flag and
this
loader has none. `Module` refuses to load a device-planned method when
that flag
is set, and otherwise builds per-method arenas for every method.
`Runtime.load_program` shares arenas unconditionally today and offers no
way to
turn that off, so refusing would stop files loading that load now. It
keeps the
shared host arenas for host methods and gives a device-planned method
its own.

1. `ProgramMemory` now receives the per-buffer device list alongside the
sizes,
and allocates each buffer on the device it is tagged for. Host-tagged
buffers
   keep using `std::vector<uint8_t>`, exactly as before.
2. Buffer indices are plan local. Buffer 0 of one method has nothing to
do with
buffer 0 of another, so one set of arenas shared by index cannot
describe a
file where one method plans onto the host and another onto an
accelerator. A
method with any device-tagged buffer therefore gets its own arenas, and
every
   other method keeps using the shared host arenas.
3. Those arenas are built in `load_method`, not when the program is
loaded. A
file containing one accelerator method still opens on a machine without
that
accelerator, still lists its methods, and its host methods still load
and
run. Only loading the accelerator method fails, and it fails naming the
   buffer and the device it could not allocate.
4. The caller reads the device for each buffer through
   `MethodMeta::memory_planned_buffer_device`.
5. Two deprecated calls were replaced with their current names. Both are
plain
   forwarders, so behavior is unchanged.

`Program.load_method` in `runtime/__init__.py` documents all of this,
including
the part that is not new: two host-only methods of the same program
share one
set of arenas and therefore overwrite each other's intermediate values.

## Existing programs are unaffected

`non_const_buffer_device` is optional.
`MethodMeta::memory_planned_buffer_device`
returns `Device{CPU, 0}` when the field is absent, which is the case for
CPU-only programs and for `.pte` files produced before the field
existed. Such a
program keeps the shared arenas, the host allocation path, and the
single
argument `HierarchicalAllocator`, so
`MemoryManager::has_device_memory()` stays
false for it as that constructor documents.

## Test plan

Two tests in `extension/pybindings/test/test_pybindings.py`.

**`test_program_loads_when_one_method_is_device_planned`** covers the
refusal
path and needs no GPU, so it runs in the existing CPU-only job. It
exports a two
method program where one method has a device-tagged planned buffer and
the other
has none, then checks that the program loads, that the host method runs,
that
loading the device method reaches the device allocator and is refused
there, and
that the host method still runs afterwards. It first asserts that the
exported
program really does carry a CUDA-tagged planned buffer, so it cannot
quietly
degrade into a plain multi-method test if planning stops tagging
devices. It
skips itself on a build that links the CUDA backend, because that
registers a
CUDA allocator at static init, the registry has no way to drop one, and
the
request would then be satisfied with or without this change.

**`test_device_planned_method_allocates_on_the_device`** covers what the
refusal
is protecting: on a build that does have a device allocator, the arena
has to
come off the device rather than out of host memory. It builds a two
method
program where one method is lowered to the CUDA backend and the other is
not,
then measures free device memory with `torch.cuda.mem_get_info` around
each
`load_method` call. It asserts that loading the host method takes no
device
memory, that loading the device method takes at least 90 percent of the
planned
device bytes, that both methods return correct numbers, that running the
host
method in between does not disturb the device method, and that the
memory is
returned once the methods and the program are all dropped. The test
deletes both
methods before releasing the program: each method owns its own memory,
so a method
kept alive after the program is released still holds its allocation. It
skips
unless the build links the CUDA backend and a device is visible.

That second test can only run where a device allocator is registered, so
this
pull request also wires it into the job that has one. The
`unittest-cuda` job in
`.github/workflows/cuda.yml` runs it, right after the install that job
already
does and before its builds, since the test needs nothing they produce.
That
workflow now triggers on changes under `extension/pybindings/` and to
`runtime/__init__.py`, and the job condition lists the same two paths so
the job
actually fires on them. Before this, no job in the repository built the
Python
extension with a device allocator and then ran the pybindings tests,
which is
exactly why this class of defect was invisible.

### Measured

Linux x86_64, NVIDIA A100 80GB, compute capability 8.0, CUDA 13.0,
Python 3.12,
torch 2.13.0. Two builds from one source tree, one CPU only and one with
the
CUDA backend. The before column is the merge base with `main`, produced
by
swapping only `pybindings.cpp` and rebuilding, so both columns are the
same
machine, the same model files and the same everything else.

Two methods in one program, `forward` on the host and `forward2` lowered
to
CUDA, planned device bytes 50331648 (48 MiB):

| Measurement | Before | After |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Device memory taken by `load_program` | 0 MiB | 0 MiB |
| Device memory taken by loading the host method | 0 MiB | 0 MiB |
| Device memory taken by loading the CUDA method | 0 MiB | 48 MiB |
| CUDA method produces correct numbers | no, error 0x12 | yes |
| Host method produces correct numbers | yes | yes |
| CUDA method still correct after running the host method | not reached
| yes |
| Device memory returned once the methods and program are dropped |
nothing to return | 48 MiB |

The before column is not a generic failure. The CUDA backend names the
defect
itself:

```
[cuda_backend.cpp:548] Tensor 0 has device_type=CUDA but its data pointer
0x7f5842fff010 is not backed by CUDA device memory
(cudaPointerGetAttributes err=0, cudaMemoryType=0).
[method.cpp:1528] CALL_DELEGATE execute failed at instruction 2: 0x12
```

Suites, on the same two builds:

| Suite | CUDA build | CPU-only build |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `extension/pybindings/test/test_pybindings.py` | 39 passed, 1 skipped,
2 failed | 39 passed, 1 skipped, 2 failed |
| the same file filtered to `-k device` | 4 passed, refusal test skipped
| 4 passed, success test skipped |
| `test_device_planned_method_allocates_on_the_device` alone, run the
way the CI script runs it | passed | skipped |

The two failures are `test_method_quantized_ops` and
`test_quantized_ops`. They
are pre-existing and unrelated: they need the quantized AOT library
preloaded,
which the Buck target does and a bare `pytest` invocation does not. They
reproduce identically at the merge base.

Linux aarch64, Jetson Orin Nano, Python 3.10, CPU-only build: identical
counts to
the x86_64 CPU-only column above, including the device tests and the
same two
pre-existing quantized-op failures. The CUDA success path is not
reachable on
that board, because its GPU needs a PyTorch build pinned to a different
version
than this repository requires, so only the host paths and the refusal
path are
covered there.

## Landing order

This should land after or together with #22095. The device arenas added
here are
allocated through the device allocator, and ETDump can be handed
pointers into
them when a delegate logs its arguments. `BufferDataSink::write` does a
plain host
`memcpy`, so recording a CUDA tensor would read device memory from the
host.
#22095 is the fix for that path: it routes non-CPU tensors through a
device copy
before writing. Landing this one first leaves that combination reachable
whenever
event tracing is on.

## Not covered

- Leaving a device-planned method out of the shared host arenas is not
covered
by any test. Delete that skip and both tests still pass, because nothing
in
Python can observe the shared arena sizes. What it saves is host memory
that
nothing reads, which grows with the model, so it is worth a C++ test
later.
- The device path is measured on one accelerator, an A100 with compute
  capability 8.0. Not measured on a Jetson board or on any non-CUDA
  accelerator.
- `has_device_buffers` and `make_method_memory` ask `MethodMeta` for one
buffer
at a time, and `MethodMeta::memory_planned_buffer_device` scans the
sparse
device list on each call, so the cost is the buffer count times the
device
entry count. Real programs measured here have 2 or 3 buffers and 1
device
entry, and `extension/module/module.cpp` already reads the same metadata
the
same way, but both counts come from the file. Removing the concern
properly
means a bulk accessor on `MethodMeta`, which would fix both callers at
once
  and belongs in its own change.

---------

Co-authored-by: Anthony Shoumikhin <shoumikhin@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: r <r@e>
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