Server Parameters

This page documents the parameters operators usually set directly. TokenSpeed uses familiar serving parameter names where the semantics match and keeps TokenSpeed-specific knobs for runtime features with different meaning.

For a compact compatibility table, see Compatible Parameters.

Model Loading

Parameter	Purpose
positional model	Model path or Hugging Face repo ID.
--model	Equivalent to positional model.
--tokenizer	Tokenizer path when it differs from the model path.
--tokenizer-mode	Select tokenizer behavior. auto uses fast tokenizers and model-specific hooks when available.
--skip-tokenizer-init	Skip tokenizer initialization for input-ID-only serving paths.
--load-format	Weight loading format: auto, pt, safetensors, npcache, dummy, or extensible.
--trust-remote-code	Allow custom model code from the model repository.
--revision	Model branch, tag, or commit.
--download-dir	Hugging Face download/cache directory.
--hf-overrides	JSON overrides for model configuration values.

Precision And Quantization

Parameter	Purpose
--dtype	Model weight and activation dtype. auto follows model metadata.
--kv-cache-dtype	KV cache dtype. Lower precision reduces KV memory and may require scaling factors.
--kv-cache-quant-method	KV cache quantization method.
--quantization	Weight quantization mode such as fp8, nvfp4, w8a8_fp8, or compressed-tensors.
--quantization-param-path	JSON file for KV cache scaling factors, commonly needed with FP8 KV cache.

API Surface

Parameter	Purpose
--host	HTTP bind host.
--port	HTTP bind port.
--served-model-name	Model name returned by the OpenAI-compatible API.
--api-key	API key required by the server.
--chat-template	Built-in chat template name or template file path (handled by the smg gateway).
--stream-interval	Streaming buffer interval in generated tokens. Smaller values stream more frequently.
--stream-output	Return generated text as disjoint streaming segments.

Scheduler And Memory

Parameter	Purpose
--max-model-len	Maximum sequence length. If omitted, TokenSpeed uses the model config.
--gpu-memory-utilization	Fraction of GPU memory used for model weights and KV cache. Lower it to leave headroom.
--max-num-seqs	Maximum number of active sequences the scheduler may process concurrently.
--chunked-prefill-size	Token budget the scheduler may issue in one iteration. Defaults to 8192. Set -1 to disable chunked prefill.
--max-prefill-tokens	Prefill token budget used when chunked prefill is disabled. Defaults to 8192.
--max-total-tokens	Override the automatically calculated token pool size.
--block-size	KV cache block size.
--enable-prefix-caching / --no-enable-prefix-caching	Enable or disable prefix cache reuse.
--enforce-eager	Disable CUDA graph execution.
--max-cudagraph-capture-size	Largest batch size to capture with CUDA graphs.
--cudagraph-capture-sizes	Explicit CUDA graph capture sizes.

--chunked-prefill-size is intentionally separate from --max-num-batched-tokens: in TokenSpeed it is the scheduler's per-iteration issue budget, while --max-total-tokens controls the global token pool.

Parallelism

Parameter	Purpose
--tensor-parallel-size, --tp	Familiar alias for setting attention tensor parallel size.
--attn-tp-size	Tensor parallel size for attention.
--dense-tp-size	Tensor parallel size for dense layers.
--moe-tp-size	Tensor parallel size for MoE layers.
--data-parallel-size	Number of data-parallel replicas.
--enable-expert-parallel	Set expert parallelism across the selected world size.
--expert-parallel-size, --ep-size	Explicit expert parallel size.
--world-size	Total worker process count across all nodes.
--nprocs-per-node	Worker process count per node.
--nnodes	Number of nodes.
--node-rank	Rank of the current node.
--dist-init-addr	Distributed initialization address.

Use --tensor-parallel-size for simple launches. Use the TokenSpeed-specific split knobs when attention, dense, and MoE layers need different process groups.

Backend Selection

Parameter	Purpose
--attention-backend	Attention kernel backend. Common values include mha, fa3, fa4, triton, flashinfer, trtllm_mla, and tokenspeed_mla.
--drafter-attention-backend	Attention backend for speculative decoding drafter model.
--moe-backend	MoE backend.
--draft-moe-backend	MoE backend for the speculative decoding draft model.
--all2all-backend	MoE all-to-all backend.
--deepep-mode	DeepEP mode: auto, normal, or low_latency.
--sampling-backend	Sampling backend: greedy, flashinfer, or flashinfer_full.

Set backend choices explicitly in production. auto is useful for bring-up, but explicit values make benchmark comparisons and regressions easier to reason about.

When --dp-sampling is enabled, the logits processor owns the per-forward logits layout decision and carries the resulting plan to the sampling backend with the logits output.

Reasoning And Tool Calling

Parameter	Purpose
--reasoning-parser	Parser for extracting reasoning content from model outputs (handled by the smg gateway).
--tool-call-parser	Parser for OpenAI-compatible tool-call payloads (handled by the smg gateway).
--enable-custom-logit-processor	Allow custom logit processors. Keep disabled unless the deployment needs it.

Common reasoning parser values include kimi_k25, base, qwen3, deepseek_r1, and deepseek_v31. Common tool-call parser values include kimik2, qwen, deepseek_v4, json, and passthrough. The parser names are validated by the SMG gateway, so use the values accepted by the bundled tokenspeed-smg package.

Speculative Decoding

Parameter	Purpose
--speculative-config	JSON speculative decoding configuration.
--speculative-algorithm	Speculative algorithm, such as EAGLE3, MTP, or DFLASH.
--speculative-draft-model-path	Draft model path or repo ID.
--speculative-draft-model-quantization	Draft model quantization. Defaults to unquant.
--speculative-num-steps	Number of draft model steps. Defaults to 3.
--speculative-num-draft-tokens	Number of draft tokens. Defaults to --speculative-num-steps + 1.
--speculative-eagle-topk	EAGLE top-k. Defaults to 1.
--eagle3-layers-to-capture	EAGLE3 layers to capture.

Prefer --speculative-config for recipe-style launches because it keeps method, draft model, and token count together.

Observability

Parameter	Purpose
--log-level	Runtime log level.
--log-level-http	HTTP server log level. Defaults to --log-level when unset.
--enable-log-requests	Log request metadata and optionally payloads.
--log-requests-level	Request logging verbosity.
--enable-metrics	Enable metrics reporting.
--metrics-reporters	Metrics reporter, such as prometheus.
--decode-log-interval	Decode batch log interval.
--enable-cache-report	Include cached-token counts in OpenAI-compatible usage details.
--kv-events-config	JSON config for KV cache mutation events. Set enable_kv_cache_events and a publisher such as zmq to publish device prefix-cache stores and removals.

KV Cache Events

KV cache events publish reusable device prefix-cache mutations from the live C++ scheduler path. Host/L2 loadback events are not published by this initial stream. Block hash lineage is cached on prefix-cache nodes, so publishing a stored block uses the parent node's cached hash instead of rebuilding the full ancestor prefix.

Example:

--kv-events-config '{"enable_kv_cache_events":true,"publisher":"zmq","endpoint":"tcp://*:5557","topic":"kv-events"}'

The ZMQ publisher sends three frames: topic bytes, an 8-byte big-endian sequence number, and a msgpack payload. The payload is an array-like KVEventBatch:

[timestamp, [["BlockStored", [block_hash], parent_hash, token_ids, block_size]], attn_dp_rank]
[timestamp, [["BlockRemoved", [block_hash]]], attn_dp_rank]

With attention data parallelism, each attention DP rank publishes on an offset port from the configured endpoint.

TokenSpeed-Specific Runtime Knobs

These parameters are TokenSpeed-specific. They expose runtime features directly:

• --max-total-tokens
• --max-prefill-tokens
• --chunked-prefill-size
• --attn-tp-size
• --dense-tp-size
• --moe-tp-size
• --kvstore-*
• --enable-mla-l1-5-cache
• --kv-events-config
• --mla-chunk-multiplier
• --disaggregation-*
• --comm-fusion-max-num-tokens
• --enable-allreduce-fusion