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Configuring an NVFP4 KV Cache for a Hybrid Qwen Model in vLLM and SGLang

By Freedom251 Team · · 6 min read

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To serve NVIDIA’s Qwen3.8-2.4T-A95B-NVFP4 checkpoint with an NVFP4 KV cache, add --kv-cache-dtype nvfp4 to a vLLM or SGLang launch command. NVIDIA’s model card says this needs a recent runtime release with NVFP4 KV support and an NVIDIA Blackwell GPU. The flag sets the precision of the attention cache while serving. It does not change the checkpoint’s weights, it is not the FP8 KV cache used in the checkpoint’s own quantization recipe, and it is not TensorRT-LLM’s NVFP4 cold-page compression, which is a separate tiered-cache feature.

Three settings that look alike

Four different settings in this area involve quantization or KV-cache precision, and each acts at a different point in the model’s lifecycle.

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Setting What it controls Where it is set What the sources say for this checkpoint or runtime
Model weight quantization Storage precision of the model weights Stored in the checkpoint Routed experts use NVFP4; self-attention and gated-delta linear attention use FP8 W8A8; the MTP block stays BF16 (NVIDIA Model Optimizer Qwen3.8 recipe)
Recipe KV cache Precision the checkpoint recipe assigns to the KV cache Applied when the checkpoint was produced with NVIDIA Model Optimizer FP8 cast (NVIDIA Model Optimizer Qwen3.8 recipe)
Serving KV-cache dtype Precision of the attention KV cache used while the model serves requests Launch flag --kv-cache-dtype The model card’s examples pass nvfp4 to vLLM and SGLang; omitting the flag uses the runtime’s default KV precision
Cold-page compression NVFP4 storage for eligible attention KV held in host or disk cold tiers TensorRT-LLM tiered-cache feature Restored to normal runtime precision before attention; the active GPU cache stays in FP16, BF16, or FP8

In practice, the weight precision is fixed by the checkpoint you download, the serving KV dtype is a runtime choice, and cold-page compression is a different path that leaves the GPU’s active cache unchanged.

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Requirements before you launch

The model card states the requirement in one sentence:

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“NVFP4 KV cache requires a recent vLLM or SGLang release with NVFP4 KV support and an NVIDIA Blackwell GPU.”

The card says “recent” and does not name a minimum version, so the release notes for your runtime decide whether support exists. The sources used for this article were checked in early October 2026. Runtime flags, hardware matrices, and supported releases change, so confirm them on the day you deploy.

  • GPU: NVIDIA Blackwell. TensorRT-LLM’s hardware matrix lists NVFP4 KV cache for Blackwell sm100 and sm103, which correspond to compute capability 10.0 and 10.3. The same matrix does not list Hopper or Ada.
  • Runtime: a vLLM or SGLang release that supports NVFP4 KV. Support in one runtime does not carry over to another. TensorRT-LLM’s matrix is a separate statement about a separate engine.
  • Checkpoint: nvidia/Qwen3.8-2.4T-A95B-NVFP4. The model card is pinned to a repository revision, so the commands describe that revision.
  • Parallelism and context length: the card’s examples use eight-way tensor parallelism and a 262,144-token maximum length. Match the parallel size to your GPU count, and confirm the model loads at the context length you choose.

The checkpoint and its quantization recipe

Architecture

The card identifies the checkpoint as nvidia/Qwen3.8-2.4T-A95B-NVFP4, based on Qwen3.8-2.4T-A95B. It describes a Transformer Mixture-of-Experts model with hybrid attention and fine-grained MoE blocks, with 2.4T total parameters and 95B activated. The listed release date is 2026-08-27. These figures describe this checkpoint only, not every model loosely called a hybrid Qwen.

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According to NVIDIA Model Optimizer’s Qwen3.8 recipe, the hybrid attention interleaves gated-delta (linear-attention) layers with full-attention layers. TensorRT-LLM’s Qwen3.8-Flash-Next deployment guide sets the gated-delta recurrent-state dtype separately from the KV-cache dtype. That guide covers a different, specific Qwen3.8-Flash-Next configuration, so treat it as an illustration of how the settings are separated, not as a recipe for this checkpoint.

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What the Model Optimizer recipe quantizes

NVIDIA Model Optimizer’s Qwen3.8 recipe assigns these precisions:

  • Routed experts: NVFP4
  • Self-attention and gated-delta linear attention: FP8 W8A8
  • KV cache: FP8 cast
  • Remaining components, such as the MTP block: BF16

This recipe describes how the stored checkpoint was produced. It is not evidence that NVFP4 KV is active by default at serving time. The card’s own usage example requests NVFP4 KV with an explicit flag, and the recipe’s FP8 KV setting does not decide what your server uses.

Serving commands

These are the model card’s example forms. Use them as templates for the flags, not as commands guaranteed to run on every release or GPU.

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vLLM

vllm serve nvidia/Qwen3.8-2.4T-A95B-NVFP4 \
  --port 8000 \
  --tensor-parallel-size 8 \
  --max-model-len 262144 \
  --kv-cache-dtype nvfp4 \
  --reasoning-parser qwen3

SGLang

python -m sglang.launch_server \
  --model-path nvidia/Qwen3.8-2.4T-A95B-NVFP4 \
  --port 8000 \
  --tp-size 8 \
  --context-length 262144 \
  --kv-cache-dtype nvfp4 \
  --reasoning-parser qwen3

The two commands map onto each other. --tensor-parallel-size and --tp-size set the parallel degree, and --max-model-len and --context-length set the maximum length. In both examples, only --kv-cache-dtype nvfp4 controls cache precision. --reasoning-parser qwen3 controls how reasoning output is parsed. If you omit --kv-cache-dtype, the runtime uses its default KV-cache precision.

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Launch procedure

  1. Confirm the GPU architecture. Run nvidia-smi --query-gpu=name,compute_cap --format=csv. You need compute capability 10.0 or 10.3. Any other result means the card’s Blackwell requirement is not met.
  2. Confirm the runtime version. Run vllm --version for vLLM or pip show sglang for SGLang, then compare the version with the release notes that list NVFP4 KV support.
  3. Launch with the flag. Use the command for your runtime from the section above, adjusted to your GPU count.
  4. Measure against a baseline. Run the same prompts through a launch without --kv-cache-dtype, and compare the outputs and any metrics that matter for your workload.

When the setup fails

Symptom Likely cause What to do
The flag is rejected or has no effect The runtime release predates NVFP4 KV support Upgrade to a release whose notes list NVFP4 KV support, then relaunch
The GPU is Hopper or Ada The card requires Blackwell, and TensorRT-LLM’s matrix does not list NVFP4 KV for these GPUs Omit the flag and serve with the runtime’s default KV-cache precision
Output quality drops on your workload Accuracy loss after post-training quantization varies by model and method, according to the Hugging Face PTQ documentation Change or disable KV-cache quantization, or use quantization-aware training, as that documentation suggests

TensorRT-LLM: a separate NVFP4 KV path

Generating an NVFP4 KV checkpoint

TensorRT-LLM’s general quantization documentation says its NVFP4 KV checkpoint-generation flow currently requires FP8 weight and activation quantization. It lists Qwen-3 as supported for NVFP4 KV cache. The same page distinguishes NVFP4 KV from general NVFP4 weight support, so a setup that runs NVFP4 weights in TensorRT-LLM has not thereby enabled NVFP4 KV.

Cold-page compression

TensorRT-LLM’s cold-page compression stores eligible attention KV in NVFP4 in host or disk cold tiers. The active GPU cache keeps its ordinary runtime type, such as FP16, BF16, or FP8. When a cold page is needed, it is restored to normal runtime precision before attention runs. The documentation explicitly separates this from active GPU KV configured as NVFP4.

Enabling cold-page compression therefore does not give you an NVFP4 KV cache on the GPU. The vLLM and SGLang flag is a serving-cache setting, not the TensorRT-LLM cold-tier feature.

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Published benchmark results

NVIDIA’s model card reports scores for three configurations: BF16, NVFP4 weights, and NVFP4 weights with an NVFP4 KV cache. These are the publisher’s own results, dated 2026, not measurements made for this article. The card specifies temperature 1.0, top-p 0.95, and top-k 20. Maximum new tokens varied by benchmark, as shown in the last column.

Benchmark BF16 NVFP4 NVFP4 + NVFP4 KV Max new tokens
GPQA Diamond 92.55 92.58 92.33 65,536
HLE 41.43 40.55 40.64 131,072
SciCode 54.44 56.21 55.92 65,536
AA-LCR 71.50 71.63 71.25 65,536
IFBench 79.93 81.73 81.33 65,536
Terminal Bench 2.1 76.03 76.40 77.25 262,144

Against the BF16 column, the NVFP4 KV row ranges from 0.79 points lower on HLE to 1.48 points higher on SciCode. These are single reported figures, and a gap of about a point can fall within normal run-to-run variation. Read them as no large loss on these six benchmarks under the card’s settings, not as a measured speedup or a guaranteed accuracy result for other workloads.

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BlackwellKV cacheLLM inferenceNVFP4quantizationQwenSGLangTensorRT-LLMvLLM

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