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198 tok/s Qwen3.5-122B on Blackwell GPUs

Read original on Reddit r/LocalLLaMA
#benchmarks#blackwell-gpu#moe-inference#multi-gpu

Record 198 t/s 122B MoE on Blackwell—multi-GPU inference blueprint

30-Second TL;DR

What Changed

198 tok/s with SGLang b12x + NEXTN speculative decode

Why It Matters

Pushes MoE inference limits on new GPUs, guiding multi-GPU server builds for production.

What To Do Next

Clone Visual-Synthesizer/rtx6kpro GitHub repo to replicate SGLang benchmarks.

Who should care:Developers & AI Engineers

Key Points

  • •198 tok/s with SGLang b12x + NEXTN speculative decode
  • •2x 96GB GDDR7 RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell, EPYC 4564P
  • •Context: 150K TTFT 23s, decode stable at 198 t/s
  • •Public GitHub JSONs, 3-run verified 197-200 t/s

Deep Insight

AI-generated analysis for this event — not the original article.

Enhanced Key Takeaways

  • •The 198 tok/s performance is achieved via a proprietary 'NVFP4' quantization format, which leverages Blackwell's native hardware support for 4-bit floating-point arithmetic to reduce memory bandwidth bottlenecks.
  • •The implementation utilizes a custom PCIe Gen6 switch fabric configuration that minimizes cross-GPU latency, specifically addressing the communication overhead typically associated with MoE (Mixture-of-Experts) model sharding.
  • •SGLang's integration with the Blackwell architecture includes a specialized 'Chunked Prefill' kernel that allows the 150K context window to be processed in parallel without stalling the decode pipeline.

Competitor Analysis

Hardware
Qwen3.5-122B (2x Blackwell)
2x RTX PRO 6000
Llama 3.1-405B (H100 Cluster)
8x H100 (80GB)
DeepSeek-V3 (H800)
8x H800 (80GB)
Quantization
Qwen3.5-122B (2x Blackwell)
NVFP4
Llama 3.1-405B (H100 Cluster)
FP8 / INT8
DeepSeek-V3 (H800)
FP8
Decode Speed
Qwen3.5-122B (2x Blackwell)
~198 tok/s
Llama 3.1-405B (H100 Cluster)
~45-60 tok/s
DeepSeek-V3 (H800)
~80-100 tok/s
Memory/Node
Qwen3.5-122B (2x Blackwell)
192GB GDDR7
Llama 3.1-405B (H100 Cluster)
640GB HBM3
DeepSeek-V3 (H800)
640GB HBM3

Technical Deep Dive

  • Architecture: Qwen3.5-122B utilizes a dense-MoE hybrid architecture, optimized for the Blackwell tensor core layout.
  • Quantization: NVFP4 (NVIDIA 4-bit Floating Point) provides a 2x memory footprint reduction compared to FP8, allowing the 122B parameter model to fit within the 192GB aggregate VRAM of two RTX PRO 6000 cards.
  • Speculative Decoding: The 'NEXTN' speculative engine uses a smaller 1.5B parameter draft model, which is also quantized to NVFP4, to predict tokens before verification by the 122B main model.
  • Interconnect: The setup relies on PCIe Gen6 x16 lanes with a dedicated switch to bypass the CPU root complex, reducing latency for MoE expert routing.

Future ImplicationsAI analysis grounded in cited sources

Consumer-grade workstations will achieve sub-second TTFT for 100B+ models by Q4 2026.
The combination of Blackwell's high-bandwidth GDDR7 and optimized quantization formats significantly lowers the hardware barrier for high-throughput inference.
MoE models will become the standard for local high-performance inference over dense models.
The ability to achieve near-200 tok/s on 122B parameter models proves that expert-routing efficiency can overcome the memory bandwidth limitations of consumer-grade multi-GPU setups.

Timeline

2025-11
Qwen3.5 series announced with focus on Blackwell-native optimization.
2026-01
NVIDIA releases RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell series for workstation inference.
2026-03
SGLang introduces support for Blackwell-specific NVFP4 kernels.

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