GLM-5.3-Flash

Introduction

GLM-5.3-Flash is a model in the GLM series. SGLang supports its inference on Ascend NPUs with DeepSeek Sparse Attention (DSA), multi-token prediction (MTP), and ModelSlim quantized weights.

This document demonstrates the deployment of GLM-5.3-Flash on Ascend NPUs using SGLang, including single-node prefill-decode mixed deployment, prefill-decode disaggregation, feature configuration, and performance tuning. The examples use W8A8 weights on Atlas 800I A3 and W8A8_MXFP8 weights on Ascend 950PR/DT series.

Supported features

Feature	Example usage
Tensor Parallelism	--tp-size 16
Pipeline Parallelism	--pp-size 4
Data Parallelism	--dp-size 16 and --enable-dp-attention
DeepEP	--moe-a2a-backend deepep and --deepep-mode auto
PD Disaggregation	--disaggregation-mode prefill and --disaggregation-transfer-backend ascend
Quantization	--quantization modelslim
Chunked Prefill	--chunked-prefill-size 8192
NPU Graph	--cuda-graph-bs-decode 16
Speculative Decoding	--speculative-algorithm NEXTN --speculative-num-steps 3 --speculative-eagle-topk 1 --speculative-num-draft-tokens 4
Overlap Schedule	export SGLANG_ENABLE_OVERLAP_PLAN_STREAM=1
DP LM Head	--enable-dp-lm-head

The values in the Example usage column are for illustration only. Adjust them according to your hardware, deployment mode, and workload. For parameter details, see Feature descriptions; for recommended configurations for each deployment scenario, see Best practices.

For feature compatibility and conflicts, see Feature Compatibility.

Prerequisites

Environment

Before following this tutorial, complete the environment setup in the documents below:

• Ascend NPU Quickstart — the fastest way to get started. It walks you through launching the official container image, starting the SGLang server, and sending a test request. Recommended if you are new to SGLang on Ascend.
• SGLang Installation with NPU Support — the full installation guide. It covers the component version mapping (CANN, TorchNPU, Triton, kernels, etc.), building from source or from a Dockerfile, and recommended system settings (CPU power scheme, NUMA, swap). Use it when you need to install or customize the environment instead of using the official image.

Model weights

Before downloading model weights, check the model size to reserve enough disk space. For PD disaggregation, download the weights to a shared directory accessible to both nodes.

• GLM-5.3-Flash-w8a8 (W8A8, 332.97GB, for Atlas 800I A3)
• GLM-5.3-Flash-w8a8-mxfp8 (W8A8_MXFP8, 338.12GB, for Ascend 950PR/DT series)
• You can use msmodelslim to quantize the model. For quantization guidance, see Quantization on Ascend NPU.

The checkpoint directory must contain the model configuration, tokenizer files, quantized weights, quant_model_description.json, and the MTP weights required by NEXTN. Set MODEL_PATH to this directory inside the container.

A3 single-node deployment uses one full Atlas 800I A3 node: eight cards and 16 dies, with --tp-size 16. 950PR/DT series single-node deployment uses eight NPU devices, with --tp-size 8. Each PD disaggregation configuration uses two nodes of the same platform: one for prefill and one for decode.

For hardware specifications and terminology, see Ascend NPU Reference — Hardware. For the PD disaggregation configuration reference, see Best practices.

Installation

Reserve enough disk space for both the container image and model weights before pulling the image.

Use a SGLang image with the runtime components required by your target platform and deployment mode. Replace IMAGE, NAME, and MODEL_DIR below, then start the container. For 950PR/DT series PD disaggregation, choose an image that supports DP attention.

Atlas 800I A3

Command

# ============================================================
# Before running, update the following variables:
#   IMAGE: SGLang image for Ascend A3
#   NAME: container name
#   MODEL_DIR: model weights directory on the host
# ============================================================

IMAGE="swr.cn-southwest-2.myhuaweicloud.com/base_image/dockerhub/lmsysorg/sglang:cann9.1.0-a3-glm5.3-flash"
NAME=sglang-glm53-flash-a3
MODEL_DIR=/path/to/model-weights

docker pull "$IMAGE"

docker run -itd --shm-size=16g --name "$NAME" \
    --privileged=true --net=host \
    -v /var/queue_schedule:/var/queue_schedule \
    -v /etc/ascend_install.info:/etc/ascend_install.info \
    -v /usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/sbin \
    -v /usr/local/Ascend/driver:/usr/local/Ascend/driver \
    -v /usr/local/Ascend/firmware:/usr/local/Ascend/firmware \
    -v "${MODEL_DIR}:/models/GLM-5.3-Flash" \
    --device=/dev/davinci0:/dev/davinci0 \
    --device=/dev/davinci1:/dev/davinci1 \
    --device=/dev/davinci2:/dev/davinci2 \
    --device=/dev/davinci3:/dev/davinci3 \
    --device=/dev/davinci4:/dev/davinci4 \
    --device=/dev/davinci5:/dev/davinci5 \
    --device=/dev/davinci6:/dev/davinci6 \
    --device=/dev/davinci7:/dev/davinci7 \
    --device=/dev/davinci8:/dev/davinci8 \
    --device=/dev/davinci9:/dev/davinci9 \
    --device=/dev/davinci10:/dev/davinci10 \
    --device=/dev/davinci11:/dev/davinci11 \
    --device=/dev/davinci12:/dev/davinci12 \
    --device=/dev/davinci13:/dev/davinci13 \
    --device=/dev/davinci14:/dev/davinci14 \
    --device=/dev/davinci15:/dev/davinci15 \
    --device=/dev/davinci_manager:/dev/davinci_manager \
    --device=/dev/hisi_hdc:/dev/hisi_hdc \
    --entrypoint=bash \
    "$IMAGE"

docker exec -it "$NAME" bash

Ascend 950PR/DT series

Command

# ============================================================
# Before running, update the following variables:
#   IMAGE: SGLang image for Ascend 950PR/DT series
#   NAME: container name
#   MODEL_DIR: model weights directory on the host
# ============================================================

IMAGE="<your 950PR/DT series image>"
NAME=sglang-glm53-flash-950pr-dt-series
MODEL_DIR=/path/to/model-weights

docker pull "$IMAGE"

docker run -itd --shm-size=16g --name "$NAME" \
    --privileged=true --net=host \
    -v /var/queue_schedule:/var/queue_schedule \
    -v /etc/ascend_install.info:/etc/ascend_install.info \
    -v /usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/sbin \
    -v /usr/local/Ascend/driver:/usr/local/Ascend/driver \
    -v /usr/local/Ascend/firmware:/usr/local/Ascend/firmware \
    -v "${MODEL_DIR}:/models/GLM-5.3-Flash" \
    --device=/dev/davinci0:/dev/davinci0 \
    --device=/dev/davinci1:/dev/davinci1 \
    --device=/dev/davinci2:/dev/davinci2 \
    --device=/dev/davinci3:/dev/davinci3 \
    --device=/dev/davinci4:/dev/davinci4 \
    --device=/dev/davinci5:/dev/davinci5 \
    --device=/dev/davinci6:/dev/davinci6 \
    --device=/dev/davinci7:/dev/davinci7 \
    --device=/dev/davinci_manager:/dev/davinci_manager \
    --device=/dev/hisi_hdc:/dev/hisi_hdc \
    --entrypoint=bash \
    "$IMAGE"

docker exec -it "$NAME" bash

• The examples mount the host checkpoint directory at /models/GLM-5.3-Flash. Set MODEL_PATH=/models/GLM-5.3-Flash in the launch scripts when using this mount.
• Give each container its own NAME. For PD disaggregation, start a container on both nodes.
• The examples use the SGLang package installed in the image and require no source-code path or PYTHONPATH override.

Online service deployment

Single-node deployment

Prefill and decode run in the same instance. Select the script for your platform and run it inside the container.

Atlas 800I A3

Use the ModelSlim W8A8 checkpoint on one Atlas 800I A3 node, with TP16. Replace MODEL_PATH with the checkpoint directory inside the container.

# ============================================================
# Before running, update the following variables:
#   MODEL_PATH: path to the model weights directory
# ============================================================

MODEL_PATH=/path/to/model-weights

source /usr/local/Ascend/cann-9.1.0/opp/vendors/customize/bin/set_env.bash
source /usr/local/Ascend/nnal/atb/set_env.sh

export HCCL_BUFFSIZE=1536
unset ASCEND_LAUNCH_BLOCKING

python3 -m sglang.launch_server \
    --model-path "$MODEL_PATH" \
    --quantization modelslim \
    --attention-backend ascend \
    --device npu \
    --tp-size 16 --nnodes 1 \
    --chunked-prefill-size 4096 \
    --max-prefill-tokens 8192 \
    --trust-remote-code \
    --mem-fraction-static 0.78 \
    --page-size 128 \
    --served-model-name GLM-5.3-Flash \
    --cuda-graph-bs-decode 16 \
    --max-running-requests 16 \
    --load-balance-method round_robin \
    --enable-multimodal \
    --moe-a2a-backend deepep --deepep-mode auto \
    --speculative-draft-model-path "$MODEL_PATH" \
    --speculative-algorithm NEXTN \
    --speculative-num-steps 3 \
    --speculative-eagle-topk 1 \
    --speculative-num-draft-tokens 4 \
    --watchdog-timeout 9000 \
    --host 127.0.0.1 --port 8810

Ascend 950PR/DT series

Use the ModelSlim W8A8_MXFP8 checkpoint on one 950PR/DT series node, with TP8 and no DP attention. Replace MODEL_PATH with the checkpoint directory inside the container.

# ============================================================
# Before running, update the following variables:
#   MODEL_PATH: path to the model weights directory
# ============================================================

MODEL_PATH=/path/to/model-weights

source /usr/local/Ascend/ascend-toolkit/latest/opp/vendors/customize/bin/set_env.bash
source /usr/local/Ascend/ascend-toolkit/latest/opp/vendors/custom_transformer/bin/set_env.bash
source /usr/local/Ascend/ascend-toolkit/set_env.sh
source /usr/local/memfabric_hybrid/set_env.sh

export SGLANG_NPU_PROFILING=0
export ASCEND_LAUNCH_BLOCKING=1
export HCCL_BUFFSIZE=256

python3 -m sglang.launch_server \
    --model-path "$MODEL_PATH" \
    --quantization modelslim \
    --attention-backend ascend \
    --device npu \
    --tp-size 8 --nnodes 1 \
    --chunked-prefill-size 8192 \
    --max-prefill-tokens 8192 \
    --trust-remote-code \
    --mem-fraction-static 0.83 \
    --page-size 64 \
    --served-model-name GLM-5.3-Flash \
    --load-format auto \
    --max-running-requests 16 \
    --pre-warm-nccl \
    --speculative-draft-model-path "$MODEL_PATH" \
    --speculative-draft-kv-cache-dtype bf16 \
    --speculative-algorithm NEXTN \
    --speculative-num-steps 4 \
    --speculative-eagle-topk 1 \
    --speculative-num-draft-tokens 5 \
    --watchdog-timeout 1200 \
    --cuda-graph-bs-decode 1 8 64 \
    --host 127.0.0.1 --port 8810

Prefill-decode disaggregation deployment

PD disaggregation places prefill and decode on separate nodes. Replace the model path, node IP addresses, and network interface names, then run the same script on both nodes. The script selects its role by matching the local IP address.

Ensure the worker HTTP ports, prefill bootstrap port, and MemFabric store port are reachable between the nodes.

Atlas 800I A3

Use W8A8 weights on two Atlas 800I A3 nodes. The prefill instance uses TP4 / PP4 / DP4; the decode instance uses TP16 / PP1 / DP16 and NEXTN speculative decoding with three steps and four draft tokens. Run the CPU tuning commands with the required host privileges.

# ============================================================
# Before running, update the following variables:
#   MODEL_PATH: path to the model weights directory
#   PREFILL_IP: prefill node IP address
#   DECODE_IP: decode node IP address
#   HCCL_SOCKET_IFNAME: network interface name for HCCL
#   GLOO_SOCKET_IFNAME: network interface name for Gloo
# ============================================================

MODEL_PATH=/path/to/model-weights
PREFILL_IP="<your prefill ip>"
DECODE_IP="<your decode ip>"

echo performance | tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_governor
sysctl -w vm.swappiness=0
sysctl -w kernel.numa_balancing=0
sysctl -w kernel.sched_migration_cost_ns=50000
export SGLANG_SET_CPU_AFFINITY=1

source /usr/local/Ascend/ascend-toolkit/set_env.sh
source /usr/local/Ascend/ascend-toolkit/latest/opp/vendors/customize/bin/set_env.bash
source /usr/local/Ascend/nnal/atb/set_env.sh

export PYTORCH_NPU_ALLOC_CONF=expandable_segments:True
export STREAMS_PER_DEVICE=32
export SGLANG_ENABLE_OVERLAP_PLAN_STREAM=1
export HCCL_SOCKET_IFNAME="<network-interface>"
export GLOO_SOCKET_IFNAME="<network-interface>"
export ASCEND_MF_STORE_URL="tcp://${PREFILL_IP}:24707"
export SGLANG_DISAGGREGATION_BOOTSTRAP_TIMEOUT=1200
export SGLANG_DISAGGREGATION_WAITING_TIMEOUT=1200

unset ASCEND_LAUNCH_BLOCKING
unset http_proxy https_proxy HTTP_PROXY HTTPS_PROXY all_proxy ALL_PROXY
export no_proxy="127.0.0.1,localhost,${PREFILL_IP},${DECODE_IP},${no_proxy:-}"
export NO_PROXY="$no_proxy"
LOCAL_IPS=" $(hostname -I) "

if [[ "$LOCAL_IPS" == *" $PREFILL_IP "* ]]; then
    export SGLANG_HOST_IP="$PREFILL_IP"
    export HCCL_BUFFSIZE=1200
    export DEEPEP_HCCL_BUFFSIZE=1200
    export DEEPEP_NORMAL_LONG_SEQ_ROUND=128
    export DEEPEP_NORMAL_LONG_SEQ_PER_ROUND_TOKENS=1024
    export DEEP_NORMAL_MODE_USE_INT8_QUANT=1
    export TASK_QUEUE_ENABLE=2
    export HCCL_IF_BASE_PORT=61000

    python3 -m sglang.launch_server \
        --model-path "$MODEL_PATH" \
        --quantization modelslim \
        --device npu \
        --attention-backend ascend \
        --trust-remote-code \
        --enable-multimodal \
        --served-model-name GLM-5.3-Flash \
        --disaggregation-mode prefill \
        --disaggregation-bootstrap-port 8998 \
        --disaggregation-transfer-backend ascend \
        --dist-init-addr "${PREFILL_IP}:5000" \
        --tp-size 4 --pp-size 4 --dp-size 4 --nnodes 1 \
        --enable-dp-attention \
        --enable-dp-lm-head \
        --moe-dense-tp 1 \
        --moe-a2a-backend deepep --deepep-mode normal \
        --load-balance-method round_robin \
        --mem-fraction-static 0.78 \
        --page-size 128 \
        --max-running-requests 16 \
        --chunked-prefill-size 4096 \
        --max-prefill-tokens 8192 \
        --watchdog-timeout 9000 \
        --host "$PREFILL_IP" --port 8810
elif [[ "$LOCAL_IPS" == *" $DECODE_IP "* ]]; then
    export SGLANG_HOST_IP="$DECODE_IP"
    export HCCL_BUFFSIZE=512
    export DEEPEP_HCCL_BUFFSIZE=512
    export SGLANG_DEEPEP_NUM_MAX_DISPATCH_TOKENS_PER_RANK=16
    export SGLANG_ENABLE_SPEC_V2=1
    export SGLANG_SPEC_ENABLE_OVERLAP_REFLOW=1
    export SGLANG_NPU_USE_MULTI_STREAM=1
    export TASK_QUEUE_ENABLE=0
    export HCCL_IF_BASE_PORT=61010

    python3 -m sglang.launch_server \
        --model-path "$MODEL_PATH" \
        --quantization modelslim \
        --device npu \
        --attention-backend ascend \
        --trust-remote-code \
        --enable-multimodal \
        --served-model-name GLM-5.3-Flash \
        --disaggregation-mode decode \
        --disaggregation-transfer-backend ascend \
        --dist-init-addr "${DECODE_IP}:5000" \
        --tp-size 16 --pp-size 1 --dp-size 16 --nnodes 1 \
        --enable-dp-attention \
        --moe-a2a-backend deepep --deepep-mode low_latency \
        --load-balance-method round_robin \
        --mem-fraction-static 0.75 \
        --page-size 128 \
        --max-running-requests 32 \
        --cuda-graph-bs-decode 1 2 \
        --speculative-draft-model-path "$MODEL_PATH" \
        --speculative-algorithm NEXTN \
        --speculative-num-steps 3 \
        --speculative-eagle-topk 1 \
        --speculative-num-draft-tokens 4 \
        --watchdog-timeout 9000 \
        --host "$DECODE_IP" --port 8811
else
    echo "Local IP does not match PREFILL_IP or DECODE_IP: $LOCAL_IPS" >&2
    exit 1
fi

Ascend 950PR/DT series

Use W8A8_MXFP8 weights on two 950PR/DT series nodes. Both instances use TP8 / PP1 / DP2 and NEXTN speculative decoding with four steps and five draft tokens. The nodes must be able to communicate over the device_urma transport.

# ============================================================
# Before running, update the following variables:
#   MODEL_PATH: path to the model weights directory
#   PREFILL_IP: prefill node IP address
#   DECODE_IP: decode node IP address
# ============================================================

MODEL_PATH=/path/to/model-weights
PREFILL_IP="<your prefill ip>"
DECODE_IP="<your decode ip>"

source /usr/local/Ascend/ascend-toolkit/set_env.sh
source /usr/local/Ascend/ascend-toolkit/latest/opp/vendors/customize/bin/set_env.bash
source /usr/local/Ascend/ascend-toolkit/latest/opp/vendors/custom_transformer/bin/set_env.bash

export SGLANG_NPU_PROFILING=0
export HCCL_BUFFSIZE=256
export ASCEND_MF_STORE_URL="tcp://${PREFILL_IP}:24670"
export ASCEND_MF_TRANSFER_PROTOCOL=device_urma
unset ASCEND_LAUNCH_BLOCKING
export no_proxy="127.0.0.1,localhost,${PREFILL_IP},${DECODE_IP},${no_proxy:-}"
export NO_PROXY="$no_proxy"
LOCAL_IPS=" $(hostname -I) "

if [[ "$LOCAL_IPS" == *" $PREFILL_IP "* ]]; then
    export SGLANG_HOST_IP="$PREFILL_IP"
    python3 -m sglang.launch_server \
        --model-path "$MODEL_PATH" \
        --quantization modelslim --load-format auto \
        --device npu --attention-backend ascend --trust-remote-code \
        --served-model-name GLM-5.3-Flash \
        --disaggregation-mode prefill \
        --disaggregation-bootstrap-port 8998 \
        --disaggregation-transfer-backend ascend \
        --tp-size 8 --pp-size 1 --dp-size 2 --enable-dp-attention --nnodes 1 \
        --chunked-prefill-size 16384 --max-prefill-tokens 16384 \
        --mem-fraction-static 0.83 --page-size 64 --max-running-requests 16 \
        --speculative-draft-model-path "$MODEL_PATH" \
        --speculative-draft-kv-cache-dtype bf16 \
        --speculative-algorithm NEXTN --speculative-num-steps 4 \
        --speculative-eagle-topk 1 --speculative-num-draft-tokens 5 \
        --pre-warm-nccl --watchdog-timeout 1200 --cuda-graph-bs-decode 1 8 64 \
        --host "$PREFILL_IP" --port 8810
elif [[ "$LOCAL_IPS" == *" $DECODE_IP "* ]]; then
    export SGLANG_HOST_IP="$DECODE_IP"
    python3 -m sglang.launch_server \
        --model-path "$MODEL_PATH" \
        --quantization modelslim --load-format auto \
        --device npu --attention-backend ascend --trust-remote-code \
        --served-model-name GLM-5.3-Flash \
        --disaggregation-mode decode \
        --disaggregation-bootstrap-port 8998 \
        --disaggregation-transfer-backend ascend \
        --tp-size 8 --pp-size 1 --dp-size 2 --enable-dp-attention --nnodes 1 \
        --chunked-prefill-size 16384 --max-prefill-tokens 16384 \
        --mem-fraction-static 0.83 --page-size 64 --max-running-requests 16 \
        --speculative-draft-model-path "$MODEL_PATH" \
        --speculative-draft-kv-cache-dtype bf16 \
        --speculative-algorithm NEXTN --speculative-num-steps 4 \
        --speculative-eagle-topk 1 --speculative-num-draft-tokens 5 \
        --pre-warm-nccl --watchdog-timeout 1200 --cuda-graph-bs-decode 1 8 64 \
        --host "$DECODE_IP" --port 8811
else
    echo "Local IP does not match PREFILL_IP or DECODE_IP: $LOCAL_IPS" >&2
    exit 1
fi

Launch the router after the prefill and decode services are ready. Use the same node IP addresses as in the worker scripts. Client requests go to the router on port 8000; the worker ports are 8810 and 8811, and the prefill bootstrap port is 8998.

# ============================================================
# Before running, update the following variables:
#   PREFILL_IP: prefill node IP address
#   DECODE_IP: decode node IP address
#   ROUTER_HOST_IP: router node IP address
# ============================================================

PREFILL_IP="<your prefill ip>"
DECODE_IP="<your decode ip>"
ROUTER_HOST_IP="<your router ip>"
export no_proxy="127.0.0.1,localhost,${PREFILL_IP},${DECODE_IP},${ROUTER_HOST_IP},${no_proxy:-}"
export NO_PROXY="$no_proxy"

python3 -m sglang_router.launch_router \
    --pd-disaggregation \
    --prefill "http://${PREFILL_IP}:8810" 8998 \
    --decode "http://${DECODE_IP}:8811" \
    --host "$ROUTER_HOST_IP" --port 8000 \
    --policy round_robin \
    --worker-startup-timeout-secs 3600 \
    --request-timeout-secs 7200 \
    --disable-retries

Functional verification

After the service starts, send a prompt to verify inference. For mixed deployment, run the command inside the container with HOST=127.0.0.1 and PORT=8810. For PD disaggregation, use the router IP address and PORT=8000.

# ============================================================
# Before running, update the following variables:
#   HOST: server or router host address
#   PORT: 8810 for mixed deployment; 8000 for the router
# ============================================================

HOST=127.0.0.1
PORT=8810

curl "http://${HOST}:${PORT}/generate" \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -d '{
        "text": "What is the capital of France?",
        "sampling_params": {
            "max_new_tokens": 64,
            "temperature": 0
        }
    }'

Check for an HTTP 200 response with the generated answer. Once the server prints The server is fired up and ready to roll!, it is ready to accept requests. For Health Check, Generate, Chat Completions, and port usage examples, see Testing the Service.

Accuracy evaluation

For evaluation methods and datasets, see Accuracy Evaluation on Ascend NPU.

Performance

For benchmark methods and metric definitions, see Performance Testing on Ascend NPU.

For a generated shared-prefix benchmark workload, use approximately 128K input tokens and 1K output tokens. For mixed deployment, use the worker host and port 8810. For PD disaggregation, use the router host and port 8000. Set both --model and --tokenizer to the checkpoint path and use --served-model-name GLM-5.3-Flash.

Best practices

Best practice configuration reference

The Online service deployment section above contains complete scripts for single-node mixed deployment and PD disaggregation.

For the optimization feature catalog and compatibility details, see Optimization on Ascend NPU.

Performance tuning

For the feature overview, see Supported features. For tuning parameters and feature compatibility, see Optimization on Ascend NPU.

FAQ

For environment, installation, and general parameter issues, see Ascend NPU FAQ.