hao-ai-lab-FastVideo/docs/inference/offloading.md

Offloading

This page describes how to use offloading techniques for inference to reduce GPU memory usage while maintaining acceptable performance.

Default Behavior

dit_cpu_offload: bool = True
use_fsdp_inference: bool = False
dit_layerwise_offload: bool = True
text_encoder_cpu_offload: bool = True
image_encoder_cpu_offload: bool = True
vae_cpu_offload: bool = True
pin_cpu_memory: bool = True

On unified-memory accelerators such as NVIDIA GB10 and Apple silicon, FastVideo detects the selected device inside each worker and disables all five host-offload modes before loading modules. Host and accelerator allocations share one physical pool there, so offload adds transfers and duplicate residency instead of freeing memory. CUDA FSDP sharding remains enabled when requested; MPS continues to disable FSDP. pin_cpu_memory is not an offload mode and is left unchanged.

MiniMax H3 CUDA inference can use a second lever that does not copy weights to a host pool: load the Qwen3-VL text encoder, run conditioning, then release that encoder before loading the DiT and video/audio VAEs. h3_sequential_load defaults to auto (None): on for unified-memory devices such as GB10, off on discrete GPUs. Pass --h3-sequential-load to force it, or --no-h3-sequential-load to keep the encoder resident for later generate() calls on the same worker. Sequential load currently cannot re-encode a new prompt on that worker; start a new generator until prompt-cache reload exists. The MLX FastH3 runtime always uses this phase order. When host offload is off, DiT safetensors are read onto the accelerator instead of CPU-then-copy. Input-preparation geometry (spatial ratio, latent channels, audio sample rate) comes from the VAE arch configs until those weights load.

Behavior Explanation

!!! note For CLI usage, replace underscores (_) with hyphens (-).

use_fsdp_inference

Enables FSDP for inference. The model weights are sharded across multiple GPUs to reduce memory usage per GPU, and weights are broadcast to all GPUs layer by layer during inference.

Performance Impact

FSDP inference introduces negligible performance overhead due to weight prefetching. Performance overhead may be visible when GPU interconnect is slow (e.g., multiple consumer-level GPUs connected by slow PCIe without GPU P2P support).

Usage Recommendation

We recommend enabling this option when multiple GPUs are available.

dit_cpu_offload

Enables CPU offloading for FSDP inference. When enabled, the model weights are offloaded to CPU memory, and the weight of each layer is moved to GPU memory only when that layer is being computed.

Performance Impact

The PyTorch FSDP implementation does not overlap computation and data transfer perfectly for inference, so enabling this option will harm performance.

Usage Recommendation

This option only takes effect when FSDP is enabled. For single GPU usage, we recommend using dit_layerwise_offload instead.

dit_layerwise_offload

This option is similar to dit_cpu_offload, but with two key differences:

1. It overlaps computation and PCIe data transfer
2. It only works for single GPU inference

Performance Impact

This option introduces negligible performance overhead.

Usage Recommendation

We recommend enabling this option for single GPU usage. This option is not compatible with FSDP.

h3_sequential_load

MiniMax H3 only. When enabled, the pipeline loads Qwen3-VL, runs conditioning, releases that encoder, then loads the DiT and VAEs. Default is auto: enabled on unified-memory accelerators, disabled on discrete GPUs.

Performance Impact

On GB10 / Spark this is required so encoder, DiT, and VAE weights are not all resident in one unified pool. On discrete GPUs (for example 4×GB200) sequential load is unnecessary and it blocks a second generate() on the same worker because the encoder has been released.

Usage Recommendation

Leave the default on Spark / DGX Spark. Force --h3-sequential-load only when you need the split on a discrete GPU. Use --no-h3-sequential-load when you need more than one prompt per worker and have enough memory to keep the encoder.

text_encoder_cpu_offload

When enabled, the text encoder model weights are offloaded to CPU memory, and text encoding is computed on CPU.

Performance Impact

This option significantly slows down text encoding computation, but text encoding is usually not the bottleneck.

Usage Recommendation

We recommend enabling this option only when OOM happens.

image_encoder_cpu_offload and vae_cpu_offload

When enabled, the weights are stored in CPU memory and moved to GPU memory when the corresponding module is being computed. After computation, the weights are moved back to CPU memory.

Performance Impact

These options introduce performance overhead due to PCIe data transfer.

Usage Recommendation

We recommend enabling these options when OOM happens.

General Recommendations

Single GPU Inference

We recommend enabling dit_layerwise_offload. If OOM happens, also enable image_encoder_cpu_offload and vae_cpu_offload. If OOM still happens, consider enabling text_encoder_cpu_offload.

Multi-GPU Inference

We recommend enabling use_fsdp_inference and disabling both dit_layerwise_offload and dit_cpu_offload. If OOM happens, consider enabling text_encoder_cpu_offload, image_encoder_cpu_offload, and vae_cpu_offload. If OOM still happens, consider enabling dit_cpu_offload.

Examples

Single GPU with Layerwise Offloading

from fastvideo import VideoGenerator

generator = VideoGenerator.from_pretrained(
    "Wan-AI/Wan2.1-T2V-1.3B-Diffusers",
    num_gpus=1,
    # Recommended for single GPU
    dit_layerwise_offload=True,
    # Enable if OOM happens
    vae_cpu_offload=True,
    image_encoder_cpu_offload=True,
    text_encoder_cpu_offload=True,
    # Speeds up CPU-GPU transfer
    pin_cpu_memory=True,
)

prompt = "A curious raccoon peers through a vibrant field of yellow sunflowers."
video = generator.generate_video(prompt, output_path="output/", save_video=True)

Multi-GPU with FSDP

from fastvideo import VideoGenerator

generator = VideoGenerator.from_pretrained(
    "Wan-AI/Wan2.1-T2V-1.3B-Diffusers",
    num_gpus=2,
    # Recommended for multi-GPU
    use_fsdp_inference=True,
    dit_layerwise_offload=False,
    dit_cpu_offload=False,
    # Enable if OOM happens
    vae_cpu_offload=True,
    image_encoder_cpu_offload=True,
    text_encoder_cpu_offload=True,
    pin_cpu_memory=True,
)

prompt = "A majestic lion strides across the golden savanna."
video = generator.generate_video(prompt, output_path="output/", save_video=True)