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Add moe loss normalization for RL SFT#3956

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pthombre wants to merge 1 commit intoNVIDIA:mainfrom
pthombre:pranav/moe-loss-normalization-rl
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Add moe loss normalization for RL SFT#3956
pthombre wants to merge 1 commit intoNVIDIA:mainfrom
pthombre:pranav/moe-loss-normalization-rl

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What does this PR do ?

This change adds a separate loss scaling function specifically for MoE (Mixture of Experts) auxiliary losses during RL SFT training.

Problem: Previously, MoE auxiliary losses used the same grad_scale_func as the main model loss. In RL SFT scenarios, you may need to scale the MoE auxiliary loss differently from the primary loss (e.g., the main loss uses a dynamic scaler tied to RL
rewards, but MoE load-balancing losses need their own scaling).

What changed:

  • A new optional config field moe_grad_scale_func is added to ModelParallelConfig
  • In the forward step, MoE loss scaling now checks for moe_grad_scale_func first, falls back to grad_scale_func if not set, and defaults to 1 otherwise
  • Note that moe_grad_scale_func takes no arguments (returns the scale directly), unlike grad_scale_func which takes a tensor input — this allows a simpler interface where the caller pre-computes the scale

Impact: Existing code is unaffected since moe_grad_scale_func defaults to None, preserving the current fallback behavior.

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Signed-off-by: Pranav Prashant Thombre <pthombre@nvidia.com>
@pthombre pthombre requested review from a team as code owners March 19, 2026 22:48
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copy-pr-bot Bot commented Mar 19, 2026

This pull request requires additional validation before any workflows can run on NVIDIA's runners.

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@svcnvidia-nemo-ci svcnvidia-nemo-ci marked this pull request as draft March 19, 2026 22:48
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This PR has been automatically converted to draft because all PRs must start as drafts.

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@pthombre pthombre marked this pull request as ready for review March 19, 2026 22:48
@svcnvidia-nemo-ci svcnvidia-nemo-ci requested a review from a team March 19, 2026 22:48
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