Comfy Kitchen

August 9, 2026 · View on GitHub

Fast kernel library for Diffusion inference with multiple compute backends.

Backend Capabilities Matrix

Functioneagercudatritonhip
quantize_per_tensor_fp8
dequantize_per_tensor_fp8
stochastic_rounding_fp8
quantize_nvfp4
dequantize_nvfp4
scaled_mm_nvfp4
quantize_mxfp8
dequantize_mxfp8
scaled_mm_mxfp8
adaln
rms_adaln
na3d
na2d
apply_rope
apply_rope1
apply_rope_split_half
apply_rope_split_half1
rms_rope
rms_rope1
rms_rope_split_half
rms_rope_split_half1
quantize_int8_rowwise
quantize_int8_tensorwise
quantize_and_rotate_rowwise
quantize_int8_convrot_weight
dequantize_int8_simple_dtype
dequantize_int8_convrot_weight_dtype
int8_linear
gemv_awq_w4a16
quantize_svdquant_w4a4
scaled_mm_svdquant_w4a4
convrot_w4a4_linear
quantize_convrot_w4a4_weight
dequantize_convrot_w4a4_weight

Each of the eight rope entries also has an in-place form (apply_rope_, rms_rope_split_half1_, ...) with the same backend coverage as the row above.

HIP backend (AMD RDNA2 / RDNA3 / RDNA3.5 / RDNA4)

The hip backend implements the quantized paths with its own kernels: WMMA matrix-core GEMMs on RDNA3/RDNA3.5/RDNA4, and non-WMMA kernels (quantizers, INT8 dequantizers, RoPE and the fused RMSNorm+RoPE, AdaLN and RMS-AdaLN, the AWQ GEMV) that also run on RDNA2. It does not link or call hipBLAS/hipBLASLt; every matmul is compiled from the sources in comfy_kitchen/backends/hip/.

Both rope kernels address their inputs through the tensor's own strides, so a q/k pair permuted or sliced out of a packed qkv is read where it lies rather than copied contiguous first. The in-place entries (apply_rope_, rms_rope_ and their split-half and single-tensor siblings) rotate a strided view in place for the same reason: each thread owns one element pair and loads both before storing either.

int8_linear(input_act=...) folds the activation into the fused ConvRot quantizer's load, so an MLP's linear(act(proj(x))) never writes act's output to HBM just to read it straight back.

What a GPU gets depends on whether it has matrix cores:

Generationgfx targetsMatrix coresWhat runs
RDNA4gfx1200, gfx1201WMMA + fp8All HIP-supported kernels, fp8 native
RDNA3.5gfx1150-gfx1153WMMA, no fp8All HIP-supported kernels; fp8 widened
RDNA3gfx1100-gfx1103WMMA, no fp8All HIP-supported kernels; fp8 widened
RDNA2gfx1030-gfx1036noneNon-WMMA kernels incl. AWQ GEMV; WMMA GEMMs decline

fp8, int8 and int4 share one byte-addressed tile kernel (gemm_wmma.h). RDNA3 and RDNA4 spread a WMMA operand across the wave differently and RDNA3 has no fp8 WMMA (it widens to bf16, which is exact), so each has its own set of Mma policies in mma.h; the tile kernel itself is shared.

RDNA2 has no matrix cores. It runs the kernels that do not need them (RoPE, AdaLN and RMS-AdaLN, the quantizers, stochastic rounding, the AWQ GEMV) and does not advertise the GEMMs, which fall through to triton/eager. In a process with a mix of GPUs the capability set is the intersection, since kernels launch on the tensor's own device.

A request outside a kernel's domain (swizzled operands, scaling other than tensor-wise, a K that is not a multiple of 16) falls back to torch or eager. NVFP4 and MXFP8 stay on eager everywhere: RDNA has neither fp4 WMMA nor microscaling hardware. Set COMFY_KITCHEN_DISABLE_HIP=1 to remove the backend from dispatch.

Building

On a ROCm-only host, the backend is selected automatically when CUDA's nvcc is absent. Both a system ROCm install and the pip rocm-sdk layout (which a ROCm PyTorch build already pulls in) are detected, so on Linux and Windows alike the usual build is:

pip install .

No environment variables, CC/CXX override or Visual Studio developer shell are needed: the ROCm clang builds C, C++ and HIP alike and locates the MSVC toolchain itself. CMake >= 3.26 and Ninja are required (Windows only ships a Visual Studio generator, which has no HIP language support). On Windows the Microsoft C++ build tools and Windows SDK must be installed, since clang links against them and CMake compiles a resource file with the SDK's rc.exe, which the build locates itself rather than expecting on PATH. Use the Visual Studio 2022 v143 toolset; newer MSVC toolsets are not yet reliable with ROCm.

When CUDA and ROCm toolchains are both installed, the source build defaults to CUDA only. This avoids compiling an unused multi-architecture HIP binary on an NVIDIA workstation. Request a combined build explicitly:

COMFY_KITCHEN_BUILD_HIP=1 pip install .

Architectures default to the validated GPUs the build machine can see, or to every target in the backend's architecture manifest when it can see none (a CI box), which is what the wheels carry. Detection reads the visible devices through PyTorch, so under PEP 517 build isolation (a plain pip install .) it sees nothing and falls back to the full target list; set COMFY_HIP_ARCHS, or pass --no-build-isolation, to build for the local GPU instead. Building for one target is much faster:

COMFY_HIP_ARCHS=gfx1201 pip install .
$env:COMFY_HIP_ARCHS = "gfx1201"; pip install .

PYTORCH_ROCM_ARCH and GPU_ARCHS are honoured too. When the build machine sees AMD GPUs but none is RDNA2/3/3.5/4 (CDNA has MFMA, not WMMA), the extension is skipped rather than built (seeing no GPU at all falls back to the full target list above instead); COMFY_KITCHEN_BUILD_HIP=1 requests HIP explicitly (and makes an unsupported visible AMD GPU a hard error), while COMFY_KITCHEN_BUILD_NO_HIP=1 suppresses the backend entirely.

Architecture overrides are exact and fail closed. A compiler-recognized target that is not in the manifest is rejected until its device and WMMA policies have been reviewed and added.

Both extensions are built against the Python limited API on 3.12+, so a wheel carrying CUDA and HIP side by side keeps its abi3 tag. At runtime only the extension matching PyTorch's CUDA or ROCm runtime is loaded.

Quantized Tensors

The library provides QuantizedTensor, a torch.Tensor subclass that transparently intercepts PyTorch operations and dispatches them to optimized quantized kernels when available.

LayoutFormatHW RequirementDescription
TensorCoreFP8LayoutFP8 E4M3SM ≥ 8.9 (Ada)Per-tensor scaling, 1:1 element mapping
TensorCoreNVFP4LayoutNVFP4 E2M1SM ≥ 10.0 (Blackwell)Block quantization with 16-element blocks
TensorCoreMXFP8LayoutMXFP8 E4M3SM ≥ 10.0 (Blackwell)Block quantization with 32-element blocks, E8M0 scales
from comfy_kitchen.tensor import QuantizedTensor, TensorCoreFP8Layout, TensorCoreNVFP4Layout

# Quantize a tensor
x = torch.randn(128, 256, device="cuda", dtype=torch.bfloat16)
qt = QuantizedTensor.from_float(x, TensorCoreFP8Layout)

# Operations dispatch to optimized kernels automatically
output = torch.nn.functional.linear(qt, weight_qt)

# Dequantize back to float
dq = qt.dequantize()

Installation

From PyPI

# Install default (Linux/Windows/MacOS)
pip install comfy-kitchen

# Install with CUBLAS for NVFP4 (+Blackwell)
pip install comfy-kitchen[cublas]

Package Variants

  • CUDA wheels: Linux x86_64 and Windows x64
  • Pure Python wheel: Any platform, eager and triton backends only

Wheels are built for Python 3.10, 3.11, and 3.12+ (using Stable ABI for 3.12+).

From Source

# Standard installation with CUDA support
pip install .

# Development installation
pip install -e ".[dev]"

# For faster rebuilds during development (skip build isolation)
pip install -e . --no-build-isolation -v

Build Options

These options require using setup.py directly (not pip install):

OptionCommandDescriptionDefault
--no-cudapython setup.py bdist_wheel --no-cudaDisable CUDA; without --hip, build a CPU-only wheelEnabled (build with CUDA)
--hippython setup.py bdist_wheel --hipAdd HIP explicitly (including to a CUDA build)Auto only when CUDA is unavailable
--no-hippython setup.py bdist_wheel --no-hipDisable HIPDisabled
--hip-archs=...python setup.py build_ext --hip-archs="gfx1200;gfx1201"HIP architectures to build forVisible supported AMD GPUs, otherwise all supported targets
--cuda-archs=...python setup.py build_ext --cuda-archs="80;89"CUDA architectures to build for75-virtual;80;89;90a;100f;120f (Linux), 75-virtual;80;89;120f (Windows)
--debug-buildpython setup.py build_ext --debug-buildBuild in debug mode with symbolsDisabled (Release)
--lineinfopython setup.py build_ext --lineinfoEnable NVCC line info for profilingDisabled
# Build CPU-only wheel (pure Python, no CUDA required)
python setup.py bdist_wheel --no-cuda

# Build with custom CUDA architectures
python setup.py build_ext --cuda-archs="80;89" bdist_wheel

# Debug build with line info for profiling
python setup.py build_ext --debug-build --lineinfo bdist_wheel

Requirements

  • Python: ≥3.10
  • PyTorch: ≥2.5.0
  • CUDA Runtime (for CUDA wheels): ≥13.0
    • Pre-built wheels require NVIDIA Driver r580+
    • Building from source requires CUDA Toolkit ≥12.8 and CUDA_HOME environment variable
  • nanobind: ≥2.0.0 (for building from source)
  • CMake: ≥3.26 (for building from source; the abi3 modules need FindPython's Development.SABIModule)

Quick Start

import comfy_kitchen as ck
import torch

# Automatic backend selection (hip -> cuda -> triton -> eager)
x = torch.randn(100, 100, device="cuda")
scale = torch.tensor([1.0], device="cuda")
result = ck.quantize_per_tensor_fp8(x, scale)

# Check which backends are available
print(ck.list_backends())

# Force a specific backend
result = ck.quantize_per_tensor_fp8(x, scale, backend="eager")

# Temporarily use a different backend
with ck.use_backend("triton"):
    result = ck.quantize_per_tensor_fp8(x, scale)

Backend System

The library supports multiple backends:

  • eager: Pure PyTorch implementation
  • cuda: Custom CUDA C kernels (CUDA only)
  • hip: Custom HIP kernels (WMMA GEMMs on RDNA3/3.5/4; non-WMMA kernels also on RDNA2)
  • triton: Triton JIT-compiled kernels

Automatic Backend Selection

When you call a function, the registry selects the best backend by checking constraints in priority order (hipcudatritoneager):

# Backend is selected automatically based on input constraints
result = ck.quantize_per_tensor_fp8(x, scale)

# On CPU tensors → falls back to eager (only backend supporting CPU)
# On CUDA tensors → uses cuda or triton (higher priority)

Constraint System

Each backend declares constraints for its functions:

ConstraintDescription
DeviceWhich device types are supported
DtypeAllowed input/output dtypes per parameter
ShapeShape requirements (e.g., 2D tensors, dimensions divisible by 16)
Compute CapabilityMinimum GPU architecture (e.g., SM 8.0 for FP8, SM 10.0 for NVFP4)

The registry validates inputs against these constraints before calling the backend—no try/except fallback patterns. If no backend can handle the inputs, a NoCapableBackendError is raised with details.

# Debug logging to see backend selection
import logging
logging.getLogger("comfy_kitchen.dispatch").setLevel(logging.DEBUG)

Testing

Run the test suite with pytest:

# Run all tests
pytest

# Run specific test file
pytest tests/test_backends.py

# Run with verbose output
pytest -v

# Run specific test
pytest tests/test_backends.py::TestBackendSystem::test_list_backends