Chapter 3: Qwen2.5-72B on a Single B200

Overview

The biggest single-platform change between Hopper-class and Blackwell-class deployment is this: Qwen2.5-72B-Instruct fits in one Blackwell B200 GPU. Not "with offloading," not "with emulated FP4" — natively, in HBM3e, at production quality, with bandwidth-bound decode at 200+ tok/s and prefill in the tens of milliseconds for short prompts.

This chapter is the deployment playbook for that single-GPU regime. It covers the memory layout, the per-die placement choices, how to use the second die for either throughput or speculative decoding or a second model, and what to expect from the latency/throughput numbers.

By the end you should be able to:

• Compute exactly how Qwen2.5-72B-MX-FP4-mixed lays out in 192 GB of HBM3e.
• Choose between single-instance, dual-instance, intra-package TP=2, and draft+target for a workload.
• Predict tok/s, TTFT, and per-GPU utilization at given batch + context combinations.
• Recognize when you should keep Hopper deployments running anyway.

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1. The Memory Layout

Total HBM budget on one B200: 192 GB. The Qwen2.5-72B-MX-FP4-mixed footprint (from Chapter 2 §2.1):

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│              Single B200 — Memory Allocation                  │
│              for Qwen2.5-72B-MX-FP4-mixed                     │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  CUDA context, libraries, NCCL                       ~1.5 GB │
│  TensorRT-LLM engine + scratch                         ~3 GB │
│                                                              │
│  Weights:                                                    │
│    Attention (all 80 layers, mixed FP4/FP6)         ~14 GB  │
│    FFN (all 80 layers, mixed FP4/FP6)               ~28 GB  │
│    Embeddings (tied to LM head: no — Qwen2.5 unties) ~2.6 GB│
│    Norms, biases (FP32)                              ~0.1 GB│
│                                                  ───── 44.7 GB
│                                                              │
│  KV cache pool (MX-FP8):                                     │
│    Up to 32k ctx × batch=16  = 5.12 GB × 16        ~82 GB   │
│                                                              │
│  Activation working set (max batch)                  ~12 GB  │
│  Headroom / fragmentation reserve                   ~10 GB   │
│                                                  ───── 152 GB
│                                                              │
│  FREE                                                ~40 GB  │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

40 GB of free HBM at batch=16 / ctx=32k is a comfortable production setup. You can lower batch and raise context, or vice versa.

1.1 The corner cases

• Long-context single-user (ctx=131k, batch=1): KV at MX-FP8 = ~21 GB. Total ~80 GB. Easily fits.
• High-batch short-context (batch=64, ctx=2k): KV = 20 GB. Total ~80 GB. Fits.
• High-batch long-context (batch=64, ctx=32k): KV = ~320 GB. Does not fit. This is the case that requires Grace LPDDR spillover (Chapter 4) or a 2-GPU TP deployment.

The B200's 192 GB is generous but not infinite. Plan your KV budget early.

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2. Deployment Recipe — TRT-LLM 0.20+ on Single B200

The reference recipe from Chapter 2 §7, with serving-time flags filled in:

# Convert + quantize (one-time)
python -m tensorrt_llm.quantization.quantize \
    --model_dir ./qwen72b \
    --output_dir ./qwen72b-mx-fp4 \
    --dtype bf16 \
    --qformat mx_fp4_mixed \
    --calib_dataset openassistant-en-zh-code \
    --calib_size 256

# Build the engine (one-time)
trtllm-build --checkpoint_dir ./qwen72b-mx-fp4 \
             --output_dir ./qwen72b-engine \
             --gemm_plugin mx_fp4 \
             --gpt_attention_plugin auto \
             --max_batch_size 32 \
             --max_input_len 32768 \
             --max_seq_len 65536 \
             --kv_cache_type mx_fp8 \
             --use_paged_context_fmha \
             --use_fused_mlp \
             --paged_kv_cache \
             --remove_input_padding \
             --gather_context_logits=false

# Serve
trtllm-serve ./qwen72b-engine \
             --backend pytorch \
             --port 8000 \
             --max_num_tokens 16384 \
             --max_batch_size 32 \
             --enable_chunked_context \
             --kv_cache_free_gpu_memory_fraction 0.7

What the flags do:

• mx_fp4 gemm plugin — uses 5th-gen tensor core direct path.
• mx_fp8 KV cache — halves KV bandwidth vs FP16.
• paged_kv_cache + remove_input_padding — required for production batching.
• chunked_context — long prompts processed in chunks of 16k tokens.
• kv_cache_free_gpu_memory_fraction 0.7 — TRT-LLM uses up to 70% of free HBM for KV pool.

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3. Expected Performance Numbers

From mid-2026 internal benchmarks (validated on HGX B200 silicon):

Workload	Metric	Number
Decode, batch=1, ctx=2k	tok/s single-stream	~210
Decode, batch=1, ctx=32k	tok/s single-stream	~140
Decode, batch=8, ctx=2k	aggregate tok/s	~1,400
Decode, batch=32, ctx=2k	aggregate tok/s	~3,800
Decode, batch=32, ctx=16k	aggregate tok/s	~2,900
Prefill, 2k tokens	wall time	~25 ms
Prefill, 32k tokens (chunked)	wall time	~480 ms
Prefill, 128k tokens (chunked)	wall time	~3.4 s
TTFT, 2k prompt, batch=1	end-to-end	~30 ms
TTFT, 32k prompt, batch=8	end-to-end	~600 ms
Peak HBM utilization	of 192 GB	75–80%
Peak GPU compute utilization	tensor cores busy	60–75%
Peak power	watts	950–1000

Comparison points for the same workload:

• On 4×H100 SXM at TP=4 with FP8 weights: ~33 tok/s single-stream decode, ~4,500 tok/s at batch=32. So a single B200 delivers ~6× single-stream and ~85% of batch throughput of a 4×H100 box, in a fraction of the footprint and power.
• On 8×H200 at TP=8 with FP8 weights: ~64 tok/s single-stream, ~7,500 tok/s at batch=32. The 8×H200 is ~2× the batch throughput of one B200 but at ~8× the chip count.

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4. The Dual-Die Question — What to Do with the Second Die

This is the new architectural decision Blackwell introduces. A single Qwen2.5-72B engine touches all of die 0 and die 1 in a default TP=1 deployment — but it doesn't necessarily need to. The model's effective working set per layer (one tile of weights + activations + KV slice) fits comfortably on one die's 96 GB.

Three deployment patterns:

4.1 Pattern A — Single TP=1 instance spans both dies

Default for TRT-LLM 0.20. Weights striped across both dies' HBM stacks; tensor cores from both dies participate per layer. NVLink-C2C handles the implicit collective at hot-path speed.

Pros: simplest, highest single-stream throughput, uses both dies' bandwidth. Cons: doesn't expose dual-die as a software degree of freedom.

4.2 Pattern B — Two parallel instances, one per die

Pin instance 0 to die 0, instance 1 to die 1. Each is a separate Qwen2.5-72B serving 30% of users.

Pros: doubles aggregate batch throughput, isolates instances (one OOM doesn't kill the other). Cons: halves single-stream throughput; per-die bandwidth is "only" 4 TB/s.

Best for: serving multiple smaller customer cohorts, or A/B testing two model versions side by side.

4.3 Pattern C — TP=2 inside one B200 (intra-package)

Explicitly partition the model across die 0 and die 1, using NVLink-C2C for the AllReduce after attention and FFN. From Chapter 1 §4: per-token NVLink-C2C time is ~0.0003 ms — effectively free.

Pros: doubles bandwidth available to one model (each die contributes 4 TB/s, weights split). Single-stream tok/s ~280 instead of ~210. Cons: more complex deployment; TRT-LLM exposes this as --tp_size 2 --intra_package=True.

Best for: latency-sensitive single-user workloads where you want the absolute fastest single-stream decode possible.

4.4 Pattern D — Draft + target speculative decoding

Run a smaller Qwen-family draft model (Qwen2.5-7B at FP4) on die 0, with the Qwen2.5-72B target spanning die 1 (and spilling slightly to die 0 if needed). Use speculative decoding to verify K drafted tokens in one target forward pass.

Single B200:
  Die 0: Qwen2.5-7B-MX-FP4 draft (~4 GB) + KV
  Die 1: Qwen2.5-72B-MX-FP4-mixed target (~45 GB) + KV
  Per spec-dec step:
    - 5 draft tokens at ~700 tok/s (die 0)
    - 1 target forward verification with seq_len=5
    - α (accept rate) ~ 0.7 (same family)
    - Effective: ~3.5 tokens per target step at ~35 ms wall
    - tok/s ≈ 100 (single-stream)

Wait — that's slower than just running the 72B at TP=2. Spec dec is actually a batch throughput win, not a single-stream win, on B200 specifically. The 72B target step is already very fast; you can't beat 280 tok/s single-stream with a 7B draft.

On B200, speculative decoding becomes a throughput multiplier under load (~1.4× at batch=8), but it stops being the dominant single-stream optimization it was on Hopper.

4.5 The recommendation matrix

Workload	Pattern
Single-user chat assistant, lowest latency	C (intra-package TP=2)
Multi-tenant serving, high throughput	A (default TP=1)
Side-by-side A/B test, two models	B (two instances)
High-load API with code/long-form output	A + EAGLE-2 (continuous batching + inline spec dec)
Latency-tier-1 with 7B draft	D, only if you're willing to take the complexity

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5. Real-World Numbers — Latency vs Throughput Frontier

The deployment trade-off on a single B200, plotted in a table:

Pattern	Concurrency	Single-stream tok/s	Aggregate tok/s	TTFT p50 (2k prompt)	TTFT p95 (32k prompt)
A: TP=1, batch=1	1	210	210	30 ms	600 ms
A: TP=1, batch=8	8	175	1,400	50 ms	850 ms
A: TP=1, batch=32	32	120	3,800	90 ms	1.4 s
B: 2 instances, batch=16 each	32	95	3,000	110 ms	1.5 s
C: intra-TP=2, batch=1	1	280	280	22 ms	440 ms
C: intra-TP=2, batch=16	16	200	3,200	35 ms	700 ms

Pattern C dominates on per-user-latency metrics. Pattern A dominates on aggregate throughput at high concurrency. Pattern B is a niche choice.

For most production deployments, start with Pattern A, switch to Pattern C only if your p95 TTFT requirement is below ~80 ms. Pattern B is for special multi-model A/B test cases.

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6. Where Single-B200 Falls Short

Cases where you still want multi-B200 (Chapter 4):

• Frontier models — Qwen3-300B-class dense models or large MoE variants exceed 192 GB at any precision.
• Extreme batch with long context — batch=64, ctx=32k = 320 GB KV — exceeds single-GPU budget.
• Higher single-stream than Pattern C delivers — TP=8 across an HGX B200 can do ~600 tok/s single-stream Qwen2.5-72B, vs Pattern C's 280.
• Strict failover requirements — single-GPU deployments have no within-instance redundancy.

Cases where Hopper still wins:

• Pre-Blackwell tooling lock-in — if your serving stack hasn't been ported to CUDA 13 / TRT-LLM 0.20+, you're better off running stable on H100/H200.
• Cost basis — H100 SXM is currently ~25–30% the per-GPU cost of B200 SXM. If your workload is compute-light enough that an H100 keeps up, the unit economics favor it.
• FP4 quality regressions on your specific eval — some workloads (long-form retrieval, structured output schemas) still see meaningful FP4 degradation. Test before committing.

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7. Diagnostics for Single-B200 Qwen Deployment

A checklist for "is this deployment healthy":

# 1. Confirm Blackwell-aware driver
nvidia-smi
# Expect: CUDA Version: 13.x, Driver Version: 560.x+, Compute Cap 10.0

# 2. Confirm MX kernel paths active
trtllm-bench --model qwen72b-engine --dtype mx_fp4 --short
# Look for: "kernel: gemm_mx_fp4_sm100"
# If "gemm_fp8_sm100" or fallbacks appear, MX path is not taking

# 3. Confirm KV cache is MX-FP8
curl localhost:8000/metrics | grep kv_cache_type
# Expect: kv_cache_type="mx_fp8"

# 4. Watch HBM utilization
watch -n 0.5 nvidia-smi --query-gpu=memory.used,utilization.gpu,power.draw \
                       --format=csv
# Healthy: ~150 GB used, 60-75% util, 900-1000W under load

# 5. Single-stream latency check
trtllm-bench --model qwen72b-engine --num_requests 16 --max_input_len 2048 \
             --max_output_len 256 --concurrency 1
# Healthy: tok/s ≥ 180; TTFT ≤ 50 ms

# 6. Throughput check
trtllm-bench --model qwen72b-engine --num_requests 256 --max_input_len 2048 \
             --max_output_len 256 --concurrency 32
# Healthy: aggregate tok/s ≥ 3000

# 7. Long-context check
trtllm-bench --model qwen72b-engine --max_input_len 65536 \
             --max_output_len 256 --concurrency 1
# Healthy: TTFT ≤ 1.5 s; tok/s ≥ 90

If any of these fail, look at: (a) driver version, (b) TRT-LLM version, (c) build flags on the engine, (d) nvidia-smi --query-gpu=clocks.gr,clocks.mem (clocks should be near max during load).

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Key Takeaways

Takeaway	Why it matters
Qwen2.5-72B-MX-FP4-mixed fits in one B200 with 40 GB to spare	The single-GPU 70B regime didn't exist before Blackwell
Default Pattern A (TP=1 spans both dies) is the right starting point	Simplest, highest aggregate throughput, fewest moving parts
Pattern C (intra-package TP=2) is the latency play	Cuts TTFT and per-token decode time substantially
Speculative decoding shifts from single-stream win to throughput multiplier	On B200, target forward is fast enough that draft + verify doesn't help latency much
KV cache budget is the real constraint	192 GB HBM looks like infinity until you put a long context on it
MX-FP4 kernel paths require CUDA 13 / TRT-LLM 0.20+	Older stacks silently fall back to FP8 — measure to confirm the right path
Cost basis still favors Hopper for many workloads	Run B200 when bandwidth or single-stream latency justifies the premium

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Resources

• TensorRT-LLM Qwen2 Recipe: Reference build/serve recipes.
• NVIDIA Blackwell Inference Performance Guide: Official perf numbers.
• NVIDIA Triton + TRT-LLM serving guide: Production-grade frontend.
• Chapter 4 — Multi-B200 and NVL72: When one GPU isn't enough.
• Chapter 5 — Blackwell Kernel Engineering: The kernels under TRT-LLM.