What's Changed

• [CI/Build] [TPU] Fix TPU CI exit code by @CAROLZXYZXY in #18282
• [Neuron] Support quantization on neuron by @aws-satyajith in #18283
• Support datasets in vllm bench serve and sync with benchmark_[serving,datasets].py by @mgoin in #18566
• [Bugfix] Disable prefix caching by default for benchmark by @cascade812 in #18771
• [Build] Fixes for CMake install by @ProExpertProg in #18570
• [Core] Improve Tensor serialisation by @lgeiger in #18774
• [rocm] Fix wrong attention log by @fxmarty-amd in #18764
• [Bugfix] Fix nomic max_model_len by @noooop in #18755
• [Bugfix]: correctly propagate errors message caught at the chat_templating step to the client by @gcalmettes in #18769
• [V1] fix torch profiling for V1 offline scenarios by @divakar-amd in #18445
• [V1] [Bugfix] eagle bugfix and enable correct lm_head for multimodal (2) by @RonaldBXu in #18781
• [Bugfix][FailingTest]Fix test_model_load_with_params.py by @rabi in #18758
• [Deprecation] Require overriding get_dummy_text and get_dummy_mm_data by @DarkLight1337 in #18796
• [Deprecation] Remove unused sync methods in async_timeout by @DarkLight1337 in #18792
• [Deprecation] Remove fallbacks for Embeddings API by @DarkLight1337 in #18795
• [CI] improve embed testing by @noooop in #18747
• Fix PiecewiseCompileInterpreter by @zou3519 in #17338
• [BugFix] FA2 MLA Accuracy Issue by @LucasWilkinson in #18807
• [Platform][Dist] Make torch distributed process group extendable by @MengqingCao in #18763
• Enable Pydantic mypy checks and convert configs to Pydantic dataclasses by @hmellor in #17599
• [Frontend] add run batch to CLI by @reidliu41 in #18804
• decrement server_load on listen for disconnect by @daniel-salib in #18784
• [Core] Add Lora Support to Beam Search by @alex-jw-brooks in #18346
• [Chore] update ty configuration by @aarnphm in #18839
• [Misc] fix olmoe model layer for TP > 1 by @lengrongfu in #18828
• [V1][Metrics] Remove metrics that were deprecated in 0.8 by @markmc in #18837
• [Chore][Spec Decode] Update check NoneType instead of assigning variables by @aarnphm in #18836
• [Hardware][TPU][V1] Multi-LoRA Optimisations for the V1 TPU backend by @Akshat-Tripathi in #15655
• Remove checks for None for fields which should never be None by @hmellor in #17985
• [Core] Enable CUDA graphs for DP + All2All kernels by @varun-sundar-rabindranath in #18724
• [Bugfix][ROCm] fix the power of 2 exception from triton_unified_attention.py when running llama4 models and unit test fix by @hongxiayang in #18100
• Prevent the cross-encoder logic from being applied to classification tasks by @maxdebayser in #18838
• Add ability to use CUDAGraphs with use_inductor=False by @zou3519 in #17345
• [Bugfix][TPU] fix moe custom kernel import by @yaochengji in #18853
• [Doc][Neuron] Update documentation for Neuron by @elaineyz in #18868
• Skip device and quant Pydantic validation to make plugin device work by @Yikun in #18843
• Fixes a dead link in nightly benchmark readme by @nerdalert in #18856
• [Neuron] Add multi-LoRA support for Neuron. by @aws-satyajith in #18284
• [LoRA] Add LoRA support for InternVL by @jeejeelee in #18842
• [Doc] Remove redundant spaces from compatibility_matrix.md by @windsonsea in #18891
• [doc] add CLI doc by @reidliu41 in #18871
• [Bugfix] Fix misleading information in the documentation by @jeejeelee in #18845
• [Misc] Replace TODO in serving transcription by @NickLucche in #18895
• [Bugfix] Ensure tensors are contiguous during serialisation by @lgeiger in #18860
• [BugFix] Update pydantic to fix error on python 3.10 by @ProExpertProg in #18852
• Fix an error in dummy weight loading for quantization models by @Chenyaaang in #18855
• [Misc][Tools][Benchmark] Add benchmark_serving supports for llama.cpp. by @Duyi-Wang in #18692
• [Doc] Fix codeblocks formatting in LoRA adapters documentation by @Zerohertz in #18907
• [Bugfix] Fix the failing gte embedding test by @Isotr0py in #18720
• [Attention][V1] Toggle for v1 attention backend by @gshtras in #18275
• [ROCm][V0][Attention] Revert to the previous FA triton kernel by @gshtras in #18226
• [Deprecation] Disallow pos-args other than model when initializing LLM by @DarkLight1337 in #18802
• [Misc] Remove duplicate init for self.vllm_config by @googs1025 in #18896
• [V1] Allocate kv_cache with stride order for V1 by @NickLucche in #18775
• [BugFix] Make DP work with connector-delayed new requests by @njhill in #18559
• [P/D] NixlConnector DP fixes by @wseaton in #18903
• Use standalone_compile by default in torch >= 2.8.0 by @zou3519 in #18846
• [TPU] remove transpose ops in moe kernel by @yaochengji in #18923
• [Bugfix] Fix PP default fallback behavior for V1 by @mgoin in #18915
• [Misc] Update type annotation for rotary embedding base by @DarkLight1337 in #18914
• [TPU][CI/CD] Clean up docker for TPU tests. by @CAROLZXYZXY in #18926
• improve the robustness of parsing vlms config in AutoRound by @wenhuach21 in #18894
• [Bugfix] Consistent ascii handling in tool parsers by @chaunceyjiang in #18883
• [Model] Use AutoWeightsLoader for mamba2 by @jinyouzhi in #18918
• [docs] fix: fix markdown syntax by @eric-haibin-lin in #18927
• [ROCm] Remove unnecessary assertion of max_model_len in ROCM_AITER_MLA attention backend. by @vllmellm in #18938
• [Bugfix] Remove NVFP4 scales assertions to fix load_format=dummy by @mgoin in #18861
• [Deprecation] Remove mean pooling default for Qwen2EmbeddingModel by @DarkLight1337 in #18913
• [Misc]Fix benchmarks/README.md for speculative decoding by @rabi in #18897
• [doc] add mkdocs doc by @reidliu41 in #18930
• [Model] Use in-place adds in SigLIP by @lgeiger in #18922
• [Bugfix][Failing Test] Fix test_vllm_port.py by @rabi in #18618
• [Misc]Fix typo by @Always-Naive in #18947
• [Bugfix][TPU] Fix tpu model runner testcase failure by @CAROLZXYZXY in #18810
• [CI/Build] remove regex from build dependencies by @dtrifiro in #18945
• [Feature] minicpm eagle support by @huangyuxiang03 in #18943
• [doc] show the count for fork and watch by @reidliu41 in #18950
• [Docs] Update SECURITY.md with link to our security guide by @russellb in #18961
• Improve "failed to get the hash of the compiled graph" error by @zou3519 in #18956
• [Perf] API-server scaleout with many-to-many server-engine comms by @njhill in #17546
• Benchmark script for fp8 vs bf16 gemm by @mgoin in #17126
• [VLM] Add PP support and fix GPTQ inference for Ovis models by @Isotr0py in #18958
• [Misc] add group_size is -1 in awq quantization by @lengrongfu in #18910
• Tool parser regex timeout handling by @wseaton in #18960
• [Docs] Correct multiprocessing design doc by @lgeiger in #18964
• create util function for batched arange by @yuguo68 in #18937
• [Frontend] Add rerank support to run_batch endpoint by @pooyadavoodi in #16278
• [Misc] Fix estimated max model len msg by @sarckk in #18966
• [Bugfix]: Fix the incompatibility issue with Structured Outputs when Thinking is disabled by @chaunceyjiang in #18879
• fix security issue of logging llm output by @luccafong in #18980
• [Neuron] Add Multi-Modal model support for Neuron by @aws-satyajith in #18921
• [doc] fix the list rendering issue - security.md by @reidliu41 in #18982
• [BugFix] Pydantic part 2 by @ProExpertProg in #18911
• [FEAT][ROCm] Add AITER grouped topk for DeepSeekV2 by @vllmellm in #18825
• [Bugfix] Fix for issue 17396 by @frreiss in #18773
• [ROCm][Kernel] Add gfx950 support for skinny gemms by @charlifu in #18010
• [P/D] NixlConnector use cache device index for memory registration by @ptarasiewiczNV in #18969
• [BugFix] Fix multi-node offline data-parallel by @njhill in #18981
• [Misc] add return token strs for tokenize by @reidliu41 in #18941
• [Misc][Benchmark] Add support for CustomDataset by @ekagra-ranjan in #18511
• [Bugfix] Fix EAGLE3 broken logits by @benchislett in #18909
• [Core] Rework dtype resolution by @DarkLight1337 in #18751
• [LoRA] Support dynamically initialize packed_modules_mapping for VLM with arbitrary components by @Isotr0py in #18987
• [doc] small fix - mkdocs by @reidliu41 in #18996
• Let max_num_batched_tokens use human_readable_int for large numbers by @mgoin in #18968
• [BugFix] fix data parallel construct ipv6 url addres by @lengrongfu in #18991
• [BugFix] Fix incorrect metrics shutdown error log message by @njhill in #18992
• [doc] wrong output by @reidliu41 in #19000
• [Misc] reuse num_tokens_across_dp of get_dp_padding to avoid unnecessary dp all reduce in set_forward_context by @izhuhaoran in #18935
• [Bugfix][Nixl] Fix DP Metadata Handshake by @robertgshaw2-redhat in #19008
• [Core] Support inplace model weights loading by @22quinn in #18745
• [doc] add pytest tips by @reidliu41 in #19010
• [Model] enable data parallel for Llama4 vision encoder by @jennyyyyzhen in #18368
• [Frontend] enable custom logging for the uvicorn server (OpenAI API server) by @fpaupier in #18403
• [Bugfix][Model] Attempt to fix eagle in V0. by @gshtras in #18978
• add an absolute path for run.sh by @calvin0327 in #18258
• [Hardware][TPU] Initial support of model parallelism with single worker using SPMD by @lsy323 in #18011
• [Doc] Remove duplicate TOCs during MkDocs migration by @Zerohertz in #19021
• [Bugfix][EP+DP] Use pplx-kernel internode instead of intranode by @tlrmchlsmth in #19034
• Adding "LoRA Test %N" to AMD production tests by @Concurrensee in #18929
• [CPU][CI] Re-enable the CPU CI tests by @bigPYJ1151 in #19046
• [ROCm][Build] Clean up the ROCm build by @gshtras in #19040
• [V1] Support DP with Ray by @ruisearch42 in #18779
• Add tarsier model support by @princepride in #18985
• [bugfix] small fix logic issue by @reidliu41 in #18999
• Reduce logs in CLI scripts and plugin loader by @mgoin in #18970
• [Bugfix] Use cmake 3.26.1 instead of 3.26 to avoid build failure by @houseroad in #19019
• [v1][KVCacheManager] Rename BlockHashType to BlockHash by @heheda12345 in #19015
• Update docker docs with ARM CUDA cross-compile by @mgoin in #19037
• [Doc] Add InternVL LoRA support by @jeejeelee in #19055
• [Misc] Update WeightsMapper for qwen2-vl/qwen2.5-vl by @Isotr0py in #19054
• [Doc] Update V1 user guide for embedding and enc-dec models by @DarkLight1337 in #19060
• [doc] clarify windows support by @youkaichao in #19088
• [CI/Build] Remove V0 LoRA test by @jeejeelee in #19066
• Fix underscores in dict keys passed via CLI by @hmellor in #19030
• [Bugfix] disable processor cache by @zucchini-nlp in #19068
• [Doc] Improve the Pull Request template with key components by @houseroad in #19086
• [Misc] Add missing _Backend enums by @NickLucche in #19081
• [Misc] fix: add miss best_of param validation by @googs1025 in #18555
• [Misc] Add SPDX-FileCopyrightText by @simon-mo in #19100
• [Doc] Readme standardization by @SorenDreano in #18695
• [doc] update docker version by @reidliu41 in #19074
• [Kernel] DeepEP dispatch-combine kernel integration by @varun-sundar-rabindranath in #18434
• [V1] Support cross-layer KV sharing by @sarckk in #18212
• [Perf] Tune scaled_fp8_quant by increasing vectorization by @mgoin in #18844
• Fix interaction between Optional and Annotated in CLI typing by @hmellor in #19093
• [v1] Re-init input batch for multiple kv cache groups by @heheda12345 in #18654
• [V1][Spec Decode][Ngram] 1.35x gain -> 1.95x gain on InstructCoder with prompt fix by @ekagra-ranjan in #18971
• [Bugfix] get_num_blocks_to_allocate with null_block by @heheda12345 in #19031
• [Bugfix]: Fix the incompatibility issue with tool_choice 'required' when Thinking is enabled by @chaunceyjiang in #19075
• [Bugfix][P/D] Fix Prefix Cache Bug by @NickLucche in #18411
• [Bugfix] Max concurrency estimation and check_enough_kv_cache_memory for models with sliding window layers by @heheda12345 in #19029
• feat: add data parallel rank to KVEventBatch by @PeaBrane in #18925
• [Misc] Fix path and python alias errors in disagg_prefill exmaples by @Jeffwan in #18919
• [Docs] Add developer doc about CI failures by @russellb in #18782
• [CPU] V1 support for the CPU backend by @bigPYJ1151 in #16441
• [Core] Cast multimodal input in hf processor by @lgeiger in #18862
• [KERNEL] Sampler. CUDA kernel for applying repetition penalty by @vadiklyutiy in #18437
• [Cleanup][v1]:remote guided-decoding-backend for example by @calvin0327 in #19059
• [NVIDIA] Add Cutlass MLA backend by @kaixih in #17625
• [Bugfix] Fix FA3 full cuda graph correctness by @WoosukKwon in #19106
• Fix #19130 by @princepride in #19132
• [TPU] Skip hanging tests by @lsy323 in #19115
• Fix ValueError: Missing value for tag key(s): model_name,engine. by @eicherseiji in #19113
• [Misc] Add packages for benchmark as extra dependency by @Isotr0py in #19089
• Improve the output precision of embedding models by @noooop in #19092
• [CI/Build][Bugfix] Ensure compatibility with transformers 4.52 by @DarkLight1337 in #18678
• Add DeepSeek-R1-0528 function call chat template by @Xu-Wenqing in #18874
• Sm100 blockwise fp8 swap ab by @IwakuraRein in #18564
• [Doc] Update V1 Guide for embedding models by @DarkLight1337 in #19141
• Allow AsyncLLMEngine.generate to target a specific DP rank by @jmswen in #19102
• [Bugfix][EP+DP] Fix internode check by @tlrmchlsmth in #19112
• [Perf] Tunings for SM100 FP8 CUTLASS kernel by @mgoin in #18778
• [TPU] Update dynamo dump file name in compilation test by @lsy323 in #19108
• [Bugfix] fix v1 cpu worker fails on macOS by @kebe7jun in #19121
• [Kernel] Integrate batched/masked deepgemm kernel by @varun-sundar-rabindranath in #19111
• [Misc] refactor: simplify EngineCoreClient.make_async_mp_client in AsyncLLM by @googs1025 in #18817
• [P/D] Heterogeneous TP by @NickLucche in #18833
• [doc] small fix by @reidliu41 in #19167
• [Bugfix][Nixl] Fix full prefix cache hit bug by @robertgshaw2-redhat in #18632
• [Bugfix] Fix port handling in make_zmq_path by @mgoin in #19117
• [Torch Nightly]add missing dependency by @yangw-dev in #18770
• Handle non-serializable objects when dumping benchmark results by @huydhn in #19114
• [BugFix][Minor] Fix full cuda graph bug when max_num_seqs < 512 by @WoosukKwon in #19171
• [Bugfix]: Fix the incompatibility issue with stream when Thinking is disabled by @chaunceyjiang in #19135
• [Build] Annotate wheel and container path for release workflow by @simon-mo in #19162
• [Misc] Remove unnecessary fallback to prefill-decode attention by @vllmellm in #19138
• [Misc] Do not override NCCL_CUMEM_ENABLE if set explicitly by @22quinn in #19105
• [Frontend] improve vllm run-batch --help display by @reidliu41 in #19187
• [Bugfix] properly catch PIL-related errors for vision models when incorrect data urls are provided by @gcalmettes in #19202
• [mistral_common] Add v11 tokenizer by @patrickvonplaten in #19193
• Add H20-3e fused MoE kernel tuning configs for DeepSeek-R1/V3 by @Xu-Wenqing in #19205
• [Hardware][NVIDIA] FP4 MoE kernel optimization by @dubcyfor3 in #19110
• [MISC][Bugfix] Use less CPU when message queue has been empty for some time by @p12tic in #16226
• [P/D][NixlConnector] Enable FlashInfer backend by @NickLucche in #19090
• [Quantization] Skip Fp4 Test for compressed-tensors by @dsikka in #19217
• [V1] Use FlashInfer by default on Blackwell GPUs by @mgoin in #19118
• [Model] NemotronH support by @vegaluisjose in #18863
• Fix AOPerModuleConfig name changes by @jerryzh168 in #18869
• [Bugfix] Fix EAGLE vocab embedding construction for Llama 70B by @benchislett in #19033
• [v1] Hybrid Memory Allocator by @heheda12345 in #17996
• [TPU] update torch_xla pin by @yaochengji in #19231
• Support allowed_token_ids in ChatCompletionRequest by @xu-song in #19143
• [Chore] update CODEOWNERS by @aarnphm in #19247
• [v1][P/D] Fix a edge case in kv cache schedule by @KingsleyZhang123 in #19182
• [TPU] fix kv cache dtype in model runner by @yaochengji in #19244
• [Quantization] Bump compressed-tensors version; update NVFP4A16 test model by @dsikka in #19224
• [Docs] Improve V1 KVConnector interface documentation by @njhill in #19172
• Fix CompilationConfig repr by @zou3519 in #19091
• Unit Test for run_dp_sharded_vision_model by @cryptopic in #19103
• [Model] Optimize nemotron_h implementation by @jeejeelee in #19249
• [Core] Raise when non-multi-instance DP clients target a DP rank by @jmswen in #19227
• improve logits bias by @yuguo68 in #19041
• Fixed ppc build when it runs on non-RHEL based linux distros by @npanpaliya in #18422
• [BugFix] Fix MultiConnector test after HMA changes by @njhill in #19291
• [Bugfix][Core] Update cancellation logic in generate() to handle Generator exits by @Adolfo-Karim in #19225
• [Core] Fix abrupt request abort by @NickLucche in #18485
• [BugFix] Fix tpu_model_runner block_id concatenation by @njhill in #19228
• [Misc][Tools][Benchmark] Fix and improve auto tune script by @Chenyaaang in #19163
• [Build][ROCm] Update Dockerfile.rocm by @Alexei-V-Ivanov-AMD in #19296
• [Easy][Test] Simplify test_function_tool_use with multiple parametrizes by @houseroad in #19269
• [Kernel] Integrate CUTLASS MoE kernel with PPLX by @ElizaWszola in #18762
• [TPU][Test] Add script to run benchmark on TPU for buildkite by @QiliangCui in #19039
• [CI][PowerPC] Use a more appropriate way to select testcase in tests/models/language/pooling/test_embedding.py by @AaruniAggarwal in #19253
• Add FlexAttention to V1 by @drisspg in #16078
• [Misc] refactor context extension by @reidliu41 in #19246
• [CI/Build] Improve Llama GGUF test robustness by @Isotr0py in #19287
• [Nit][Benchmark]Fix example in benchmark_serving_structured_output.py by @draftbk in #19311
• [AMD] Update compatible packaging version by @pramenku in #19309
• [BugFix][V1] Fix memory profiling bug by @ProExpertProg in #18974
• [Bugfix]: Fix TypeError: 'float' object cannot be interpreted as an integer by @chaunceyjiang in #19283
• [Bugfix] Re-enable use_cudagraph in vLLM v1 by @zou3519 in #19299
• [Misc] Change tests/compile to use VLLM_V1 by default by @zou3519 in #19302
• Add H20-3e fused MoE kernel tuning configs for Qwen3-235B-A22B by @Xu-Wenqing in #19315
• [Hardware][POWER] Add IBM POWER11 Support to CPU Extension Detection by @Akashcodes732 in #19082
• [Quantization] Add compressed-tensors NVFP4 support by @dsikka in #18312
• [Multi Modal] Add an env var for message queue max chunk bytes by @jennyyyyzhen in #19242
• [Bugfix] model_max_length should consider max_model_len in tokenizer_config by @noooop in #19201
• [Deprecation] Remove inputs arg fallback in Engine classes by @DarkLight1337 in #18799
• [Misc] Add documentation update reminder to PR template by @Isotr0py in #19289
• [Frontend] Remove unreachable code from llm.py by @KsuParkhamchuk in #19288
• [Misc] Cleanup compilation tests by @zou3519 in #19343
• [doc] improve ci doc by @reidliu41 in #19307
• [Doc] Fix description in the Automatic Prefix Caching design doc by @cr7258 in #19333
• [CI/Build] Fix LoRA test by @jeejeelee in #19350
• [Fix] Allow kernel compilation for CUDA capability 8.7 by @conroy-cheers in #19328
• [CI] Introduce rules for llama auto-label by @houseroad in #19323
• [Docs] Fix a bullet list in usage/security.md by @windsonsea in #19358
• [full_graph] Fix query_start_loc padding by @yinghai in #19321
• [v1] Add fp32 support to v1 engine through flex attn by @Isotr0py in #19319
• [Misc] Fixes and Optimizations for DeepEP + DeepGEMM combination. by @varun-sundar-rabindranath in #19298
• [Bugfix][Core] Prevent token lengths exceeding max_model_len in V0 by @22quinn in #19348
• [Quantization] Bump compressed-tensors version by @kylesayrs in #19295
• [Frontend] Make TIMEOUT_KEEP_ALIVE configurable through env var by @liusiqian-tal in #18472
• [TPU]Fix KV cache sharing tests by @lsy323 in #19371
• [HOT-FIX] Add kv_sharing_target_layer_name argument to cutlass_mla backend by @pavanimajety in #19374
• [Misc] Fix a config typo in disable_hybrid_kv_cache_manager configuration by @lsy323 in #19383

New Contributors

• @nerdalert made their first contribution in #18856
• @Duyi-Wang made their first contribution in #18692
• @jinyouzhi made their first contribution in #18918
• @eric-haibin-lin made their first contribution in #18927
• @Always-Naive made their first contribution in #18947
• @yuguo68 made their first contribution in #18937
• @ptarasiewiczNV made their first contribution in #18969
• @izhuhaoran made their first contribution in #18935
• @jennyyyyzhen made their first contribution in #18368
• @zucchini-nlp made their first contribution in #19068
• @SorenDreano made their first contribution in #18695
• @PeaBrane made their first contribution in #18925
• @jmswen made their first contribution in #19102
• @dubcyfor3 made their first contribution in #19110
• @p12tic made their first contribution in #16226
• @KingsleyZhang123 made their first contribution in #19182
• @cryptopic made their first contribution in #19103
• @Adolfo-Karim made their first contribution in #19225
• @QiliangCui made their first contribution in #19039
• @draftbk made their first contribution in #19311
• @pramenku made their first contribution in #19309
• @KsuParkhamchuk made their first contribution in #19288
• @cr7258 made their first contribution in #19333
• @liusiqian-tal made their first contribution in #18472

Full Changelog: v0.9.0...v0.9.1rc1