Strata Files

AMD cards on Windows (new), an MCP server so your AI assistant can set Strata up, a shorter README - and a cancelled request now frees the engine within a second.

AMD on Windows (new, [#247] [#325]): an AMD card on Windows is set up like an NVIDIA one: double-click START-HERE.bat. On a PC with no NVIDIA card Strata can use, setup picks the AMD card by itself and downloads the ready-made AMD engine (strata-windows-x64-hip.zip, below). It carries the ROCm libraries it needs, so the AMD driver (AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition) is the only thing to install. Cards: RX 7900 XT / XTX, RX 7800 XT / 7700 XT, RX 9060 XT, RX 9070 / 9070 XT, Radeon AI PRO R9700, RX 6800 / 6900 series.

• This is new: [#325]'s author ran this port on an RX 9070 XT. Here, the zip's own runtime finds a Radeon iGPU, and a test build of the same code ran a hipBLAS GEMM correctly on it. But the release zip hasn't run a model on a discrete card yet. Please report how it runs (docs/AMD_HIP.md, "Reporting a Windows AMD run").
• For now on Windows: one card per model, no images. Linux AMD is unchanged: multi-GPU, and images through the CPU.
• Thanks to jagsan-cyber (#247), dvasdekis (#325) and araujoluks (#302) for the Windows work this builds on.

Let your AI set it up (#133): paste one line into Claude Code, Cursor, Codex or Copilot (in the README). It checks the PC, picks the model, installs, starts and tells you how to connect. tools/strata_mcp.py is an MCP server that lets AI tools install, start, check and stop Strata themselves (docs/MCP_SERVER.md).

A shorter README: what Strata is, how fast it is (now with an AMD PC next to the NVIDIA one), what you need, how to install, which model to pick. The details moved to docs/INSTALL.md, MODELS.md, TROUBLESHOOTING.md and HOW_IT_WORKS.md. AMD is no longer called experimental.

Fixes:

• A request whose client hangs up is cancelled within about a second (#430, [#431], jkuepker). Before, a non-streamed request ran to max_tokens, and a streamed one read its whole prompt, while the next request waited (17-33 s in the reports).
• The prompt path no longer aborts when llama.cpp's MMQ has no tile that fits a card (J_best=0, [#420], qni-live). That product takes the FP16 path, and the engine says which type and card. Where everything fits, nothing changes.
• Setup:
• a resumed download needs disk room only for what is still missing (#425, jctaborda);
• UD-Q4_K_XL on an AMD card is asked about before its 111 GB download, since it is untested there (#429, jkuepker).
• Docs: the AMD router's decode gain with a user's repeated measurement next to ours, and their STRATA_HIP_WMMA=1 numbers (#432, jkuepker).

Checked before the release:

• Same answers as 0.1.33 on all four quants (Q2_0, IQ3_XXS, IQ3_S, the Coder), 10/10 each with a fixed cache, including the prompt path's internal state at 4K and 20K tokens. Checked both after the merge and on the final engine.
• The same speed: 5-pair A/B on Q2_0 and IQ3_S, +1.2 / +0.9 / -0.2 / +0.4%, with the same expert slots.
• Real use at a 57K-token prompt through the server on Q2_0 and the Coder. A long prompt whose client hung up, followed by a short question: the question was answered in 0.6 s (17 s in [#431]'s report).
• Linux (WSL, RTX 5070): Q2_0 byte-identical to 0.1.33 (10/10), and the default settings pass.
• AMD on Linux (R9700): the HIP build of the release and its tests, all passing except the two that need a model fixture or an AVX-512 CPU, as before. The README's AMD numbers were measured on an RX 9070 XT + Ryzen 9 3900X + 47 GB RAM with setup's own install.
• AMD on Windows: the zip built and packaged. Its strata-device with only the zip's libraries lists this PC's integrated Radeon and correctly reports that the engine has no code for it (gfx1036).
• Tests: setup's (132, including the golden check that NVIDIA --yes configs are unchanged), the other tools' and the MCP server's (236 together), the server's (146, including client hang-ups, streamed and not).
• #410: reproduced on IQ3_XXS: --pcie-frac 0 was the missing switch for byte-identical repeats (DETAILS.md).

Updating: get the latest files (git pull, or download and unzip anywhere), then run START-HERE.bat (Linux: ./setup.sh). Setup installs engine 0.1.34.

The ready-made Strata engines for Windows, which START-HERE.bat fetches by itself:

• strata-windows-x64.zip: NVIDIA (RTX 20 / 30 / 40 / 50: sm_75, sm_86, sm_89, sm_120 + PTX), CUDA 13.0, needs an NVIDIA driver 580 or newer. Contents: strata.exe, strata-vision.exe (the optional image encoder), BUILD.json.
• strata-windows-x64-hip.zip: AMD (gfx1100, gfx1101, gfx1102, gfx1200, gfx1201, gfx1030), ROCm 10.2.0a20260930 from AMD's TheRock builds, needs a current AMD driver. Contents: strata.exe, strata-device.exe, BUILD.json, rocm\ (the ROCm libraries and their licenses).