- Port HTTP server, and appropriate points across core etc from old API to Zig `0.15.0-dev` patterns - Fix mutability, unused variables, and API compatibility issues - Validate SIMD tensor operations and backend architecture - Foundation now compiles cleanly and produces working binary
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DeepZig V3: A High-Performance LLM Architecture
Overview
A proposal & foundation for implementing DeepSeek V3 in Zig to create a high-performance, web-ready LLM inference engine. This leverages Zig's unique advantages for systems programming while targeting modern deployment scenarios.
Status Update: ✅ Foundation compiles cleanly with theoretical implementation with Zig 0.15.0-dev, including:
- Working HTTP server with modern Zig API
- SIMD-optimized tensor operations
- Cross-platform backend architecture
- Professional memory management
- Comprehensive build system
Why This Matters
Current LLM inference is dominated by Python/PyTorch, which introduces:
- Garbage collection pauses during generation
- Runtime overhead from dynamic dispatch
- Complex deployment with heavy runtimes
- Platform lock-in due to dependency complexity
Why Zig?
Performance: Zero-cost abstractions, compile-time optimization, direct hardware access
Simplicity: Single static binary, no runtime dependencies, cross-compilation built-in
Web-First: Native HTTP server, WebAssembly compilation, efficient memory management
Proposed Architecture
┌─────────────────┐ ┌──────────────────┐ ┌─────────────────┐
│ Web Layer │ │ Core Engine │ │ Backends │
│ │ │ │ │ │
│ ├─ HTTP API │◄──►│ ├─ Transformer │◄──►│ ├─ CPU (SIMD) │
│ ├─ WebSocket │ │ ├─ Attention │ │ ├─ Metal (macOS)│
│ ├─ Rate Limit │ │ ├─ MoE Routing │ │ ├─ CUDA (Linux) │
│ └─ Auth │ │ └─ Tokenizer │ │ └─ WebGPU │
└─────────────────┘ └──────────────────┘ └─────────────────┘
Proposed Web API
Target Endpoints
POST /v1/chat/completions
- OpenAI-compatible chat APIPOST /v1/completions
- Text completionGET /v1/models
- List available modelsGET /health
- Service health checkWebSocket /ws
- Streaming inference
Deployment Vision
- Static binaries - Single file deployment, no dependencies
- Direct VPS deployment - Copy binary and run with systemd
- Edge devices - ARM/RISC-V cross-compilation
- Serverless functions - Minimal cold start with static linking
- WebAssembly - Browser inference without additional runtime
Implementation Plan
Phase 1: Foundation ✅ DRAFTED
- Set up Zig project structure
- Implement basic tensor operations with SIMD
- Create memory management system (arena allocators)
- Build HTTP server framework
- Updated to Zig 0.15.0-dev - compiles cleanly
Phase 2: Core Model
- Implement transformer layers
- Add Multi-Head Latent Attention (MLA)
- Build Mixture of Experts (MoE) routing
- Create tokenizer integration
Phase 3: Backends
- Optimize CPU backend with AVX/NEON
- Integrate Metal for Apple Silicon
- Add CUDA support for NVIDIA GPUs
- Implement WebGPU for browsers
Phase 4: Web Integration
- Complete HTTP API implementation (basic structure)
- Add WebSocket streaming
- Build authentication/rate limiting
- Create deployment tooling
Expected Benefits
Aspect | Current (PyTorch) | Proposed (Zig) |
---|---|---|
Cold start | 10-30s | < 2s |
Memory usage | 20-40GB | < 16GB |
Dependencies | ~2GB runtime | Single binary |
Deployment | Complex | Copy & run |
Technical Challenges
- Model Complexity: DeepSeek V3's MoE architecture requires careful memory management
- Backend Integration: Need efficient FFI to CUDA/Metal while maintaining performance
- Web Scale: Handle concurrent requests without blocking inference
- Accuracy: Match PyTorch numerical precision
Platform-Specific Opportunities
Apple Silicon (M-Series)
- Metal Performance Shaders integration for matrix operations
- AMX instruction set access for accelerated linear algebra
- Unified memory architecture exploitation for zero-copy transfers
- Power efficiency tuning across P and E cores
x86_64 Architecture
- AVX-512 vectorization with masked operations
- Cache-friendly memory layouts for L1/L2/L3 optimization
- NUMA-aware allocation and thread assignment
- Dynamic dispatch based on runtime CPU feature detection
NVIDIA GPUs
- CUDA integration via efficient FFI bindings
- Tensor Core utilization for mixed-precision operations
- Custom kernels for attention mechanisms
- Memory pooling for reduced allocation overhead
Getting Started
Current Status: This repository contains the original Python DeepSeek V3 implementation. The Zig implementation is proposed future work.
For the Current Python Implementation:
# Clone this repository
git clone https://github.com/[current-repo-path]
cd DeepSeek-V3-Zig
# Follow existing Python setup instructions
# (see original DeepSeek V3 documentation)
For the Proposed Zig Implementation:
# This would be the future workflow once implemented:
# 1. Set up new Zig project structure
zig init-exe deepseek-v3-zig
# 2. Implement core components
# - Tensor operations with SIMD
# - HTTP server framework
# - Model architecture
# 3. Test and benchmark
zig build test
zig build bench
# 4. Run web server
zig build run -- --port 8080
Want to contribute to making this real? See Seeking Contributors below.
Development Approach
Following established Zig patterns:
- Arena allocators for request-scoped memory
- Error unions for explicit error handling
- Comptime generics for zero-cost abstractions
- SIMD vectors for numerical computation
Reference: Zig Cookbook for implementation patterns.
Seeking Contributors
This is an ambitious project that would benefit from expertise in:
- Zig systems programming
- GPU kernel optimization (CUDA/Metal)
- ML model implementation
- Web server development
- Performance optimization
- Hardware-software co-design
- Novel inference techniques (Speculative decoding, quantization)
Project Timeline
- Foundation and basic tensor ops
- Core transformer implementation
- Backend optimization and web API
- Testing, benchmarking, deployment tools
Key Questions
Q: Why not just optimize PyTorch?
A: PyTorch's Python overhead and GC pauses are fundamental limitations. Zig offers zero-cost abstractions, superior error handling, and deterministic performance.
Q: How will this compare to llama.cpp?
A: Similar performance goals, but with built-in web API, better memory management, and focus on DeepSeek V3's specific MoE architecture.
Q: What about ONNX/TensorRT/ZML etc?
A: Those are inference runtimes, not development frameworks / LLM frameworks. This project enables rapid iteration and custom optimization for research.
References
- DeepSeek V3 Paper - Original model architecture
- Zig Language - Language documentation
- Awesome Zig - Community resources
- Zig Patterns - Common idioms
- ZML - Zig Inference Stack
- LLaMA.cpp - C++ Inference Engine
- DeepZig Consciousness - Research goal/end game
Status: 🎯 Seeking feedback & idea expansion
Vision: Foundation for advanced AI reasoning research