Introduction
Qwen3.6-27B is a dense model in the Qwen3.6 series developed by Alibaba, featuring 27B parameters with a hybrid
architecture combining Gated Delta Networks (linear, O(n) complexity) with full attention every 4th layer. It supports
multimodal inputs (text, image, video) with native context lengths of up to 262,144 tokens, and includes built-in
multi-token prediction (MTP) for speculative decoding. The model delivers strong performance in instruction following,
reasoning, text comprehension, and tool usage.
This document demonstrates the deployment of Qwen3.6-27B on Ascend NPUs using SGLang, including single-node PD mixed
mode, feature configuration, and performance optimization.
This document is validated and written based on SGLang v0.5.13. The current model (Qwen3.6-27B) is fully supported
in this version. To use the latest features (e.g., speculative decoding, multimodal), it is recommended to use
v0.5.13 or a later version.
Supported features
| Feature | Example usage |
|---|
| Tensor Parallelism | --tp-size 2 |
| Quantization | --quantization modelslim |
| Chunked Prefill | auto based on device memory, or set explicit value; disable with --chunked-prefill-size -1; e.g. --chunked-prefill-size 32768 |
| NPU Graph | enabled by default; disable with --disable-cuda-graph; control range via --cuda-graph-bs or --cuda-graph-max-bs; e.g. --cuda-graph-bs 2 8 16 32 48 |
| Speculative Decoding | --speculative-algorithm NEXTN \
--speculative-num-steps 3 \
--speculative-eagle-topk 1 \
--speculative-num-draft-tokens 4 |
| Overlap Schedule | export SGLANG_ENABLE_OVERLAP_PLAN_STREAM=1 |
The values in the Example usage column are for illustration only. Adjust them according to your hardware, deployment
mode, and workload. For parameter details, see
Feature descriptions; for
recommended configurations for each deployment scenario, see Best practices.
For feature compatibility and conflict information between features,
see Feature Compatibility.
Prerequisites
Model weights
If you need to download model weights, check the model size before downloading to reserve enough space.
Ensure the available device memory exceeds the model weight size before deployment. For optimal throughput and latency,
refer to the best practice configurations which may require additional cards.
It is recommended to download the model weights to a shared directory across multiple nodes.
Installation
Ensure sufficient disk space before pulling images. The Docker image requires at least 30 GB of free space.
The dependencies required for the NPU runtime environment have been integrated into a Docker image and uploaded to the
online platform. You can directly pull it.
Both stable releases and daily builds are available. The following command is based on the stable release tag.
For details, see Docker image versions.
Atlas 800I A3
Atlas 800I A2
docker pull quay.io/ascend/sglang:v0.5.13.post1-cann9.0.0-a3
docker run -itd --shm-size=16g --name ${NAME} \
--privileged=true --net=host \
-v /var/queue_schedule:/var/queue_schedule \
-v /etc/ascend_install.info:/etc/ascend_install.info \
-v /usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/sbin \
-v /usr/local/Ascend/driver:/usr/local/Ascend/driver \
-v /usr/local/Ascend/firmware:/usr/local/Ascend/firmware \
--device=/dev/davinci0:/dev/davinci0 \
--device=/dev/davinci1:/dev/davinci1 \
--device=/dev/davinci2:/dev/davinci2 \
--device=/dev/davinci3:/dev/davinci3 \
--device=/dev/davinci4:/dev/davinci4 \
--device=/dev/davinci5:/dev/davinci5 \
--device=/dev/davinci6:/dev/davinci6 \
--device=/dev/davinci7:/dev/davinci7 \
--device=/dev/davinci8:/dev/davinci8 \
--device=/dev/davinci9:/dev/davinci9 \
--device=/dev/davinci10:/dev/davinci10 \
--device=/dev/davinci11:/dev/davinci11 \
--device=/dev/davinci12:/dev/davinci12 \
--device=/dev/davinci13:/dev/davinci13 \
--device=/dev/davinci14:/dev/davinci14 \
--device=/dev/davinci15:/dev/davinci15 \
--device=/dev/davinci_manager:/dev/davinci_manager \
--device=/dev/hisi_hdc:/dev/hisi_hdc \
--entrypoint=bash \
quay.io/ascend/sglang:v0.5.13.post1-cann9.0.0-a3
docker pull quay.io/ascend/sglang:v0.5.13.post1-cann9.0.0-910b
docker run -itd --shm-size=16g --name ${NAME} \
--privileged=true --net=host \
-v /var/queue_schedule:/var/queue_schedule \
-v /etc/ascend_install.info:/etc/ascend_install.info \
-v /usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/sbin \
-v /usr/local/Ascend/driver:/usr/local/Ascend/driver \
-v /usr/local/Ascend/firmware:/usr/local/Ascend/firmware \
--device=/dev/davinci0:/dev/davinci0 \
--device=/dev/davinci1:/dev/davinci1 \
--device=/dev/davinci2:/dev/davinci2 \
--device=/dev/davinci3:/dev/davinci3 \
--device=/dev/davinci4:/dev/davinci4 \
--device=/dev/davinci5:/dev/davinci5 \
--device=/dev/davinci6:/dev/davinci6 \
--device=/dev/davinci7:/dev/davinci7 \
--device=/dev/davinci_manager:/dev/davinci_manager \
--device=/dev/hisi_hdc:/dev/hisi_hdc \
--entrypoint=bash \
quay.io/ascend/sglang:v0.5.13.post1-cann9.0.0-910b
- If the model weights have already been downloaded to a shared directory, use
-v to mount the model path into the
container, for example: -v /path/to/models:/models.
- Replace
${NAME} with your own container name or remove --name to use default name.
Online service deployment
Single-node online deployment
Single-node deployment completes both prefill and decode within the same node (PD mixed mode), suitable for scenarios
with limited hardware resources. This scenario is already covered in the best practice. For the complete, optimized
deployment commands and benchmark data, see
Qwen3.6-27B Best Practice — PD Mixed On A3.
Functional verification
After the service is started, you can invoke the model by sending a prompt:
# ============================================================
# Before running, update the following variables:
# HOST: the server host address (e.g., localhost)
# PORT: the server port number (e.g., 6688)
# ============================================================
curl http://${HOST}:${PORT}/generate \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"text": "What is the capital of France?",
"sampling_params": {
"max_new_tokens": 64,
"temperature": 0
}
}'
Expected result: an HTTP 200 response with the generated text containing “Paris”.
Once the server prints The server is fired up and ready to roll! in the logs, it is ready to accept requests. For more
testing examples (Health Check, Generate, Chat Completions, and port usage guidance),
see Testing the Service.
Accuracy evaluation
For accuracy evaluation methods and datasets, see Accuracy Evaluation on Ascend NPU.
For performance data and benchmark commands, see Performance Testing on Ascend NPU.
Best practices
Best practice configuration reference
For complete optimal configurations with deployment scripts and benchmark commands, see the
Qwen3.6-27B Best Practice page.
For the full list of supported features, see Supported features. For detailed optimization
guidance, see Optimization on Ascend NPU.
FAQ
For common environment, installation, and general parameter issues, please refer to the Ascend NPU FAQ.
This section only covers model-specific issues.