b200-mbarrier-protocol-auditor

name	b200-mbarrier-protocol-auditor
description	Use when a Blackwell/B200 asynchronous kernel deadlocks, fails intermittently, reads stale data, reuses a stage too early, or when the arrival, tx-count, phase, and wait of TMA/tcgen05/CLC need auditing. Produces a per-barrier protocol ledger and fix points. Not for cases already known to be out-of-bounds accesses, layout mismatches, or ordinary host-side synchronization problems.
source_book	Modern GPU Programming For MLSys (MLC Community) + NVIDIA Blackwell Tuning/Compatibility Guides
source_chapter	S9; S6; S7; S13; S14
tags	["b200","blackwell"]
related_skills	["b200-scope-layout-dispatch","b200-layout-contract-auditor","b200-tma-pipeline-designer","b200-tmem-lifecycle-planner","b200-tcgen05-mma-contract-builder","b200-warp-specialized-debugger"]
version	0.1.0

B200 mbarrier Protocol Auditor

R — Source evidence (Reading, paraphrased)

• [S9] An mbarrier keeps an arrival counter and a phase in SMEM; completion of asynchronous operations cannot be inferred from program order.
• [S9] A TMA load's expect_tx registers both the issuing thread's arrival and the expected bytes; the phase flips only when both the arrivals and the pending bytes are complete.
• [S9] A tcgen05 MMA must explicitly associate a barrier arrival on its commit path; otherwise consumers may wait forever.
• [S13] Multi-role GEMMs commonly carry two barrier sets, forward ready and backward release; a wrong initial phase deadlocks or silently corrupts.

Source: distilled from "Modern GPU Programming for MLSys" (https://mlc.ai/modern-gpu-programming-for-mlsys/) and the NVIDIA Blackwell tuning/compatibility guides. Short paraphrases only; no long passages are reproduced.

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I — Methodology skeleton (Interpretation)

Treat every barrier as a bidirectional contract, not "a wait somewhere":

• Who initializes it, and how many arrivals are expected?
• Who produces the data, and does the completion signal come from threads, a TMA byte count, an MMA commit, or a CLC response?
• Which consumers wait on which phase?
• On completion, does it release data-ready or buffer-free?
• When does the phase flip, and who holds the local expected phase for the next round?

The audit's goal is a complete barrier ledger; any field without a unique answer is a potential bug.

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A1 — Applications in the source (Past Application)

Case 1: producer/consumer initial phases

• With an empty buffer, the producer's first round should start filling immediately; the consumer's first round should block until the data is ready.
• If the two sides share the same initial phase, both may block on the first round, or an old completion may be mistaken for a new one.

Case 2: the four-barrier GEMM

• tma2mma: SMEM data ready.
• mma2tma: SMEM stage overwritable.
• mma2ld: TMEM result ready.
• ld2mma: TMEM region reusable.
• Forward data flow and backward resource release must close the loop in pairs.

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A2 — Trigger scenarios (Future Trigger) ★

In what situations will the user need this skill?

1. "The kernel is stuck in mbarrier.wait — help me check the arrival/phase."
2. "My double buffering occasionally reads the previous round's tile."
3. "How should tcgen05 commit be wired to the barrier?"

Language signals

• "The kernel is stuck in mbarrier.wait — help me check the arrival/phase."
• "My double buffering occasionally reads the previous round's tile."
• "How should tcgen05 commit be wired to the barrier?"

Distinction from adjacent skills

Versus b200-layout-contract-auditor: this skill only proves "when it is safe", not "whether the address is correct". Versus b200-warp-specialized-debugger: this skill is a dedicated barrier audit; the debugger is a full symptom-driven workflow.

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E — Executable steps (Execution)

Once the skill is activated, the agent must execute the following procedure:

1. Build the barrier ledger
   • Fields: name, storage address, init scope, expected arrivals, tx bytes, producer, arrival mechanism, consumer, wait phase, released resource.
2. Verify the initialization sites
   • Barrier init must happen before the role branch and be observed by the correct scope.
   • Check alignment and the number of stages.
3. Verify the producer side
   • TMA load: is the expected byte count exact, and does the actual copy complete against the same barrier?
   • MMA/tcgen05.cp: is the commit bound to the correct barrier arrival?
   • Plain threads: does the number of threads actually arriving equal the init count?
4. Verify the consumer side
   • Do the waited-on barrier and the stage index match?
   • Does the local phase flip exactly once, and only once, after a successful consume?
5. Verify the ready/free closed loop
   • Every SMEM/TMEM slot has both a "when readable" and a "when overwritable/freeable" condition.
6. Verify scope legality
   • A CTA-wide collective must not hide inside a warpgroup-only branch.
   • Cluster signals must use the correct CTA mask/remote arrival.
7. Check the first and last rounds
   • Simulate the prologue's first wait, one steady-state lap, and the epilogue's final drain.
   • Hand-compute the 0/1/0/1 phase sequence in a table.
8. Change only one handoff
   • After changing exactly one of init count, phase, arrival, or fence, run minimal correctness first, then measure performance.

Required outputs

1. Conclusion: the current choice/diagnosis, without vague "could be any of them" hedging.
2. Evidence or assumptions: which come from user data, and which are hypotheses awaiting verification.
3. Contract/table/timeline: the auditable intermediate artifacts corresponding to this skill.
4. Minimal validation: correctness tests, boundary tests, and one falsifiable experiment.
5. Risks and fallback: alternative paths when hardware, version, or resource conditions are not met.

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B — Boundaries (Boundary) ★

Do not use when

• There is already conclusive evidence of an out-of-bounds access, an invalid pointer, or a wrong descriptor.
• Ordinary CPU mutex/condition_variable synchronization problems.

Failure modes

• Treating expect_tx as a plain arrival and ignoring the byte budget.
• Forgetting the MMA commit arrival.
• Stage index correct but the phase belongs to the previous round.
• Building only the ready barrier and not the buffer-release barrier.

Limitations

• Compiler lowering may change the surface code structure; ultimately verify the barrier initialization and commit/wait in the generated CUDA/PTX.

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Related skills

• depends-on: b200-scope-layout-dispatch
• contrasts-with: b200-layout-contract-auditor
• composes-with: b200-tma-pipeline-designer, b200-tmem-lifecycle-planner, b200-tcgen05-mma-contract-builder, b200-warp-specialized-debugger

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Audit info

• Validation passed: V1 ✓ / V2 ✓ / V3 ✓
• Test definitions: 6 (3 should_trigger / 2 should_not_trigger / 1 edge_case)
• Hardware validation: not performed; must be verified on a target B200
• Distilled: 2026-06-25