Ollama fork rebalances mixed GPUs
A Reddit post describes custom scheduler changes to Ollama that weight mixed GPUs by compute as well as VRAM, reverse layer packing, and pin the output layer to the fastest card. The goal is simple: make a 5090+3090 rig run faster than a 5090 alone instead of letting the weaker GPU become the bottleneck.
This is the kind of infra work that actually moves tokens/sec on real hardware: mixed-GPU setups fail when the scheduler optimizes for memory only and ignores where the compute is. The post reads like a practical fork-level fix, not a theoretical rewrite.
- –Compute-weighted capacity is the key idea here: it shifts more layers onto the faster GPU without pretending VRAM is the only constraint
- –Reversing greedy placement matters because it stops the slow card from monopolizing the heaviest layers
- –Forcing the output layer onto the strongest GPU is a sensible latency win, since that layer is disproportionately expensive
- –The redistribution pass for FFN-heavy layers is a targeted heuristic, which is exactly what heterogeneous rigs usually need
- –This looks useful for power users, but upstreaming will hinge on correctness across many GPU combinations and keeping the heuristics understandable
DISCOVERED
1h ago
2026-05-28
PUBLISHED
5h ago
2026-05-28
RELEVANCE
AUTHOR
comperr