ggml-org/llama.cpp b8786

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common: skip reasoning budget sampler when no budget is requested (#21870)

• common: skip reasoning budget sampler when no budget is requested

After I added thinking_start_tag / thinking_end_tag for gemma4 in #21697, the reasoning budget sampler gets unconditionally created even when no budget is configured (the default -1). The same applies to kimi_k2, lfm2, lfm2_5, and ministral_3 which also set these tags. The budget gets converted to INT_MAX, so the sampler never actually forces any tokens but still runs per-token checks (start tag matching in IDLE state, token-to-piece conversion + UTF-8 checks in COUNTING state).

More importantly, the mere existence of the sampler (non-null rbudget) disables backend sampling. Backend sampling lets the GPU select tokens directly, avoiding a full logits transfer from GPU to CPU every token. This could explain the 30% speed regression reported in #21784 (98 t/s to 70 t/s on Vulkan).

So I added a reasoning_budget_tokens >= 0 check to the sampler creation condition. When the budget is unlimited, the sampler is not created, backend sampling stays enabled, and no per-token overhead is added. When a budget is explicitly set (0, 128, 1024, etc.), the sampler is created and works as before.

• common: preserve rbudget when grammar is lazy

Following up on the review feedback on #21870: keep the reasoning budget sampler when grammar_lazy is true, so the thinking-block grammar suppression from #20970 still works when tools are in use. This way, we only skip the sampler when both no budget is set AND grammar is not lazy.