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+This record captures the `Lower LR` submission.
+
+## Summary
+
+Same baseline architecture (9x512, SP-1024, 4 KV heads, tied embeddings, relu^2 MLP) with lower learning rates. A systematic LR sweep over 8 experiments showed the default Muon/Adam learning rates (MATRIX_LR=0.04, SCALAR_LR=0.04, TIED_EMBED_LR=0.05) were too high. Optimal is approximately half the default.
+
+## Changes from baseline
+- `MATRIX_LR=0.02` (default: 0.04)
+- `SCALAR_LR=0.02` (default: 0.04)
+- `TIED_EMBED_LR=0.03` (default: 0.05)
+
+No architecture, schedule, or other hyperparameter changes.
+
+## LR sweep results (8-GPU H200, 600s)
+
+| MATRIX_LR | val_bpb (post-quant) | Delta vs baseline |
+|---|---|---|
+| 0.06 | 1.2445 | +0.0159 (much worse) |
+| 0.04 (default) | 1.2286 | — |
+| 0.03 | 1.2279 | -0.0007 |
+| 0.025 | 1.2250 | -0.0036 |
+| **0.02** | **1.2230** | **-0.0056** |
+| 0.015 | 1.2234 | -0.0052 |
+
+Configuration:
+- Layout: `VOCAB_SIZE=1024 NUM_LAYERS=9 MODEL_DIM=512 NUM_HEADS=8 NUM_KV_HEADS=4 MLP_MULT=2`
+- Tied output/input embeddings: `TIE_EMBEDDINGS=1`
+- Learning rates: `MATRIX_LR=0.02 SCALAR_LR=0.02 TIED_EMBED_LR=0.03`
+- Batching: `TRAIN_BATCH_TOKENS=524288 TRAIN_SEQ_LEN=1024`
+
+Command:
+```bash
+RUN_ID=exp25_lr_0.02 \
+DATA_PATH=./data/datasets/fineweb10B_sp1024/ \
+TOKENIZER_PATH=./data/tokenizers/fineweb_1024_bpe.model \
+VOCAB_SIZE=1024 \
+MAX_WALLCLOCK_SECONDS=600 \
+VAL_LOSS_EVERY=200 \
+TRAIN_LOG_EVERY=50 \
+MATRIX_LR=0.02 \
+SCALAR_LR=0.02 \
+TIED_EMBED_LR=0.03 \
+torchrun --standalone --nproc_per_node=8 train_gpt.py
+```
+
+Key metrics (from `train.log`):
+- Timed training stopped at `14421/20000` steps due to the wallclock cap.
+- Pre-quant eval at stop: `val_loss:2.0571`, `val_bpb:1.2183`
+- Post-quant roundtrip eval: `val_loss:2.0649`, `val_bpb:1.2230`
+- Exact printed metric: `final_int8_zlib_roundtrip_exact val_bpb:1.22296644`
+- Train time: `599847ms` (`step_avg:41.60ms`)
+- Peak memory: `10246 MiB allocated`, `10310 MiB reserved`
+- Serialized model int8+zlib: `15803327 bytes`
+- Code size: `50919 bytes`
+- Total submission size int8+zlib: `15854246 bytes`
+
+Training volume:
+- Global batch: `524288` tokens/step
+- Total train tokens seen: `7560609792`
+
+Note: Run performed on 8xH200 (141GB HBM3e). Step time (41.60ms) is comparable to 8xH100 baseline (43.54ms), and memory usage (10.2 GiB) is well within H100's 80GB limit. The ~5% faster step time on H200 yields ~400 extra steps, which may account for a small portion of the improvement.
+
+Included files:
+- `train_gpt.py` (code snapshot used for the run)
+- `train.log` (exact training log)
+- `submission.json` (leaderboard metadata)