Nemotron 3.5 Lightning#

Note: This document has moved and will be deprecated here. See the new location: https://github.com/NVIDIA-NeMo/RL/blob/main/docs/guides/models/nemotron/nemotron-3.5-lightning.md

This guide covers two ways to post-train Nemotron 3.5 Lightning with NeMo RL:

RLVR with NeMo Gym (GB200 reference run) — the full 86-node asynchronous GRPO + NeMo Gym recipe used for the reference RLVR stage on GB200 NVL72 (ARM64 / aarch64) hardware.
DAPO math RL with the automodel backend — a compact 4-node DAPO recipe on the DTensor (automodel) training backend, useful as a smaller-footprint starting point on x86 H100 clusters.

RLVR with NeMo Gym (GB200 reference run)#

This section explains how to reproduce the Nemotron 3.5 Lightning RLVR recipe with NeMo RL on GB200 NVL72 (ARM64 / aarch64) hardware.

Overview#

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is post-trained in a single Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) stage using asynchronous Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) and NeMo Gym.

Training and policy generation use separate node pools. The GenRM and general-purpose NL2Bash judge run as external vLLM pools in the same Slurm heterogeneous allocation, while the smaller content-safety judge runs in the Gym pool.

The recipe files are under examples/nemo_gym/nemotron-3.5-lightning/:

rlvr.yaml contains the training, generation, reward, and Gym configuration.
lightning35_launch.sh handles Slurm submission, code snapshots, persistent caches, container mounts, and run-specific paths.

The reference run uses the following training configuration:

Setting	Value
Maximum sequence length	73,728 tokens
Prompts per step	512
Generations per prompt	16
Global batch size	8,192
Training parallelism	TP=4, CP=4, EP=16, PP=1
Policy-generation parallelism	TP=4, PP=1
Training precision	BF16

Topology#

The recipe uses four GPUs per GB200 node:

Component	Deployment	Nodes	GPUs
Training	Megatron TP=4, CP=4, EP=16	32	128
Policy generation	NeMo RL vLLM TP=4	32	128
Safety judge	Gym vLLM TP=4, DP=2	2	8
GenRM	8 independent TP=8 vLLM servers	16	64
NL2Bash judge	4 independent TP=4 vLLM servers	4	16
Total		86	344

Prepare the code#

Clone NeMo RL and its submodules on a filesystem visible to every allocated node:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/NVIDIA-NeMo/RL.git
cd RL

The launcher mounts the current NeMo RL source, Lightning recipe directory, and Gym checkout into the training container. With USE_SNAPSHOT=1 (the default), it first snapshots tracked source files so the submitted job uses a stable copy.

Container#

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning uses vLLM and requires an aarch64 (arm64) image for GB200 NVL72 nodes. Prebake the NeMo Gym virtual environments used by the recipe to avoid building them every time a training job starts. From the root of the NeMo RL repository, build and push the image:

docker buildx build \
  --platform linux/arm64 \
  --progress=plain \
  -f docker/Dockerfile \
  --target release \
  -t <your-registry>/nemo-rl:main-lightning35-prefetched-venvs \
  --push \
  --build-context nemo-rl=. \
  --build-arg MAX_JOBS=8 \
  --build-arg SKIP_SGLANG_BUILD=1 \
  --build-arg SKIP_TRTLLM_BUILD=1 \
  --build-arg NEMO_GYM_PREFETCH_CONFIGS="examples/nemo_gym/nemotron-3.5-lightning/rlvr.yaml" \
  .

Build arguments:

NEMO_GYM_PREFETCH_CONFIGS builds the Gym virtual environments referenced by rlvr.yaml into the image.
SKIP_SGLANG_BUILD=1 skips SGLang because this recipe uses vLLM.
SKIP_TRTLLM_BUILD=1 skips TensorRT-LLM because this recipe does not use it.
MAX_JOBS controls parallel build jobs; tune it for the build machine.
--build-context nemo-rl=. builds from the current checkout. Without it, the Dockerfile pulls NVIDIA-NeMo/RL.git#main.

On a Slurm cluster using enroot, convert the image to squashfs:

enroot import -o nemo-rl-lightning35.sqsh \
  docker://<your-registry>/nemo-rl:main-lightning35-prefetched-venvs

Pass the resulting .sqsh path as CONTAINER. A registry image URI can be used instead on clusters that do not require a local squashfs image. The same image is used for training, policy generation, and the external judge pools by default.

Download and prepare the data#

The RLVR blend is published as nvidia/Nemotron-RL-Lightning-Training-Blend. It contains rlvr.jsonl and fill_placeholders.py. Math rows originating from BytedTsinghua-SIA/DAPO-Math-17k and Skywork/Skywork-OR1-RL-Data are represented by placeholders; the bundled script restores them from the original datasets on Hugging Face. This is the same general preparation flow used by the Nemotron 3 Ultra recipe.

export DATA_DIR=/path/to/lightning/data

# Download rlvr.jsonl and fill_placeholders.py.
uvx --from huggingface-hub hf download \
  nvidia/Nemotron-RL-Lightning-Training-Blend \
  --repo-type dataset \
  --local-dir lightning-blend

# Restore the source-backed placeholders into $DATA_DIR/rlvr.jsonl.
chmod +x lightning-blend/fill_placeholders.py
./lightning-blend/fill_placeholders.py \
  --input-dir lightning-blend \
  --output-dir "$DATA_DIR"

The resulting $DATA_DIR/rlvr.jsonl is already in the format expected by NemoGymDataset. The released recipe does not run periodic, start, or end validation, but the launcher still requires both paths. To reproduce the reference run, pass the restored blend as both:

TRAIN_PATH=$DATA_DIR/rlvr.jsonl
VAL_PATH=$DATA_DIR/rlvr.jsonl

Rows select their Gym agent through agent_ref. The corresponding agent and resource-server configs are already listed under env.nemo_gym.config_paths in rlvr.yaml.

For each external dataset you elect to use, you are responsible for confirming that its license is appropriate for your intended use.

Build the sandbox container#

Several Gym environments used by the Lightning blend, including ns_tools and math_formal_lean, execute verification tools in a sandbox container. Build it from the NeMo Skills Dockerfile:

git clone https://github.com/NVIDIA-NeMo/Skills.git
cd Skills
git checkout b620e79
docker build -t nemo-skills-sandbox:latest -f dockerfiles/Dockerfile.sandbox .

For Slurm clusters using enroot, convert it to a .sqsh:

enroot import -o nemo-skills-sandbox.sqsh \
  dockerd://nemo-skills-sandbox:latest

Pass this image as SANDBOX_CONTAINER when launching training.

Prepare the policy and judge models#

Set MODEL_PATH to the Transformers-compatible Nemotron 3.5 Lightning SFT checkpoint from which RLVR should start.

MODEL_PATH=/path/to/nemotron-3.5-lightning-sft-checkpoint

The recipe uses three judge roles:

Variable	Reference model	Deployment
`GENRM_MODEL`	`nvidia/NVIDIA-Nemotron-3-Ultra-550B-A55B-GenRM`	8 external TP=8 servers
`NL2BASH_JUDGE_MODEL`	`Qwen/Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507-FP8`	4 external TP=4 servers
`SAFETY_JUDGE_MODEL`	`nvidia/Nemotron-Content-Safety-Reasoning-4B`	Gym TP=4, DP=2

Launch script#

Run examples/nemo_gym/nemotron-3.5-lightning/lightning35_launch.sh from the repository root. The launcher handles Slurm submission, source snapshots, persistent compile caches, container mounts, external vLLM services, and run-specific paths. Training hyperparameters and parallelism remain in rlvr.yaml and the launcher defaults.

Optional knobs:

Variable	Default	Purpose
`WALLTIME`	`4:00:00`	Slurm `--time`
`NUM_TRAIN_NODES`, `NUM_GEN_NODES`, `NUM_GYM_NODES`	`32`, `32`, `2`	Training, policy-generation, and in-cluster Gym node counts
`NRL_MAX_STEPS`	from YAML	Override `grpo.max_num_steps`
`WANDB_PROJ`	`nemotron-3.5-lightning`	W&B project name
`DRY_RUN`	`0`	Set to `1` to print the resolved training command without submitting

Launch RLVR#

The following command launches the complete 86-node reference topology. Run it from a NeMo RL checkout located under the shared filesystem root:

export SHARED_ROOT=/shared
export DATA_DIR=$SHARED_ROOT/data/lightning

EXP_NAME=lightning35-rlvr \
MODEL_PATH=$SHARED_ROOT/models/nemotron-3.5-lightning-sft-checkpoint \
TRAIN_PATH=$DATA_DIR/rlvr.jsonl \
VAL_PATH=$DATA_DIR/rlvr.jsonl \
GENRM_MODEL=nvidia/NVIDIA-Nemotron-3-Ultra-550B-A55B-GenRM \
NL2BASH_JUDGE_MODEL=Qwen/Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507-FP8 \
SAFETY_JUDGE_MODEL=nvidia/Nemotron-Content-Safety-Reasoning-4B \
CONTAINER=$SHARED_ROOT/containers/nemo-rl-lightning35.sqsh \
SANDBOX_CONTAINER=$SHARED_ROOT/containers/nemo-skills-sandbox.sqsh \
PERSISTENT_CACHE=$SHARED_ROOT/cache/lightning35-rlvr \
HF_HOME=$SHARED_ROOT/cache/huggingface \
HF_TOKEN=$HF_TOKEN \
RESULTS_DIR=$SHARED_ROOT/results/lightning35-rlvr \
EXTERNAL_VLLM_SHARED_ROOT=$SHARED_ROOT \
EXTRA_MOUNTS=$SHARED_ROOT:$SHARED_ROOT \
SLURM_PARTITION=your-partition \
SLURM_ACCOUNT=your-account \
bash examples/nemo_gym/nemotron-3.5-lightning/lightning35_launch.sh

DAPO math RL with the automodel backend#

The recipe examples/configs/recipes/llm/dapo-nanov3.5-30BA3B-4n8g-automodel.yaml trains nvidia/NVIDIA-Nemotron-3.5-Lightning-30B-A3B-BF16 with DAPO on math data using the DTensor (automodel) training backend and colocated vLLM generation. It runs on 4 nodes of 8x H100 80GB and is also exercised as a nightly test (tests/test_suites/llm/dapo-nanov3.5-30BA3B-4n8g-automodel.sh).

Overview#

Setting	Value
Algorithm	GRPO with DAPO (dynamic sampling, overlong filtering, reward scaling/shaping, TIS)
Data	`DAPOMath17K` train / `DAPOMathAIME2024` validation
Maximum sequence length	9,216 tokens (8,192 generated)
Rollouts per step	32 prompts x 16 generations (global batch size 512)
Training parallelism	DTensor FSDP with EP=8, TP=1, activation checkpointing
Policy generation	Colocated vLLM TP=4
Optimizer	TransformerEngine `FusedAdam`, lr 1e-6, wd 0.1, 10-step warmup
Training precision	BF16

The Lightning checkpoint ships a Multi-Token Prediction (MTP) module (mtp.* weights, num_nextn_predict_layers=1). The recipe ignores MTP end-to-end without code changes: the automodel custom NemotronH implementation builds only the backbone and LM head, the DCP loader never reads the mtp.* tensors, and vLLM skips them at load and refit. Keep dtensor_cfg.automodel_kwargs.force_hf and generation speculative_config unset, otherwise the MTP module is instantiated.

Launch training#

From the repository root:

uv run examples/run_grpo.py \
    --config examples/configs/recipes/llm/dapo-nanov3.5-30BA3B-4n8g-automodel.yaml \
    logger.wandb_enabled=True

For launching on a multi-node Slurm or Kubernetes cluster, see the cluster guide. Interrupted runs resume automatically from the latest checkpoint in checkpointing.checkpoint_dir.

Results#

Over roughly 210 steps, training reward climbs from -0.7 to about 0.5 and AIME-2024 validation accuracy improves from 0.33 to about 0.75. The truncation rate drops from ~0.5 to ~0.1 as responses shorten from ~5,500 to ~3,000 generated tokens per sample.

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning DAPO automodel training curves