FractalCore
High-Performance Orchestration Engine, Federated Aggregator, and Model Graph Slicer
FractalCore is the central server, control plane, and model compilation engine for the Fractal decentralized compute ecosystem.
Overview | Control Plane UI | Design Case Study | Architecture | Core Components | Data Flow | API Summary | Deployment | Security
Overview
FractalCore serves as the centralized orchestration backbone that coordinates decentralized edge nodes (FractalAndroid). It handles the end-to-end lifecycle of distributed machine learning tasks, executing two primary operations:
- Federated Learning Orchestration: Multi-tenant data binning, task scheduling, client checkpoint verification, and deterministic parameter aggregation via Federated Averaging (
FedAvg). - Foundation Model Slicing: Offline neural graph surgery, INT4 weight quantization, static ATen graph tracing, and XNNPACK lowering (
inference-model-maker/slicer) to produce memory-safe.ptelayer partitions for mobile nodes.
Control Plane Web Interface
FractalCore provides a hardware-accelerated, high-density Web UI engineered for orchestrating federated learning tasks, monitoring compute budgets, and isolating tenant silos:
System Architecture
FractalCore decouples tenant session control from compute dispatching and storage silos:
graph TD
subgraph ClientFleet ["Edge Client Fleet (FractalAndroid)"]
Node1["Android Node 1"]
Node2["Android Node 2"]
NodeN["Android Node N"]
end
subgraph FractalCoreServer ["FractalCore Control Plane"]
API["REST Gateway & Route Handlers"]
AuthModule["X-Auth-Token Session Manager"]
TenantMgr["Multi-Tenant Isolation Manager"]
TaskScheduler["Task Queue & Segment Dispatcher"]
AggEngine["Federated Averaging Engine (FedAvg)"]
SlicerPipeline["Model Slicer & INT4 Quantizer"]
RewardService["Liquid MB Reward Processor"]
end
subgraph StorageLayer ["Persistence & State"]
FirestoreDB[("Firestore (Tenants / Devices / Ledger)")]
DiskStorage[("Local Silos (tenants/username/bins, uploads, models)")]
end
%% Client Connections
Node1 & Node2 & NodeN <-->|"REST HTTPS (X-Auth-Token / Task / Checkpoint)"| API
%% Internal Wiring
API --> AuthModule
AuthModule --> TenantMgr
TenantMgr --> TaskScheduler
TaskScheduler --> DiskStorage
TaskScheduler --> AggEngine
AggEngine --> DiskStorage
SlicerPipeline --> DiskStorage
RewardService --> FirestoreDB
API --> RewardService
Core Components
1. Multi-Tenant Orchestrator (src/fractal_server/server.py)
- Tenant Sandboxing: Maintains physically separated storage paths (
data/tenants/{username}/) for datasets, training bins, uploaded checkpoints, and compiled global models. - Session Isolation: Authentication relies strictly on the
X-Auth-Tokenheader (secrets.token_hex(32)), backed by a thread-safe token registry with zero cookie leakage between browser tabs or clients. - TFLOPs Budget Management: Enforces per-tenant compute limits, monitoring compute capacity and round progression in real time.
2. Federated Aggregation Engine
- Task Dispatching: Distributes tasks (
ActiveTask) referencing specific binary data bins to available Android nodes based on hardware telemetry proofs. - Deterministic Averaging: Validates uploaded checkpoints against the active task registry and executes FedAvg weight summation using TensorFlow/NumPy upon reaching the round threshold.
- Model Checkpointing: Serializes and archives aggregated model weights, updating the active model served to subsequent rounds.
3. Model Slicing Compiler (src/inference-model-maker/slicer/)
- Block Ingestion: Ingests monolithic Hugging Face models (e.g., Llama 3 8B, TinyLlama) and extracts isolated decoder transformer blocks without breaking weight references.
- INT4 Quantization: Applies grouped weight-only quantization (
torchaoINT4, group size 128) targeting linear attention and MLP projections to reduce layer memory footprints below 150MB. - Static ATen Tracing: Freezes dynamic Python operations into static computational graphs via
torch.export. - XNNPACK Lowering & Export: Lowering to ExecuTorch Edge dialect with XNNPACK microkernels, serialized into
.ptebinaries for zero-copymmapingestion on Android nodes.
4. Reward & Ledger Interface (src/fractal_server/firebase_reward.py)
- Hardware Telemetry Verification: Inspects device IDs and task receipts.
- Liquid MB Settlement: Credits compute tokens ("Liquid MBs") directly to user profiles in Google Cloud Firestore upon successful checkpoint verification.
Data Flow and Lifecycle
sequenceDiagram
participant Admin as Tenant Admin
participant Core as FractalCore Server
participant Node as Android Client Node
participant Firestore as Firestore Registry
Admin->>Core: POST /api/admin/tenant (Configure Session & TFLOP Budget)
Admin->>Core: Upload Training Data -> Generate Binary Bins
Note over Core: Partition Bins into Segment Tasks
loop Compute Round
Node->>Core: GET /api/task/current (device_id)
Core-->>Node: 200 OK (task_Id, model URL, bin URL, hyperparams)
Node->>Core: GET /download/model & GET /download/images
Note over Node: Local On-Device Training (TFLite)
Node->>Core: POST /api/model/upload (task_Id, device_id, .ckpt)
Core->>Core: Validate task_Id Against Dispatch Registry
Core->>Firestore: Credit Liquid MB Reward
alt Quorum Reached (N Checkpoints Uploaded)
Core->>Core: Execute FedAvg Tensor Summation
Core->>Core: Generate New Global Model Checkpoint
Core->>Core: Increment Session Round
end
end
API Reference Summary
Full API schemas and contracts are documented in docs/api.md.
| Endpoint | Method | Authentication | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
/api/admin/login |
POST | None | Authenticate admin / tenant and receive X-Auth-Token |
/api/admin/tenants |
GET | X-Auth-Token (Admin) |
List all registered tenants and compute budgets |
/api/admin/tenant |
POST | X-Auth-Token (Admin) |
Provision a new tenant and allocate TFLOP budget |
/api/task/current |
GET | None / Device ID | Request active training task descriptor for a mobile node |
/api/model/upload |
POST | Multipart Form | Upload computed local checkpoint delta (.ckpt) |
/download/model |
GET | Query param | Download current global model checkpoint (.tflite) |
/download/images |
GET | Query param | Download binary dataset image segment bin |
/download/labels |
GET | Query param | Download binary dataset label segment bin |
Directory Structure
FractalCore/
|-- src/
| |-- fractal_server/ # Production Multi-Tenant Server
| | |-- server.py # Main Flask Application & API Routes
| | `-- firebase_reward.py # Firestore Ledger & Credit Processor
| |-- inference-model-maker/ # Model Slicing & Partitioning System
| | |-- run_pipeline.py # Slicer CLI Orchestrator
| | `-- slicer/ # Workstations, Validators & Contracts
| `-- legacy/ # Single-user prototypes & migration assets
|-- scripts/ # Operations, Sweepers & Global Model Testers
|-- docs/ # Deep Technical Specs, API & Architecture
|-- Dockerfile # Production Container Definition
|-- docker-compose.yml # Multi-Service Orchestration Config
|-- requirements.txt # Core Python Dependencies
`-- tests/ # Unit and Integration Test Suites
Deployment and Execution
Docker Deployment (Production Standard)
# 1. Configure Environment Variables cp .env.example .env # 2. Build and Launch Container docker-compose up --build -d # 3. Stream Container Logs docker-compose logs -f
Manual Host Execution
# 1. Create Virtual Environment python3 -m venv venv source venv/bin/activate # 2. Install Dependencies pip install -r requirements.txt # 3. Launch with Gunicorn WSGI gunicorn --bind 0.0.0.0:5000 src.fractal_server.server:app
Code Formatting & Quality Verification
All Python source files must adhere to black formatting and flake8 standards:
# Format Python source files black . # Check formatting compliance black --check . # Lint source files flake8 . --count --select=E9,F63,F7,F82 --show-source --statistics
Security Model
- Zero Data Ingress: The server never accesses raw user data; all computation occurs locally on edge devices.
- Header-Bound Authentication: Enforced
X-Auth-Tokenvalidation without cookie fallback prevents cross-session bleeding. - Tenant Sandboxing: Filesystem-level isolation prevents cross-tenant access to datasets, task queues, or checkpoint models.
- Replay Protection: Single-use
task_Idassignment prevents duplicate or stale weight injection.
For full vulnerability reporting procedures, refer to SECURITY.md.
Governance & Licensing
FractalCore is proprietary, source-available software licensed under the Fractal Proprietary Source-Available & Non-Commercial Restrictive License v3.0. All Rights Reserved. Commercial use strictly prohibited without written authorization.
FractalCore -- Architected and maintained by Ahmad Hassan (B-Ted).



