Update cudnn-frontend to v1.18

[cyanguwa]

Description

Update 3rdparty/cudnn-frontend to v1.18.

Type of change

• Documentation change (change only to the documentation, either a fix or a new content)
• Bug fix (non-breaking change which fixes an issue)
• New feature (non-breaking change which adds functionality)
• Breaking change (fix or feature that would cause existing functionality to not work as expected)
• Infra/Build change
• Code refactoring

Changes

Update FE to 1.18.

Checklist:

• I have read and followed the contributing guidelines
• The functionality is complete
• I have commented my code, particularly in hard-to-understand areas
• I have made corresponding changes to the documentation
• My changes generate no new warnings
• I have added tests that prove my fix is effective or that my feature works
• New and existing unit tests pass locally with my changes

[cyanguwa]

/te-ci L0 L1

[greptile-apps]

Greptile Summary

Updates the 3rdparty/cudnn-frontend git submodule pointer from commit b372d39 to 8d19d31 (v1.18). This is a dependency bump with no accompanying source code changes in TransformerEngine itself.

• Submodule update: The cudnn-frontend submodule reference is advanced to v1.18, bringing in upstream improvements and new features from the NVIDIA/cudnn-frontend repository.
• Usage in codebase: cudnn-frontend is used extensively across fused attention (fused_attn_f16_arbitrary_seqlen.cu, fused_attn_fp8.cu, etc.), normalization (common.cpp), and utility code (cudnn_utils.h). All of these files include cudnn_frontend.h and use cudnn_frontend namespace APIs.
• Version compatibility: The existing compile-time guard CUDNN_FRONTEND_VERSION >= 10601 (requiring at least v1.6.1) in transformer_engine/common/normalization/common.cpp remains satisfied with v1.18.
• No source changes needed: No TransformerEngine source files were modified, suggesting v1.18 is backward-compatible with the existing API usage.

Confidence Score: 4/5

• This PR is a low-risk submodule pointer bump with no source code changes; safety depends on upstream cudnn-frontend v1.18 compatibility.
• Score of 4 reflects that this is a single-line submodule pointer change with no accompanying source modifications. The cudnn-frontend library is a well-maintained NVIDIA dependency, and the existing version guard (>= 1.6.1) will remain satisfied. The only risk is potential API incompatibilities in the upstream library, which cannot be fully verified without building and running the test suite.
• No files in this PR require special attention. However, the files that heavily depend on cudnn-frontend APIs (transformer_engine/common/fused_attn/*.cu, transformer_engine/common/normalization/common.cpp, transformer_engine/common/cudnn_utils.cpp) should be verified through CI builds to confirm compatibility with v1.18.

Important Files Changed

Filename	Overview
3rdparty/cudnn-frontend	Submodule pointer update from commit b372d39 (previous version) to 8d19d31 (v1.18). No source code changes in this repository — only the git submodule reference is updated.

Flowchart

%%{init: {'theme': 'neutral'}}%%
flowchart TD
    subgraph Submodule["3rdparty/cudnn-frontend"]
        OLD["Old: b372d39 (prev version)"]
        NEW["New: 8d19d31 (v1.18)"]
        OLD -->|"pointer update"| NEW
    end

    subgraph Consumers["TransformerEngine Files Using cudnn-frontend"]
        CU["cudnn_utils.h / cudnn_utils.cpp"]
        FA1["fused_attn_f16_arbitrary_seqlen.cu"]
        FA2["fused_attn_f16_max512_seqlen.cu"]
        FA3["fused_attn_fp8.cu"]
        NORM["normalization/common.cpp"]
        UTILS["fused_attn/utils.cu"]
    end

    NEW -->|"#include cudnn_frontend.h"| CU
    NEW -->|"#include cudnn_frontend.h"| FA1
    NEW -->|"#include cudnn_frontend.h"| FA2
    NEW -->|"#include cudnn_frontend.h"| FA3
    NEW -->|"#include cudnn_frontend.h"| NORM
    NEW -->|"#include cudnn_frontend.h"| UTILS

    subgraph Build["Build System"]
        CMAKE["CMakeLists.txt"]
        CMAKE -->|"include dir + cuDNN.cmake"| NEW
    end

Loading

_{Last reviewed commit: f793745}

[greptile-apps]

_{1 file reviewed, no comments}

_{Edit Code Review Agent Settings | Greptile}

[cyanguwa]

/te-ci L2 L3