From 911331c06c16aa80633c5438c58edb32dbfdff50 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: rattus128 <46076784+rattus128@users.noreply.github.com>
Date: Thu, 2 Oct 2025 08:40:28 +1000
Subject: [PATCH] sd: fix VAE tiled fallback VRAM leak (#10139)

When the VAE catches this VRAM OOM, it launches the fallback logic
straight from the exception context.

Python however refs the entire call stack that caused the exception
including any local variables for the sake of exception report and
debugging. In the case of tensors, this can hold on the references
to GBs of VRAM and inhibit the VRAM allocated from freeing them.

So dump the except context completely before going back to the VAE
via the tiler by getting out of the except block with nothing but
a flag.

The greately increases the reliability of the tiler fallback,
especially on low VRAM cards, as with the bug, if the leak randomly
leaked more than the headroom needed for a single tile, the tiler
would fallback would OOM and fail the flow.
---
 comfy/sd.py | 16 ++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 16 insertions(+)

diff --git a/comfy/sd.py b/comfy/sd.py
index 873ad20f2..be225ad03 100644
--- a/comfy/sd.py
+++ b/comfy/sd.py
@@ -652,6 +652,7 @@ class VAE:
     def decode(self, samples_in, vae_options={}):
         self.throw_exception_if_invalid()
         pixel_samples = None
+        do_tile = False
         try:
             memory_used = self.memory_used_decode(samples_in.shape, self.vae_dtype)
             model_management.load_models_gpu([self.patcher], memory_required=memory_used, force_full_load=self.disable_offload)
@@ -667,6 +668,13 @@ class VAE:
                 pixel_samples[x:x+batch_number] = out
         except model_management.OOM_EXCEPTION:
             logging.warning("Warning: Ran out of memory when regular VAE decoding, retrying with tiled VAE decoding.")
+            #NOTE: We don't know what tensors were allocated to stack variables at the time of the
+            #exception and the exception itself refs them all until we get out of this except block.
+            #So we just set a flag for tiler fallback so that tensor gc can happen once the
+            #exception is fully off the books.
+            do_tile = True
+
+        if do_tile:
             dims = samples_in.ndim - 2
             if dims == 1 or self.extra_1d_channel is not None:
                 pixel_samples = self.decode_tiled_1d(samples_in)
@@ -713,6 +721,7 @@ class VAE:
         self.throw_exception_if_invalid()
         pixel_samples = self.vae_encode_crop_pixels(pixel_samples)
         pixel_samples = pixel_samples.movedim(-1, 1)
+        do_tile = False
         if self.latent_dim == 3 and pixel_samples.ndim < 5:
             if not self.not_video:
                 pixel_samples = pixel_samples.movedim(1, 0).unsqueeze(0)
@@ -734,6 +743,13 @@ class VAE:
 
         except model_management.OOM_EXCEPTION:
             logging.warning("Warning: Ran out of memory when regular VAE encoding, retrying with tiled VAE encoding.")
+            #NOTE: We don't know what tensors were allocated to stack variables at the time of the
+            #exception and the exception itself refs them all until we get out of this except block.
+            #So we just set a flag for tiler fallback so that tensor gc can happen once the
+            #exception is fully off the books.
+            do_tile = True
+
+        if do_tile:
             if self.latent_dim == 3:
                 tile = 256
                 overlap = tile // 4