Relax: An Asynchronous Reinforcement Learning Engine for Omni-Modal Post-Training at Scale
On the map: Deep reinforcement learning methods → RL training of language and agent models
Abstract (arXiv)
Reinforcement learning (RL) post-training has proven effective at unlocking reasoning, self-reflection, and tool-use capabilities in large language models. As models extend to omni-modal inputs and agentic multi-turn workflows, RL training systems face three interdependent challenges: heterogeneous data flows, operational robustness at scale, and the staleness -- throughput tradeoff. We present Relax (Reinforcement Engine Leveraging Agentic X-modality), an open-source RL training engine that addresses these challenges through three co-designed architectural layers. First, an omni-native architecture builds multimodal support into the full stack -- from data preprocessing and modality-aware parallelism to inference generation -- rather than retrofitting it onto a text-centric pipeline. Second, each RL role runs as an independent, fault-isolated service that can be scaled, recovered, and upgraded without global coordination. Third, service-level decoupling enables asynchronous training via the TransferQueue data bus, where a single staleness parameter smoothly interpolates among on-policy, near-on-policy, and fully asynchronous execution. Relax achieves a 1.20× end-to-end speedup over veRL on Qwen3-4B on-policy training. Its fully async mode delivers a 1.76× speedup over colocate on Qwen3-4B and a 2.00× speedup on Qwen3-Omni-30B, while all modes converge to the same reward level. Relax supports R3 (Rollout Routing Replay)~citema2025r3 for MoE models with only 1.9% overhead, compared to 32% degradation in veRL under the same configuration. It further demonstrates stable omni-modal RL convergence on Qwen3-Omni across image, text, and audio, sustaining over 2,000 steps on video without degradation. Relax is available at https://github.com/rednote-ai/Relax.
Key facts. Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in RL training of language and agent models, one of 15 directions in Deep reinforcement learning methods. Builds on 17 of its 20 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 13 Apr 2026.
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17 of 20 references.
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Other references · 16
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- 2024HybridFlow: A Flexible and Efficient RLHF Frameworkcited by 2,057
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- 2023SGLang: Efficient Execution of Structured Language Model Programscited by 1,141
- 2023PyTorch FSDP: Experiences on Scaling Fully Sharded Data Parallelcited by 660
- 2017Ray: A Distributed Framework for Emerging AI Applicationscited by 527
- 2025AReaL: A Large-Scale Asynchronous Reinforcement Learning System for Language Reasoningcited by 250
- 2025Inference-Time Scaling for Generalist Reward Modelingcited by 239
4 more
- 2025Stabilizing MoE Reinforcement Learning by Aligning Training and Inference Routerscited by 72
- 2023A Survey of Reasoning with Foundation Modelscited by 70
- 2025AsyncFlow: An Asynchronous Streaming RL Framework for Efficient LLM Post-Trainingcited by 41
- 2026ProRL Agent: Rollout-as-a-Service for RL Training of Multi-Turn LLM Agentscited by 20
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 7.
7 papers.
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- 2026Molt: A Scalable PyTorch-Native Training Framework for Agentic Reinforcement Learningcited by 0
- 2026WeightBridge: An Efficient Weight Transfer Library for Reinforcement Learningcited by 0
- 2026Rollout Efficiency in Reinforcement Learning for Reasoning Large Language Models: A Taxonomy and Future Directionscited by 0
- 2026Coding Agent Memory Post-training: Unlocking the Memory Potential of Pre-trained File Operations for Long-Horizon Tasks via Reinforcement Learningcited by 0
- 2026Coding Agent Memory Post-training: Unlocking the Memory Potential of Pre-trained File Operations for Long-Horizon Tasks via Reinforcement Learning28 Sep 2026
- 2026Rollout Efficiency in Reinforcement Learning for Reasoning Large Language Models: A Taxonomy and Future Directions21 Sep 2026
- 2026WeightBridge: An Efficient Weight Transfer Library for Reinforcement Learning21 Sep 2026
- 2026WeAgent-MMGenEdit: A Full-Stack Recipe for Multimodal Agentic Image Generation and Editing4 Sep 2026
- 2026Rollplex: Cross-Phase GPU Spatial Sharing for Vision Language Model Post-Training14 Aug 2026
- 2026Molt: A Scalable PyTorch-Native Training Framework for Agentic Reinforcement Learning22 Jul 2026
- 2026Scaling Mixture-of-Experts Video Pretraining for Embodied Intelligence8 Jul 2026
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