cs.CLApr 13, 2026

Relax: An Asynchronous Reinforcement Learning Engine for Omni-Modal Post-Training at Scale

Authors: Liujie Zhang, Benzhe Ning, Rui Yang, Xiaoyan Yu, Jiaxing Li, Lumeng Wu, Jia Liu, Minghao Li, 

Organizations: AI Platform, Xiaohongshu Inc · The University of Hong Kong · University of Science and Technology of China

Abstract

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×\times end-to-end speedup over veRL on Qwen3-4B on-policy training. Its fully async mode delivers a 1.76×\times speedup over colocate on Qwen3-4B and a 2.00×\times speedup on Qwen3-Omni-30B, while all modes converge to the same reward level. Relax supports R3 (Rollout Routing Replay)~\cite{ma2025r3} 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.

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