2.6 backport PR request list

[tengyifei]

This is a tracker for backport/cherry-picks into 2.6. For any PRs you want to backport to 2.6, please reply with following:

• Original PR link (this PR should merge into master)
• Reason to backport
• 2.6 backport PR link (a separate PR should be created, and that PR should merge into r2.6)

This process is similar to the backport request thread in 2.5 release #7977

Please note the criterion for cherrypicking into 2.6: #7203

[tengyifei]

@lsy323 libtpu pin update to 0.0.6: #8480.
Reason: pick stable libtpu for Trillium
Backport PR link: manually pushed to r2.6 since there's no delta between these branches

[yaochengji]

Fix a DDP graph capture issue #8489
Reason: The DDP result before this patch is wrong
Backport PR link: #8500

[mcuiaws]

Original PR: Compute and hash buffer_donor_indices for step marker #8467
Reason: Fixes tensor corruption issue
Backport PR: #8503

[mcuiaws]

Original PR: xm.save() should not set sync_xla_data=True when sync'ing. #8484
Reason: Fixes tensor corruption issues, easily reproducible by running huggingface tutorials.
Backport PR: #8504

[mcuiaws]

Original PR: Add xm.xla_device_kind() to return XLA device kind string. #8493
Reason: Requested by Neuron customers. Feature available in JAX but not PyTorch/XLA. Should be very low risk.
Backport PR: #8506

[jeffhataws]

Original PR: When modifying IR node, make sure to not lose the read_only bit #8505
Reason: Fixed a bug where 0-dimensional tensors result in aliasing errors
Backport PR: TBD

[mcuiaws]

Original PR: When modifying IR node, make sure to not lose the read_only bit #8505 Reason: Fixed a bug where 0-dimensional tensors result in aliasing errors Backport PR: TBD

Backport PR: #8508

[avizon-aws]

Cherry-Pick PR for softmax autocast:
Reason: This PR fixes the precision issues related to softmax being done in BF16 as it was not a part of the autocast policy which leads to convergence issues.
Original PR:#8509
Cherry-pick PR: #8511