diff --git a/src/llama-context.cpp b/src/llama-context.cpp
index eed041eef4..3679931c12 100644
--- a/src/llama-context.cpp
+++ b/src/llama-context.cpp
@@ -2472,11 +2472,12 @@ llm_graph_cb llama_context::graph_get_cb() const {
             ggml_set_name(cur, name);
         }
 
-        // norm may be automatically assigned to the backend of the previous layer, increasing data transfer between backends
+        // - norm may be automatically assigned to the backend of the previous layer, increasing data transfer between backends
+        // - force the last op of the layer on the specified backend to avoid running it on the backend of the next layer due to scheduling
         // FIXME: fix in ggml_backend_sched
         const bool full_offload = model.n_gpu_layers() > model.hparams.n_layer_all;
         if (ubatch.n_tokens < 32 || full_offload) {
-            if (il != -1 && strcmp(name, "norm") == 0) {
+            if (il != -1 && (strcmp(name, "norm") == 0 || strcmp(name, "l_last") == 0)) {
                 const auto & dev_layer = model.dev_layer(il);
                 for (const auto & backend : backends) {
                     if (ggml_backend_get_device(backend.get()) == dev_layer) {
diff --git a/src/models/deepseek4.cpp b/src/models/deepseek4.cpp
index 5ad6473ce2..2d41dace0b 100644
--- a/src/models/deepseek4.cpp
+++ b/src/models/deepseek4.cpp
@@ -1133,6 +1133,10 @@ llama_model_deepseek4::graph::graph(const llama_model & model, const llm_graph_p
                 &post, &comb, il);
         cb(cur, "hc_ffn_pre", il);
 
+        ggml_build_forward_expand(gf, residual);
+        ggml_build_forward_expand(gf, post);
+        ggml_build_forward_expand(gf, comb);
+
         cur = build_norm(cur, model.layers[il].ffn_norm, nullptr, LLM_NORM_RMS, il);
         cb(cur, "ffn_norm", il);
 
@@ -1175,7 +1179,7 @@ llama_model_deepseek4::graph::graph(const llama_model & model, const llm_graph_p
 
         inpL = build_hc_post(cur, residual, post, comb, il);
         inpL = build_cvec(inpL, il);
-        cb(inpL, "l_out", il);
+        cb(inpL, "l_last", il);
     }
 
     if (inp_out_ids) {