refinement: free-memory preflight for every level before any device work

Restores the PeriodicBlockStepper safeguard dropped in 8e1feff, for all
FixedPatchStepper levels: both G buffers, halo pairs and boundary columns
of every level are compared with cuda.mem_get_info() before the stream,
any module or any buffer exists, raising MemoryError('level buffers exceed
free device memory'). Transfer tables are not counted (lower bound).

Tests: the single-level MemoryError case is back beside the param-layout
check (no stream, no allocation); host test_single_level covers depth 1
and depth 2 (no stream, build or allocation) and the wait failure after a
good step (count stays 1). Driver-mocking fixtures report ample free memory.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

tests/unit/test_single_level.py

@@ -100,6 +100,29 @@ class SingleLevel(unittest.TestCase):
                 with self.assertRaisesRegex(RuntimeError, "failed"):
                     run.download()
 
+    def test_free_memory_preflight_before_stream_and_buffers(self):
+        for cfg, options in ((LBMConfig(nx=32, ny=24, viscosity=.1),
+                              dict(refinements=[], level_blocks=[(12, 16)])),
+                             (LBMConfig(nx=48, ny=48, viscosity=.02),  # every level counts
+                              dict(refinements=[[(6, 6, 26, 26)]], level_blocks=[(4, 4)] * 2))):
+            with self.subTest(depth=len(options["refinements"]) + 1):
+                host = host_module()
+                host.cuda.mem_get_info.return_value = (1024, 1 << 30)
+                with self.assertRaisesRegex(MemoryError, "exceed free device memory"):
+                    host.FixedPatchStepper(cfg, context=Mock(activate=nullcontext, sm_arch="sm_70"),
+                                           **options)
+                host.cuda.Stream.assert_not_called()
+                host.cuda.mem_alloc.assert_not_called()
+                host.compiler.build_module.assert_not_called()
+
+    def test_wait_failure_after_a_good_step_keeps_its_count(self):
+        run, _, _ = backend()
+        run.step(1)
+        run._stream.synchronize.side_effect = RuntimeError("device fault")
+        with self.assertRaises(RuntimeError):
+            run.step(2)
+        self.assertEqual((run.step_count, run._status), (1, "failed"))
+
     def test_final_wait_failure_fails_instance_and_keeps_step_count(self):
         run, _, _ = backend()
         run._stream.synchronize.side_effect = RuntimeError("device error")