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TensorFlow Large Model Support

TensorFlow Large Model Support (TFLMS) is a feature in the TensorFlow provided by IBM Watson Machine Learning Community Edition (WML CE) that allows the successful training of deep learning models that would otherwise exhaust GPU memory and abort with "out-of-memory" errors. LMS manages this oversubscription of GPU memory by temporarily swapping tensors to host memory when they are not needed.

One or more elements of a deep learning model can lead to GPU memory exhaustion.

These include:

Model depth and complexity
Base data size (for example, high-resolution images)
Batch size

Traditionally, the solution to this problem has been to modify the model until it fits in GPU memory. This approach, however, can negatively impact accuracy – especially if concessions are made by reducing data fidelity or model complexity.

With LMS, deep learning models can scale significantly beyond what was previously possible and, ultimately, generate more accurate results.

Installing TensorFlow Large Model Support

TFLMS is built into the tensorflow-gpu conda package so it is installed by default when you install the GPU enabled TensorFlow from WML CE.

The support is currently available for TensorFlow 2.2.0 in the WML CE early access conda channel.

The support is currently available for TensorFlow 2.1.0 in the WML CE conda channel.

For more information on this channel, how to add channels, and install frameworks see this WML CE install documentation.

How to enable TFLMS

The TFLMS functionality is disabled by default in TensorFlow and needs to be enabled before your model creates tensors. In most cases, enabling TFLMS is as simple as calling the enablement API at the start of your program:

import tensorflow as tf
tf.config.experimental.set_lms_enabled(True)

In TensorFlow 2 some models use sessions and session configurations are created either explicitly in model code or implicitly within TensorFlow APIs.

Using TensorFlow Estimators

TensorFlow Estimators use sessions for training and will implicitly create a default session configuration if one is not specified. To enable TFLMS the ConfigProto settings need to be updated with the LMS setting.

# Create a session config if necessary, or add to the existing session config
session_config = tf.compat.v1.ConfigProto(allow_soft_placement=True)
session_config.gpu_options.experimental.lms_enabled = True

# Create a run config if necessary, or add the session_config to the existing
# run config.
run_config = tf.estimator.RunConfig(# ... other RunConfig parameters,
                                    session_config=session_config)
# Pass the RunConfig to the Estimator
estimator = tf.estimator.Estimator( # .. other Estimator parameters,
                                   config=run_config)

TensorFlow Keras directly setting session

If a TensorFlow Keras model is used in with v1 compatibility mode in TensorFlow 2, and TensorFlow 2 behavior is disabled using:

import tensorflow.compat.v1 as tf
tf.disable_v2_behavior()

then the Session configuration must be set to enable LMS.

session_config = tf.compat.v1.ConfigProto(allow_soft_placement=True)
session_config.gpu_options.experimental.lms_enabled = True
sess = tf.Session(config=session_config)
tf.keras.backend.set_session(sess)

TensorFlow 1.x models using Sessions

If a standard sessions-based TensorFlow 1.x model is used with v1 compatibility mode in TensorFlow 2 using:

import tensorflow.compat.v1 as tf

then the Session configuration must be set to enable LMS.

session_config = tf.compat.v1.ConfigProto(allow_soft_placement=True)
session_config.gpu_options.experimental.lms_enabled = True
sess = tf.Session(config=session_config)

Examples

The ManyModel.py example, found in the TensorFlow LMS examples, uses synthetic random images with multiple models provided by TensorFlow Keras applications to allow users a fast hands-on experience with LMS. The example allows users to change the image size, explore auto-tuning, and manually set the LMS tunable parameters on many variants of the ResNet, DenseNet, MobileNet, Inception, NASNet, and Xception models. Advanced users can also use the command line parameters to enable CUDA profiling that can be used with the NVIDIA Visual Profiler to profile and visualize the tensor swapping.

Usage tips

Increase the system memory (GPU host) memory allocation

TensorFlow sets a limit on the amount of memory that will be allocated on the GPU host (CPU) side. The limit is often not high enough to act as a tensor swap space when swapping a large amount of data or when using multiple GPUs without the use of Horovod. The limit can be adjusted by setting the TF_GPU_HOST_MEM_LIMIT_IN_MB environment variable. Failure to set this limit higher will result in out of memory errors such as: Allocator (gpu_host_bfc) ran out of memory trying to allocate. Note the gpu_host_bfc allocator is mentioned rather than a GPU allocator.

The value for TF_GPU_HOST_MEM_LIMIT_IN_MB should be several times the size of the memory of the GPUs being used by the TensorFlow process. For example, if a single 32GB GPU is being used then the TF_GPU_HOST_MEM_LIMIT_IN_MB should be set several times greater than 32GB.

If Horovod distribution is being used, it will create one process per GPU. In this the TF_GPU_HOST_MEM_LIMIT_IN_MB limit should be set several times greater than the memory of one of the GPUs.

If other GPU distrubtion mechanisms are used, then the TF_GPU_HOST_MEM_LIMIT_IN_MB limit should be set to several times the sum of the memory of all the GPUs being used.

Use NUMA pinning for single GPU use

If you are utilizing a single GPU it is recommended to use NUMA pinning to pin the process to the CPU and memory that is on the same system socket as the GPU being used. Pinning the process allows the fastest connection paths between system memory and GPU memory, which reduces the training or inferencing time. WML CE includes the numactl utility that can be used to do this pinning. It can be installed with the conda install numactl command. The following example shows how to specify a single GPU to be used and how to pin the process to use the CPU cores and memory that are on the same socket as the specified GPU:

export CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0
numactl --cpunodebind=0 --membind=0 python train.py

Use Horovod when using more than one GPU

It is recommended to use Horovod distribution when using more than one GPU because Horovod creates a separate process per GPU and automatically sets the process have socket affinity with the GPU which allows the fastest connection paths between system memory and GPU memory, which reduces the training or inferencing time.

Model memory usage analysis with allocator statistics

TFLMS adds several APIs to obtain GPU memory allocator statistics such as the number of allocations, the peak memory usage, the amount of memory swapped, and more. For more information on the statistics APIs and examples of their usage see the TensorFlow LMS examples.

Building TensorFlow from source with TensorFlow Large Model Support

The patches directory contains git patch of for the TFLMS code. The file names correspond to tag levels in the TensorFlow source. To build TensorFlow from source with TensorFlow Large Model Support, check out the specific TensorFlow git tag and then apply the corresponding TensorFlow Large Model Support patch file.

For example:

git clone https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow
cd tensorflow
git pull --tags
git checkout v2.1.0
git am /tensorflow-large-model-support/patches/tensorflow_v2.1.0_large_model_support.patch

Contribution guidelines

If you want to contribute to TensorFlow Large Model Support please read the contribution guidelines.

Previous implementations of TensorFlow Large Model Support

TFLMSv1

The TFLMSv1 implementation was installed as a separate module from TensorFlow and performed static graph modifications on the model's graph to introduce swapping nodes. This implementation was included in the tensorflow.contrib module path as a technology preview in IBM PowerAI 1.5.4 and earlier releases. The implementation source resides in the tflmsv1 branch of this repository.

TFLMSv2

The TFLMSv2 implementation was installed as a separate conda module from TensorFlow and performed static graph modifications on the model's graph to introduce swapping nodes and other graph optimizations. This implementation was included in IBM Watson Machine Learning Community Edition 1.6.x versions. The implementation source resides in the tflmsv2 branch of this repository.