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LeanRL - Turbo-implementations of CleanRL scripts

LeanRL is a lightweight library consisting of single-file, pytorch-based implementations of popular Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms. The primary goal of this library is to inform the RL PyTorch user base of optimization tricks to cut training time by half or more.

More precisely, LeanRL is a fork of CleanRL, where hand-picked scripts have been re-written using PyTorch 2 features, mainly torch.compile and cudagraphs. The goal is to provide guidance on how to run your RL script at full speed with minimal impact on the user experience.

Key Features:

• 📜 Single-file implementation
  • We stick to the original spirit of CleanRL which is to keep every detail about an algorithm variant in a single standalone file.
• 🚀 Fast implementations:
  • We provide an optimized, lean version of the PyTorch scripts (<script_name>_torchcompile.py) where data copies and code execution have been optimized thanks to four tools:
    • 🖥️ torch.compile to reduce the overhead and fuse operators whenever possible;
    • 📈 cudagraphs to isolate all the cuda operations and eliminate the cost of entering the compiled code;
    • 📖 tensordict to speed-up and clarify data copies on CUDA, facilitate functional calls and fast target parameters updates.
    • 🗺️ torch.vmap to vectorize the execution of the Q-value networks, when needed.
  • We provide a somewhat lighter version of each script, removing some logging and checkpointing-related lines of code. to focus on the time spent optimizing the models.
  • If available, we do the same with the Jax version of the code.
• 🪛 Local Reproducibility via Seeding

Disclaimer: This repo is a highly simplified version of CleanRL that lacks many features such as detailed logging or checkpointing - its only purpose is to provide various versions of similar training scripts to measure the plain runtime under various constraints. However, we welcome contributions that re-implement these features.

Speed-ups

There are three sources of speed-ups in the codes proposed here:

• torch.compile: Introduced in PyTorch 2.0, torch.compile serves as the primary framework for accelerating the execution of PyTorch code during both training and inference phases. This compiler translates Python code into a series of elementary operations and identifies opportunities for fusion. A significant advantage of torch.compile is its ability to minimize the overhead of transitioning between the Python interpreter and the C++ runtime. Unlike PyTorch's eager execution mode, which requires numerous such boundary crossings, torch.compile generates a single C++ executable, thereby minimizing the need to frequently revert to Python. Additionally, torch.compile is notably resilient to graph breaks, which occur when an operation is not supported by the compiler (due to design constraints or pending integration of the Python operator). This robustness ensures that virtually any Python code can be compiled in principle.

• cudagraphs: Reinforcement Learning (RL) is typically constrained by significant CPU overhead. Unlike other machine learning domains where networks might be deep, RL commonly employs shallower networks. When using torch.compile, there is a minor CPU overhead associated with the execution of compiled code itself (e.g., guard checks). This overhead can negate the benefits of operator fusions, especially since the functions being compiled are already quick to execute. To address this, PyTorch offers cudagraph support. Utilizing cudagraphs involves capturing the operations executed on a CUDA device, using device buffers, and replaying the same operations graph later. If the graph's buffers (content) are updated in-place, new results can be generated. Here is how a typical cudagraph pipeline appears:

  g = torch.cuda.CUDAGraph()
  with torch.cuda.graph(graph):
       # x_buffer, y_buffer are example tensors of the desired shape
       z_buffer = func(x_buffer, y_buffer)
  # later on, with a new x and y we want to pass to func
  x_buffer.copy_(x)
  y_buffer.copy_(y)
  graph.replay()
  z = z_buffer.clone()
  

  This has some strong requirements (all tensors must be on CUDA, and dynamic shapes are not supported). Because we are explicitly avoiding the torch.compile entry cost, this is much faster. Cudagraphs can also be used without torch.compile, but by using both simultaneously we can benefit from both operator fusion and cudagraphs speed-ups. As one can see, using cudagraph as such is a bit convoluted and not very pythonic. Fortunately, the tensordict library provides a CudaGraphModule that acts as a wrapper around an nn.Module and allows for a flexible and safe usage of CudaGraphModule.

To reproduce these results in your own code base: look for calls to torch.compile and CudaGraphModule wrapper within the *_torchcompile.py scripts.

You can also look into run.sh for the exact commands we used to run the scripts.

The following table displays speed-ups obtained on a H100 equipped node with TODO cpu cores. All models were executed on GPU, simulation was done on CPU.

These figures are displayed in the plots below. All runs were executed for an identical number of steps across 3 different seeds. Fluctuations in the results are due to seeding artifacts, not implementations details (which are identical across scripts).

GPU utilization

Using torch.compile and cudagraphs also makes a better use of your GPU. To show this, we plot the GPU utilization throughout training for SAC. The Area Under The Curve (AUC) measures the total usage of the GPU over the course of the training loop execution. As this plot show, the combined usage of compile and cudagraphs brings the GPU utilization to its minimum value, meaning that you can train more models in a shorter time by utilizing these features together.

Tips to accelerate your code in eager mode

There may be multiple reasons your RL code is running slower than it should. Here are some off-the-shelf tips to get a better runtime:

• Don't send tensors to device using to(device) if you can instantiate them directly there. For instance, prefer randn((), device=device) to randn(()).to(device).
• Avoid pinning memory in your code unless you thoroughly tested that it accelerates runtime (see this tutorial for more info).
• Avoid calling tensor.item() in between cuda operations. This triggers a cuda synchronization and blocks your code. Do the logging after all code (forward / backward / optim) has completed. See how to find sync points here)
• Avoid frequent calls to eval() or train() in eager mode.
• Avoid calling args.attribute often in the code, especially with Hydra. Instead, cache the args values in your script as global workspace variables.
• In general, in-place operations are not preferable to regular ones. Don't load your code with mul_, add_ if not absolutely necessary.

Get started

Unlike CleanRL, LeanRL does not currently support poetry.

Prerequisites:

• Clone the repo locally:

  git clone https://github.com/pytorch-labs/leanrl.git && cd leanrl
  

• Python >=3.7.1,<3.11

• Upgrade torch to its nightly builds for a better coverage of torch.compile:
  • CUDA 11.8: pip3 install --upgrade --pre torch --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/nightly/cu118
  • CUDA 12.1: pip3 install --upgrade --pre torch --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/nightly/cu121
  • CUDA 12.4: pip3 install --upgrade --pre torch --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/nightly/cu124
  • CPU: pip3 install --upgrade --pre torch --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/nightly/cpu
• pip install -r requirements/requirements.txt for basic requirements, or another .txt file for specific applications.

Once the dependencies have been installed, run the scripts as follows

python leanrl/ppo_atari_envpool_torchcompile.py \
    --seed 1 \
    --total-timesteps 50000 \
    --compile \
    --cudagraphs

Together, the installation steps will generally look like this:

conda create -n leanrl python=3.10 -y
conda activate leanrl
python -m pip install --upgrade --pre torch --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/nightly/cu124
python -m pip install -r requirements/requirements.txt
python -m pip install -r requirements/requirements-atari.txt
python -m pip install -r requirements/requirements-envpool.txt
python -m pip install -r requirements/requirements-mujoco.txt

python leanrl/ppo_atari_envpool_torchcompile.py \
    --seed 1 \
    --compile \
    --cudagraphs

Citing CleanRL

LeanRL does not have a citation yet, credentials should be given to CleanRL instead. To cite CleanRL in your work, please cite our technical paper:

@article{huang2022cleanrl,
  author  = {Shengyi Huang and Rousslan Fernand Julien Dossa and Chang Ye and Jeff Braga and Dipam Chakraborty and Kinal Mehta and João G.M. Araújo},
  title   = {CleanRL: High-quality Single-file Implementations of Deep Reinforcement Learning Algorithms},
  journal = {Journal of Machine Learning Research},
  year    = {2022},
  volume  = {23},
  number  = {274},
  pages   = {1--18},
  url     = {http://jmlr.org/papers/v23/21-1342.html}
}

Acknowledgement

LeanRL is forked from CleanRL.

CleanRL is a community-powered by project and our contributors run experiments on a variety of hardware.

• We thank many contributors for using their own computers to run experiments
• We thank Google's TPU research cloud for providing TPU resources.
• We thank Hugging Face's cluster for providing GPU resources.

License

LeanRL is MIT licensed, as found in the LICENSE file.