tf.compat.v1.distribute.experimental.ParameterServerStrategy

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An asynchronous multi-worker parameter server tf.distribute strategy.

Inherits From: Strategy

tf.compat.v1.distribute.experimental.ParameterServerStrategy(
    cluster_resolver=None
)

This strategy requires two roles: workers and parameter servers. Variables and updates to those variables will be assigned to parameter servers and other operations are assigned to workers.

When each worker has more than one GPU, operations will be replicated on all GPUs. Even though operations may be replicated, variables are not and each worker shares a common view for which parameter server a variable is assigned to.

By default it uses TFConfigClusterResolver to detect configurations for multi-worker training. This requires a 'TF_CONFIG' environment variable and the 'TF_CONFIG' must have a cluster spec.

This class assumes each worker is running the same code independently, but parameter servers are running a standard server. This means that while each worker will synchronously compute a single gradient update across all GPUs, updates between workers proceed asynchronously. Operations that occur only on the first replica (such as incrementing the global step), will occur on the first replica of every worker.

It is expected to call call_for_each_replica(fn, ...) for any operations which potentially can be replicated across replicas (i.e. multiple GPUs) even if there is only CPU or one GPU. When defining the fn, extra caution needs to be taken:

1) It is generally not recommended to open a device scope under the strategy's scope. A device scope (i.e. calling tf.device) will be merged with or override the device for operations but will not change the device for variables.

2) It is also not recommended to open a colocation scope (i.e. calling tf.compat.v1.colocate_with) under the strategy's scope. For colocating variables, use strategy.extended.colocate_vars_with instead. Colocation of ops will possibly create device assignment conflicts.

For Example:

strategy = tf.distribute.experimental.ParameterServerStrategy()
run_config = tf.estimator.RunConfig(
    experimental_distribute.train_distribute=strategy)
estimator = tf.estimator.Estimator(config=run_config)
tf.estimator.train_and_evaluate(estimator,...)

os.environ['TF_CONFIG'] = json.dumps({
'cluster': {
'worker': ["localhost:12345", "localhost:23456"],
'ps': ["localhost:34567"]
},
'task': {'type': 'worker', 'index': 0}
})

# This implicitly uses TF_CONFIG for the cluster and current task info.
strategy = tf.distribute.experimental.MultiWorkerMirroredStrategy()

...

if strategy.cluster_resolver.task_type == 'worker':
# Perform something that's only applicable on workers. Since we set this
# as a worker above, this block will run on this particular instance.
elif strategy.cluster_resolver.task_type == 'ps':
# Perform something that's only applicable on parameter servers. Since we
# set this as a worker above, this block will not run on this particular
# instance.

Methods

distribute_datasets_from_function

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distribute_datasets_from_function(
    dataset_fn, options=None
)

Distributes tf.data.Dataset instances created by calls to dataset_fn.

The argument dataset_fn that users pass in is an input function that has a tf.distribute.InputContext argument and returns a tf.data.Dataset instance. It is expected that the returned dataset from dataset_fn is already batched by per-replica batch size (i.e. global batch size divided by the number of replicas in sync) and sharded. tf.distribute.Strategy.distribute_datasets_from_function does not batch or shard the tf.data.Dataset instance returned from the input function. dataset_fn will be called on the CPU device of each of the workers and each generates a dataset where every replica on that worker will dequeue one batch of inputs (i.e. if a worker has two replicas, two batches will be dequeued from the Dataset every step).

This method can be used for several purposes. First, it allows you to specify your own batching and sharding logic. (In contrast, tf.distribute.experimental_distribute_dataset does batching and sharding for you.) For example, where experimental_distribute_dataset is unable to shard the input files, this method might be used to manually shard the dataset (avoiding the slow fallback behavior in experimental_distribute_dataset). In cases where the dataset is infinite, this sharding can be done by creating dataset replicas that differ only in their random seed.

The dataset_fn should take an tf.distribute.InputContext instance where information about batching and input replication can be accessed.

You can use element_spec property of the tf.distribute.DistributedDataset returned by this API to query the tf.TypeSpec of the elements returned by the iterator. This can be used to set the input_signature property of a tf.function. Follow tf.distribute.DistributedDataset.element_spec to see an example.

For a tutorial on more usage and properties of this method, refer to the tutorial on distributed input). If you are interested in last partial batch handling, read this section.

experimental_distribute_dataset

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experimental_distribute_dataset(
    dataset, options=None
)

Creates tf.distribute.DistributedDataset from tf.data.Dataset.

The returned tf.distribute.DistributedDataset can be iterated over similar to regular datasets. NOTE: The user cannot add any more transformations to a tf.distribute.DistributedDataset. You can only create an iterator or examine the tf.TypeSpec of the data generated by it. See API docs of tf.distribute.DistributedDataset to learn more.

The following is an example:

global_batch_size = 2
# Passing the devices is optional.
strategy = tf.distribute.MirroredStrategy(devices=["GPU:0", "GPU:1"])
# Create a dataset
dataset = tf.data.Dataset.range(4).batch(global_batch_size)
# Distribute that dataset
dist_dataset = strategy.experimental_distribute_dataset(dataset)
@tf.function
def replica_fn(input):
  return input*2
result = []
# Iterate over the `tf.distribute.DistributedDataset`
for x in dist_dataset:
  # process dataset elements
  result.append(strategy.run(replica_fn, args=(x,)))
print(result)
[PerReplica:{
  0: <tf.Tensor: shape=(1,), dtype=int64, numpy=array([0])>,
  1: <tf.Tensor: shape=(1,), dtype=int64, numpy=array([2])>
}, PerReplica:{
  0: <tf.Tensor: shape=(1,), dtype=int64, numpy=array([4])>,
  1: <tf.Tensor: shape=(1,), dtype=int64, numpy=array([6])>
}]

Three key actions happending under the hood of this method are batching, sharding, and prefetching.

In the code snippet above, dataset is batched by global_batch_size, and calling experimental_distribute_dataset on it rebatches dataset to a new batch size that is equal to the global batch size divided by the number of replicas in sync. We iterate through it using a Pythonic for loop. x is a tf.distribute.DistributedValues containing data for all replicas, and each replica gets data of the new batch size. tf.distribute.Strategy.run will take care of feeding the right per-replica data in x to the right replica_fn executed on each replica.

Sharding contains autosharding across multiple workers and within every worker. First, in multi-worker distributed training (i.e. when you use tf.distribute.experimental.MultiWorkerMirroredStrategy or tf.distribute.TPUStrategy), autosharding a dataset over a set of workers means that each worker is assigned a subset of the entire dataset (if the right tf.data.experimental.AutoShardPolicy is set). This is to ensure that at each step, a global batch size of non-overlapping dataset elements will be processed by each worker. Autosharding has a couple of different options that can be specified using tf.data.experimental.DistributeOptions. Then, sharding within each worker means the method will split the data among all the worker devices (if more than one a present). This will happen regardless of multi-worker autosharding.

By default, this method adds a prefetch transformation at the end of the user provided tf.data.Dataset instance. The argument to the prefetch transformation which is buffer_size is equal to the number of replicas in sync.

If the above batch splitting and dataset sharding logic is undesirable, please use tf.distribute.Strategy.distribute_datasets_from_function instead, which does not do any automatic batching or sharding for you.

For a tutorial on more usage and properties of this method, refer to the tutorial on distributed input. If you are interested in last partial batch handling, read this section.

experimental_local_results

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experimental_local_results(
    value
)

Returns the list of all local per-replica values contained in value.

experimental_make_numpy_dataset

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experimental_make_numpy_dataset(
    numpy_input, session=None
)

Makes a tf.data.Dataset for input provided via a numpy array.

This avoids adding numpy_input as a large constant in the graph, and copies the data to the machine or machines that will be processing the input.

Note that you will likely need to use tf.distribute.Strategy.experimental_distribute_dataset with the returned dataset to further distribute it with the strategy.

Example:

numpy_input = np.ones([10], dtype=np.float32)
dataset = strategy.experimental_make_numpy_dataset(numpy_input)
dist_dataset = strategy.experimental_distribute_dataset(dataset)

experimental_run

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experimental_run(
    fn, input_iterator=None
)

Runs ops in fn on each replica, with inputs from input_iterator.

DEPRECATED: This method is not available in TF 2.x. Please switch to using run instead.

When eager execution is enabled, executes ops specified by fn on each replica. Otherwise, builds a graph to execute the ops on each replica.

Each replica will take a single, different input from the inputs provided by one