tf.distribute.TPUStrategy

See Stable See Nightly

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Synchronous training on TPUs and TPU Pods.

Inherits From: Strategy

tf.distribute.TPUStrategy(
    tpu_cluster_resolver=None, experimental_device_assignment=None
)

Used in the notebooks

To construct a TPUStrategy object, you need to run the initialization code as below:

resolver = tf.distribute.cluster_resolver.TPUClusterResolver(tpu='')
tf.config.experimental_connect_to_cluster(resolver)
tf.tpu.experimental.initialize_tpu_system(resolver)
strategy = tf.distribute.TPUStrategy(resolver)

While using distribution strategies, the variables created within the strategy's scope will be replicated across all the replicas and can be kept in sync using all-reduce algorithms.

To run TF2 programs on TPUs, you can either use .compile and .fit APIs in tf.keras with TPUStrategy, or write your own customized training loop by calling strategy.run directly. Note that TPUStrategy doesn't support pure eager execution, so please make sure the function passed into strategy.run is a tf.function or strategy.run is called inside a tf.function if eager behavior is enabled. See more details in https://www.tensorflow.org/guide/tpu.

distribute_datasets_from_function and experimental_distribute_dataset APIs can be used to distribute the dataset across the TPU workers when writing your own training loop. If you are using fit and compile methods available in tf.keras.Model, then Keras will handle the distribution for you.

An example of writing customized training loop on TPUs:

with strategy.scope():
  model = tf.keras.Sequential([
    tf.keras.layers.Dense(2, input_shape=(5,)),
  ])
  optimizer = tf.keras.optimizers.SGD(learning_rate=0.1)

def dataset_fn(ctx):
  x = np.random.random((2, 5)).astype(np.float32)
  y = np.random.randint(2, size=(2, 1))
  dataset = tf.data.Dataset.from_tensor_slices((x, y))
  return dataset.repeat().batch(1, drop_remainder=True)
dist_dataset = strategy.distribute_datasets_from_function(
    dataset_fn)
iterator = iter(dist_dataset)

@tf.function()
def train_step(iterator):

  def step_fn(inputs):
    features, labels = inputs
    with tf.GradientTape() as tape:
      logits = model(features, training=True)
      loss = tf.keras.losses.sparse_categorical_crossentropy(
          labels, logits)

    grads = tape.gradient(loss, model.trainable_variables)
    optimizer.apply_gradients(zip(grads, model.trainable_variables))

  strategy.run(step_fn, args=(next(iterator),))

train_step(iterator)

For the advanced use cases like model parallelism, you can set experimental_device_assignment argument when creating TPUStrategy to specify number of replicas and number of logical devices. Below is an example to initialize TPU system with 2 logical devices and 1 replica.

resolver = tf.distribute.cluster_resolver.TPUClusterResolver(tpu='')
tf.config.experimental_connect_to_cluster(resolver)
topology = tf.tpu.experimental.initialize_tpu_system(resolver)
device_assignment = tf.tpu.experimental.DeviceAssignment.build(
    topology,
    computation_shape=[1, 1, 1, 2],
    num_replicas=1)
strategy = tf.distribute.TPUStrategy(
    resolver, experimental_device_assignment=device_assignment)

Then you can run a tf.add operation only on logical device 0.

@tf.function()
def step_fn(inputs):
  features, _ = inputs
  output = tf.add(features, features)

  # Add operation will be executed on logical device 0.
  output = strategy.experimental_assign_to_logical_device(output, 0)
  return output
dist_dataset = strategy.distribute_datasets_from_function(
    dataset_fn)
iterator = iter(dist_dataset)
strategy.run(step_fn, args=(next(iterator),))

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_assign_to_logical_device

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experimental_assign_to_logical_device(
    tensor, logical_device_id
)

Adds annotation that tensor will be assigned to a logical device.

This adds an annotation to tensor specifying that operations on tensor will be invoked on logical core device id logical_device_id. When model parallelism is used, the default behavior is that all ops are placed on zero-th logical device.

# Initializing TPU system with 2 logical devices and 4 replicas.
resolver = tf.distribute.cluster_resolver.TPUClusterResolver(tpu='')
tf.config.experimental_connect_to_cluster(resolver)
topology = tf.tpu.experimental.initialize_tpu_system(resolver)
device_assignment = tf.tpu.experimental.DeviceAssignment.build(
    topology,
    computation_shape=[1, 1, 1, 2],
    num_replicas=4)
strategy = tf.distribute.TPUStrategy(
    resolver, experimental_device_assignment=device_assignment)
iterator = iter(inputs)

@tf.function()
def step_fn(inputs):
  output = tf.add(inputs, inputs)

  # Add operation will be executed on logical device 0.
  output = strategy.experimental_assign_to_logical_device(output, 0)
  return output

strategy.run(step_fn, args=(next(iterator),))

experimental_distribute_dataset

View source

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.