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An asynchronous multi-worker parameter server tf.distribute strategy.
Inherits From: Strategy
tf.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,...)
Args | |
---|---|
cluster_resolver
|
Optional
tf.distribute.cluster_resolver.ClusterResolver object. Defaults to a
tf.distribute.cluster_resolver.TFConfigClusterResolver .
|
Attributes | |
---|---|
cluster_resolver
|
Returns the cluster resolver associated with this strategy.
In general, when using a multi-worker Strategies that intend to have an associated
Single-worker strategies usually do not have a
The
For more information, please see
|
extended
|
tf.distribute.StrategyExtended with additional methods.
|
num_replicas_in_sync
|
Returns number of replicas over which gradients are aggregated. |
Methods
experimental_assign_to_logical_device
experimental_assign_to_logical_device(
tensor, logical_device_id
)
Adds annotation that tensor
will be assigned to a 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),))
Args | |
---|---|
tensor
|
Input tensor to annotate. |
logical_device_id
|
Id of the logical core to which the tensor will be assigned. |
Raises | |
---|---|
ValueError
|
The logical device id presented is not consistent with total number of partitions specified by the device assignment. |
Returns | |
---|---|
Annotated tensor with idential value as tensor .
|
experimental_distribute_dataset
experimental_distribute_dataset(
dataset
)
Creates tf.distribute.DistributedDataset
from tf.data.Dataset
.
The returned tf.distribute.DistributedDataset
can be iterated over
similar to how regular datasets can.
NOTE: The user cannot add any more transformations to a
tf.distribute.DistributedDataset
.
The following is an example:
strategy = tf.distribute.MirroredStrategy()
# Create a dataset
dataset = dataset_ops.Dataset.TFRecordDataset([
"/a/1.tfr", "/a/2.tfr", "/a/3.tfr", "/a/4.tfr"])
# Distribute that dataset
dist_dataset = strategy.experimental_distribute_dataset(dataset)
# Iterate over the `tf.distribute.DistributedDataset`
for x in dist_dataset:
# process dataset elements
strategy.run(replica_fn, args=(x,))
In the code snippet above, the tf.distribute.DistributedDataset
dist_dataset
is batched by GLOBAL_BATCH_SIZE
, and we iterate through it
using for x in dist_dataset
. x
a tf.distribute.DistributedValues
containing data for all replicas, which aggregates to a batch of
GLOBAL_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.
What's under the hood of this method, when we say the tf.data.Dataset
instance - dataset
- gets distributed? It depends on how you set the
tf.data.experimental.AutoShardPolicy
through
tf.data.experimental.DistributeOptions
. By default, it is set to
tf.data.experimental.AutoShardPolicy.AUTO
. In a multi-worker setting, we
will first attempt to distribute dataset
by detecting whether dataset
is
being created out of reader datasets (e.g. tf.data.TFRecordDataset
,
tf.data.TextLineDataset
, etc.) and if so, try to shard the input files.
Note that there has to be at least one input file per worker. If you have
less than one input file per worker, we suggest that you disable dataset
sharding across workers, by setting the
tf.data.experimental.DistributeOptions.auto_shard_policy
to be
tf.data.experimental.AutoShardPolicy.OFF
.
If the attempt to shard by file is unsuccessful (i.e. the dataset is not
read from files), we will shard the dataset evenly at the end by
appending a .shard
operation to the end of the processing pipeline. This
will cause the entire preprocessing pipeline for all the data to be run on
every worker, and each worker will do redundant work. We will print a
warning if this route is selected.
As mentioned before, within each worker, we will also split the data among all the worker devices (if more than one a present). This will happen even if multi-worker sharding is disabled.
If the above batch splitting and dataset sharding logic is undesirable,
please use
tf.distribute.Strategy.experimental_distribute_datasets_from_function
instead, which does not do any automatic splitting or sharding.
You can also use the element_spec
property of the
tf.distribute.DistributedDataset
instance 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
.
strategy = tf.distribute.MirroredStrategy()
# Create a dataset
dataset = dataset_ops.Dataset.TFRecordDataset([
"/a/1.tfr", "/a/2.tfr", "/a/3.tfr", "/a/4.tfr"])
# Distribute that dataset
dist_dataset = strategy.experimental_distribute_dataset(dataset)
@tf.function(input_signature=[dist_dataset.element_spec])
def train_step(inputs):
# train model with inputs
return
# Iterate over the `tf.distribute.DistributedDataset`
for x in dist_dataset:
# process dataset elements
strategy.run(train_step, args=(x,))