# Combining Distributed DataParallel with Distributed RPC Framework¶

Authors: Pritam Damania and Yi Wang

Note

View the source code for this tutorial in github.

This tutorial uses a simple example to demonstrate how you can combine DistributedDataParallel (DDP) with the Distributed RPC framework to combine distributed data parallelism with distributed model parallelism to train a simple model. Source code of the example can be found here.

Previous tutorials, Getting Started With Distributed Data Parallel and Getting Started with Distributed RPC Framework, described how to perform distributed data parallel and distributed model parallel training respectively. Although, there are several training paradigms where you might want to combine these two techniques. For example:

1. If we have a model with a sparse part (large embedding table) and a dense part (FC layers), we might want to put the embedding table on a parameter server and replicate the FC layer across multiple trainers using DistributedDataParallel. The Distributed RPC framework can be used to perform embedding lookups on the parameter server.
2. Enable hybrid parallelism as described in the PipeDream paper. We can use the Distributed RPC framework to pipeline stages of the model across multiple workers and replicate each stage (if needed) using DistributedDataParallel.

In this tutorial we will cover case 1 mentioned above. We have a total of 4 workers in our setup as follows:

1. 1 Master, which is responsible for creating an embedding table (nn.EmbeddingBag) on the parameter server. The master also drives the training loop on the two trainers.
2. 1 Parameter Server, which basically holds the embedding table in memory and responds to RPCs from the Master and Trainers.
3. 2 Trainers, which store an FC layer (nn.Linear) which is replicated amongst themselves using DistributedDataParallel. The trainers are also responsible for executing the forward pass, backward pass and optimizer step.

The entire training process is executed as follows:

1. The master creates a RemoteModule that holds an embedding table on the Parameter Server.
2. The master, then kicks off the training loop on the trainers and passes the remote module to the trainers.
3. The trainers create a HybridModel which first performs an embedding lookup using the remote module provided by the master and then executes the FC layer which is wrapped inside DDP.
4. The trainer executes the forward pass of the model and uses the loss to execute the backward pass using Distributed Autograd.
5. As part of the backward pass, the gradients for the FC layer are computed first and synced to all trainers via allreduce in DDP.
6. Next, Distributed Autograd propagates the gradients to the parameter server, where the gradients for the embedding table are updated.
7. Finally, the Distributed Optimizer is used to update all the parameters.

Attention

You should always use Distributed Autograd for the backward pass if you’re combining DDP and RPC.

Now, let’s go through each part in detail. Firstly, we need to setup all of our workers before we can perform any training. We create 4 processes such that ranks 0 and 1 are our trainers, rank 2 is the master and rank 3 is the parameter server.

We initialize the RPC framework on all 4 workers using the TCP init_method. Once RPC initialization is done, the master creates a remote module that holds an EmbeddingBag layer on the Parameter Server using RemoteModule. The master then loops through each trainer and kicks off the training loop by calling _run_trainer on each trainer using rpc_async. Finally, the master waits for all training to finish before exiting.

The trainers first initialize a ProcessGroup for DDP with world_size=2 (for two trainers) using init_process_group. Next, they initialize the RPC framework using the TCP init_method. Note that the ports are different in RPC initialization and ProcessGroup initialization. This is to avoid port conflicts between initialization of both frameworks. Once the initialization is done, the trainers just wait for the _run_trainer RPC from the master.

The parameter server just initializes the RPC framework and waits for RPCs from the trainers and master.

def run_worker(rank, world_size):
r"""
A wrapper function that initializes RPC, calls the function, and shuts down
RPC.
"""

# We need to use different port numbers in TCP init_method for init_rpc and
# init_process_group to avoid port conflicts.
rpc_backend_options = TensorPipeRpcBackendOptions()
rpc_backend_options.init_method = "tcp://localhost:29501"

# Rank 2 is master, 3 is ps and 0 and 1 are trainers.
if rank == 2:
rpc.init_rpc(
"master",
rank=rank,
world_size=world_size,
rpc_backend_options=rpc_backend_options,
)

remote_emb_module = RemoteModule(
"ps",
torch.nn.EmbeddingBag,
args=(NUM_EMBEDDINGS, EMBEDDING_DIM),
kwargs={"mode": "sum"},
)

# Run the training loop on trainers.
futs = []
for trainer_rank in [0, 1]:
trainer_name = "trainer{}".format(trainer_rank)
fut = rpc.rpc_async(
trainer_name, _run_trainer, args=(remote_emb_module, trainer_rank)
)
futs.append(fut)

# Wait for all training to finish.
for fut in futs:
fut.wait()
elif rank <= 1:
# Initialize process group for Distributed DataParallel on trainers.
dist.init_process_group(
backend="gloo", rank=rank, world_size=2, init_method="tcp://localhost:29500"
)

# Initialize RPC.
trainer_name = "trainer{}".format(rank)
rpc.init_rpc(
trainer_name,
rank=rank,
world_size=world_size,
rpc_backend_options=rpc_backend_options,
)

# Trainer just waits for RPCs from master.
else:
rpc.init_rpc(
"ps",
rank=rank,
world_size=world_size,
rpc_backend_options=rpc_backend_options,
)
# parameter server do nothing
pass

# block until all rpcs finish
rpc.shutdown()

if __name__ == "__main__":
# 2 trainers, 1 parameter server, 1 master.
world_size = 4
mp.spawn(run_worker, args=(world_size,), nprocs=world_size, join=True)


Before we discuss details of the Trainer, let’s introduce the HybridModel that the trainer uses. As described below, the HybridModel is initialized using a remote module that holds an embedding table (remote_emb_module) on the parameter server and the device to use for DDP. The initialization of the model wraps an nn.Linear layer inside DDP to replicate and synchronize this layer across all trainers.

The forward method of the model is pretty straightforward. It performs an embedding lookup on the parameter server using RemoteModule’s forward and passes its output onto the FC layer.

class HybridModel(torch.nn.Module):
r"""
The model consists of a sparse part and a dense part.
1) The dense part is an nn.Linear module that is replicated across all trainers using DistributedDataParallel.
2) The sparse part is a Remote Module that holds an nn.EmbeddingBag on the parameter server.
This remote model can get a Remote Reference to the embedding table on the parameter server.
"""

def __init__(self, remote_emb_module, device):
super(HybridModel, self).__init__()
self.remote_emb_module = remote_emb_module
self.fc = DDP(torch.nn.Linear(16, 8).cuda(device), device_ids=[device])
self.device = device

def forward(self, indices, offsets):
emb_lookup = self.remote_emb_module.forward(indices, offsets)
return self.fc(emb_lookup.cuda(self.device))


Next, let’s look at the setup on the Trainer. The trainer first creates the HybridModel described above using a remote module that holds the embedding table on the parameter server and its own rank.

Now, we need to retrieve a list of RRefs to all the parameters that we would like to optimize with DistributedOptimizer. To retrieve the parameters for the embedding table from the parameter server, we can call RemoteModule’s remote_parameters, which basically walks through all the parameters for the embedding table and returns a list of RRefs. The trainer calls this method on the parameter server via RPC to receive a list of RRefs to the desired parameters. Since the DistributedOptimizer always takes a list of RRefs to parameters that need to be optimized, we need to create RRefs even for the local parameters for our FC layers. This is done by walking model.fc.parameters(), creating an RRef for each parameter and appending it to the list returned from remote_parameters(). Note that we cannnot use model.parameters(), because it will recursively call model.remote_emb_module.parameters(), which is not supported by RemoteModule.

Finally, we create our DistributedOptimizer using all the RRefs and define a CrossEntropyLoss function.

def _run_trainer(remote_emb_module, rank):
r"""
Each trainer runs a forward pass which involves an embedding lookup on the
parameter server and running nn.Linear locally. During the backward pass,
DDP is responsible for aggregating the gradients for the dense part
propagated to the parameter server.
"""

# Setup the model.
model = HybridModel(remote_emb_module, rank)

# Retrieve all model parameters as rrefs for DistributedOptimizer.

# Retrieve parameters for embedding table.
model_parameter_rrefs = model.remote_emb_module.remote_parameters()

# model.fc.parameters() only includes local parameters.
# NOTE: Cannot call model.parameters() here,
# because this will call remote_emb_module.parameters(),
# which supports remote_parameters() but not parameters().
for param in model.fc.parameters():
model_parameter_rrefs.append(RRef(param))

# Setup distributed optimizer
opt = DistributedOptimizer(
optim.SGD,
model_parameter_rrefs,
lr=0.05,
)

criterion = torch.nn.CrossEntropyLoss()


Now we’re ready to introduce the main training loop that is run on each trainer. get_next_batch is just a helper function to generate random inputs and targets for training. We run the training loop for multiple epochs and for each batch:

2. Run the forward pass of the model and retrieve its output.
3. Compute the loss based on our outputs and targets using the loss function.
4. Use Distributed Autograd to execute a distributed backward pass using the loss.
5. Finally, run a Distributed Optimizer step to optimize all the parameters.
    def get_next_batch(rank):
for _ in range(10):
num_indices = random.randint(20, 50)
indices = torch.LongTensor(num_indices).random_(0, NUM_EMBEDDINGS)

# Generate offsets.
offsets = []
start = 0
batch_size = 0
while start < num_indices:
offsets.append(start)
start += random.randint(1, 10)
batch_size += 1

offsets_tensor = torch.LongTensor(offsets)
target = torch.LongTensor(batch_size).random_(8).cuda(rank)
yield indices, offsets_tensor, target

# Train for 100 epochs
for epoch in range(100):
for indices, offsets, target in get_next_batch(rank):
output = model(indices, offsets)
loss = criterion(output, target)

# Run distributed backward pass