arXiv:2502.07634cs.LGcs.MM2025-02被引 7

通过稀疏化与量化压缩梯度,显著降低分布式训练通信开销。

Efficient Distributed Training through Gradient Compression with Sparsification and Quantization Techniques

  • 采用top-k和DGC实现50倍压缩,提升模型性能
  • 高压缩比下收敛更快,但超过5000倍会损害效果
  • 适合追求高效分布式训练的工程师

本研究探讨梯度压缩对分布式训练性能的影响,聚焦稀疏化与量化技术,包括top-k、DGC和QSGD。基准实验显示,随机k压缩导致性能严重下降,而top-k和DGC在50倍压缩下可使困惑度降低0.06。在1、2、4个工作节点上测试表明,保守稀疏化对小模型有正则化作用,但压缩比超过5000倍时性能显著下降,尤其影响DGC。所有压缩方法均减少通信时间,高压缩比下top-k和DGC可使通信降至可忽略水平。然而,top-k因排序开销导致计算时间增加,可扩展性不如DGC或QSGD。收敛测试显示,稀疏化技术能加速收敛,所需轮次少于基线,带来计算节省。尽管存在精度权衡,浮点误差在压缩中被缓解。研究强调需针对每种压缩技术调优超参数以获得最佳性能。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

This study investigates the impact of gradient compression on distributed training performance, focusing on sparsification and quantization techniques, including top-k, DGC, and QSGD. In baseline experiments, random-k compression results in severe performance degradation, highlighting its inefficacy. In contrast, using top-k and DGC at 50 times compression yields performance improvements, reducing perplexity by up to 0.06 compared to baseline. Experiments across 1, 2, and 4 workers demonstrate that conservative sparsification can have a regularizing effect, especially for smaller models, while compression ratios above 5000 times impair performance, particularly for DGC. Communication times are reduced across all compression methods, with top-k and DGC decreasing communication to negligible levels at high compression ratios. However, increased computation times offset this efficiency for top-k due to sorting demands, making it less scalable than DGC or QSGD. In convergence tests, sparsification techniques show accelerated convergence, requiring fewer epochs than the baseline, which has implications for computational savings. Although precision trade-offs emerge, floating point errors are mitigated by compression. This study's findings underscore the need to tune hyperparameters specifically for each compression technique to achieve optimal model performance, especially in distributed training systems.

分布式训练梯度压缩稀疏化量化

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