arXiv:2605.27678cs.LGcs.DC2026-05

让多模态大模型训练模块独立分配计算资源,提升训练效率。

Heterogeneous Parallelism for Multimodal Large Language Model Training

  • 不同模块可自选并行策略,打破传统统一布局束缚
  • 同卡共存配置提升每GPU算力达49.3%,跨卡配置提升吞吐13.0%
  • 支持长上下文多模态任务,适合大规模异构训练场景

大模型训练正向多模态演进,伴随模态覆盖扩展、上下文窗口增长及编码器与语言模型规模差异增大,单一以语言模型为中心的张量并行/数据并行等布局日益限制吞吐。这种耦合迫使编码器沿用语言模型的分片和部署策略,导致通信开销增加、并行度受限或调度受约束,尤其在长上下文场景下更为明显。本文提出异构并行框架,允许端到端图中各模块采用独立的布局与进程放置方式,支持共享GPU上的共存执行与分离进程集上的非共存执行。核心挑战在于跨布局保持边界张量语义:前向激活需按目标布局显式生成,反向梯度需回传至源布局。我们通过边界通信器实现前后向布局转换,并扩展调度机制支持两种模式。在多模态工作负载与不同GPU规模上评估了优化后的同质、共存异构与非共存异构配置,结果表明共存异构可将每GPU TFLOPS提升最高49.3%,非共存异构可将总令牌吞吐提升13.0%、每GPU TFLOPS提升9.6%。验证了损失收敛性与同质基线一致,并开源为Megatron-LM扩展。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Foundation model training is becoming multimodal, from post-training pipelines to large-scale pretraining. As modality coverage broadens, context windows grow, and encoder LLM scales diverge, a single LLM-centric TP/CP/PP/DP/EP layout increasingly limits throughput. This coupling forces encoders to inherit LLM-driven sharding and placement choices that can add communication, limit encoder parallelism, or constrain the LLM schedule; the mismatch is most pronounced at long contexts, where LLM context parallelism is needed for the fused multimodal sequence but encoder inputs remain bounded. We present heterogeneous parallelism for multimodal large language model training, an abstraction that lets modules in one end-to-end graph use independent layouts and rank placements, supporting colocated execution on shared GPUs and non-colocated execution on disjoint rank sets. The key challenge is preserving boundary tensor semantics across independent layouts: forward activations must be materialized for the destination layout, while backward gradients must be routed back to the source layout. We address this with boundary communicators that implement forward and backward layout transforms, plus scheduling extensions for both placement modes. We evaluate optimized homogeneous, colocated heterogeneous, and non-colocated heterogeneous configurations across multimodal workloads and GPU scales to characterize when added layout and placement freedom exposes a better operating point. Across this sweep, colocated heterogeneity improves TFLOPS/GPU by up to 49.3%, while non-colocated heterogeneity improves aggregate token throughput by up to 13.0% and TFLOPS/GPU by up to 9.6%. We validate loss convergence parity against homogeneous baselines and release the system as an open-source Megatron-LM extension.

多模态并行训练大模型异构

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