让大模型训练不怕硬件故障,换节点不中断,零开销且恢复快。
PHOENIX: Resilient LLM Training with Hot-Swapping via Zero-Overhead Checkpoint

- 用内存快照+运行时替换,故障时热替换失败节点
- 无故障时零开销,故障后40秒内完成恢复
- 适合超大规模模型训练,提升训练稳定性
当前最先进的大语言模型训练需数万张GPU运行数月,易受软硬件故障影响。现有容错机制要么在无故障时引入显著开销,要么恢复延迟长,尤其在少数节点永久失效时更明显。本文提出PHOENIX,通过热替换实现容错:故障节点被备用节点即时替换,无需终止整个任务。其核心为两个创新:一是利用非关键路径的内存快照实现空间冗余;二是引入通信器重建协议,在运行时动态替换故障节点。该方法将内存快照与计算高效重叠,实现无故障时零开销。一旦发生永久性节点故障,可基于内存快照最小化重计算,快速重建状态。在最多512块NVIDIA A100 GPU、最大650亿参数的模型上评估,结果表明无故障时无检查点开销,热替换恢复时间低于40秒。验证了PHOENIX在无开销与低恢复成本间的双重优势。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
State-of-the-art large language model (LLM) training takes tens of thousands of graphics processing units (GPUs) for months and encounters failures across the software and hardware stack. Existing fault-tolerance mechanisms either impose non-trivial overhead during failure-free execution or suffer from prolonged recovery latency, particularly under scenarios where a small subset of compute nodes experience permanent failures. %The tradeoff between failure-free overhead and recovery latency forms a space forms a Pareto frontier We present PHOENIX to simultaneously address both optimization objectives. PHOENIX incorporates a fault-tolerance mechanism that restores LLM training via hot-swapping, namely by replacing failed nodes with spare nodes without terminating the complete job. The hot-swapping of PHOENIX is enabled by two ideas: First, it exploits an off-critical-path in-memory checkpointing mechanism for spatial redundancy. Second, it introduces a communicator reconstruction protocol that replaces failed nodes with spare nodes at runtime. PHOENIX efficiently overlaps the in-memory checkpointing with computation, thus introducing zero overhead during error-free execution. Upon permanent node failures, PHOENIX can rebuild memory states with minimal recomputation by leveraging in-memory checkpoints. We evaluate PHOENIX across scales (up to 512 NVIDIA A100 GPUs) and LLMs (up to 65B parameters), and observe zero checkpoint overhead with hot-swapping recovery completing in under 40 seconds. These results show that PHOENIX simultaneously achieves both zero-overhead error-free execution and extremely low recovery cost.
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