用互联网上的分散设备训练大模型,实现开源、去中心化且高效的预训练。
Agora: Collective and Permissionless Internet-Scale Pretraining of Large Language Models

- 通过跨网络的流水线并行和多方容错协作,让各参与方仅持模型部分权重。
- 在5000亿文本上训练86亿参数模型,40天内达到17万词/秒的吞吐,效率达集中式基线的63%。
- 适合希望参与开源大模型训练但无高端算力的个人或团队,推动开放协作
在超大规模语言模型(数十亿至万亿参数)训练中,现有技术依赖同质化加速器、高速互联和单一调度实体,导致前沿模型研发被少数机构垄断。大量消费级与专业级GPU闲置:它们异构、可中断、归属个人,仅通过互联网连接。本文提出Agora系统,利用这些资源进行高效训练。Agora结合带宽高效的流水线并行模型分片与多方容错协同计算,每个参与者仅持有模型的一阶段,无人拥有完整权重。此机制称为协议学习,支持集体训练与共有模型,实现经济可持续的开源前沿训练。本研究融合通信高效并行、异步优化与容错系统设计,首次完成示范:在5000亿条FineWeb-Edu数据上,对86亿参数模型进行开放、无需许可的预训练。该训练由330个贡献节点(主要为消费者级显卡)在互联网环境下运行40天,维持约17万词/秒速度,每千次浮点运算处理4.2个词,达到集中式H100基线63%的效率,并收敛至与集中式参考结果相近水平。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Training large language models at the multi-billion to trillion parameter scale is confined to datacenters, where data-parallel (DP) and model-parallel (MP) techniques presume homogeneous accelerators, high-speed interconnects, and a single orchestrating entity. Frontier model development is thereby concentrated among the few groups able to assemble such clusters. Meanwhile, an enormous pool of compute remains unusable for training: consumer and professional GPUs that are heterogeneous, preemptible, individually owned, and connected only by the internet. We present Agora, a system that makes efficient use of this compute. Agora combines bandwidth-efficient pipeline-parallel model sharding over internet-grade links with multi-party, fault-tolerant collective operations. Each participant holds only one stage of the model, and no single party ever possesses the full weights. We term this setup Protocol Learning: it enables collectively trained, collectively owned models, opening a path to open-source frontier training with economic sustainability. This report presents the outcome of a research effort spanning communication-efficient parallelism, asynchronous optimization, and fault-tolerant systems design. It culminates in the first demonstration of its kind: Pluralis-8B, an open, permissionless pretraining run of an 8.6B-parameter model on 500B tokens of FineWeb-Edu. The model was trained over 40 days by 330 contributor nodes, predominantly consumer GPUs on internet connections, joining and leaving throughout. The run sustained ~170k tokens/s and 4.2 tokens per TFLOP of pooled compute, 63% of the efficiency of a centralized H100 baseline, and converged to within a small margin of a centralized reference run.
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