Module: tf.distribute

Library for running a computation across multiple devices.

The intent of this library is that you can write an algorithm in a stylized way and it will be usable with a variety of different tf.distribute.Strategy implementations. Each descendant will implement a different strategy for distributing the algorithm across multiple devices/machines. Furthermore, these changes can be hidden inside the specific layers and other library classes that need special treatment to run in a distributed setting, so that most users' model definition code can run unchanged. The tf.distribute.Strategy API works the same way with eager and graph execution.

Guides

• TensorFlow v2.x
• TensorFlow v1.x

Tutorials

• Distributed Training Tutorials

  The tutorials cover how to use tf.distribute.Strategy to do distributed training with native Keras APIs, custom training loops, and Esitmator APIs. They also cover how to save/load model when using tf.distribute.Strategy.

Glossary

• Data parallelism is where we run multiple copies of the model on different slices of the input data. This is in contrast to model parallelism where we divide up a single copy of a model across multiple devices. Note: we only support data parallelism for now, but hope to add support for model parallelism in the future.
• A device is a CPU or accelerator (e.g. GPUs, TPUs) on some machine that TensorFlow can run operations on (see e.g. tf.device). You may have multiple devices on a single machine, or be connected to devices on multiple machines. Devices used to run computations are called worker devices. Devices used to store variables are parameter devices. For some strategies, such as tf.distribute.MirroredStrategy, the worker and parameter devices will be the same (see mirrored variables below). For others they will be different. For example, tf.distribute.experimental.CentralStorageStrategy puts the variables on a single device (which may be a worker device or may be the CPU), and tf.distribute.experimental.ParameterServerStrategy puts the variables on separate machines called parameter servers (see below).
• A replica is one copy of the model, running on one slice of the input data. Right now each replica is executed on its own worker device, but once we add support for model parallelism a replica may span multiple worker devices.
• A host is the CPU device on a machine with worker devices, typically used for running input pipelines.
• A worker is defined to be the physical machine(s) containing the physical devices (e.g. GPUs, TPUs) on which the replicated computation is executed. A worker may contain one or more replicas, but contains at least one replica. Typically one worker will correspond to one machine, but in the case of very large models with model parallelism, one worker may span multiple machines. We typically run one input pipeline per worker, feeding all the replicas on that worker.
• Synchronous, or more commonly sync, training is where the updates from each replica are aggregated together before updating the model variables. This is in contrast to asynchronous, or async training, where each replica updates the model variables independently. You may also have replicas partitioned into groups which are in sync within each group but async between groups.

• Parameter servers: These are machines that hold a single copy of parameters/variables, used by some strategies (right now just tf.distribute.experimental.ParameterServerStrategy). All replicas that want to operate on a variable retrieve it at the beginning of a step and send an update to be applied at the end of the step. These can in priniciple support either sync or async training, but right now we only have support for async training with parameter servers. Compare to tf.distribute.experimental.CentralStorageStrategy, which puts all variables on a single device on the same machine (and does sync training), and tf.distribute.MirroredStrategy, which mirrors variables to multiple devices (see below).

• Replica context vs. Cross-replica context vs Update context

  A replica context applies when you execute the computation function that was called with strategy.run. Conceptually, you're in replica context when executing the computation function that is being replicated.

  An update context is entered in a tf.distribute.StrategyExtended.update call.

  An cross-replica context is entered when you enter a strategy.scope. This is useful for calling tf.distribute.Strategy methods which operate across the replicas (like reduce_to()). By default you start in a replica context (the "default single replica context") and then some methods can switch you back and forth.

• Distributed value: Distributed value is represented by the base class tf.distribute.DistributedValues. tf.distribute.DistributedValues is useful to represent values on multiple devices, and it contains a map from replica id to values. Two representative kinds of tf.distribute.DistributedValues are "PerReplica" and "Mirrored" values.

  "PerReplica" values exist on the worker devices, with a different value for each replica. They are produced by iterating through a distributed dataset returned by tf.distribute.Strategy.experimental_distribute_dataset and tf.distribute.Strategy.experimental_distribute_datasets_from_function. They are also the typical result returned by tf.distribute.Strategy.run.

  "Mirrored" values are like "PerReplica" values, except we know that the value on all replicas are the same. We can safely read a "Mirrored" value in a cross-replica context by using the value on any replica.

• Unwrapping and merging: Consider calling a function fn on multiple replicas, like strategy.run(fn, args=[w]) with an argument w that is a tf.distribute.DistributedValues. This means w will have a map taking replica id 0 to w0, replica id 1 to w1, etc. strategy.run() unwraps w before calling fn, so it calls fn(w0) on device d0, fn(w1) on device d1, etc. It then merges the return values from fn(), which leads to one common object if the returned values are the same object from every replica, or a DistributedValues object otherwise.

• Reductions and all-reduce: A reduction is a method of aggregating multiple values into one value, like "sum" or "mean". If a strategy is doing sync training, we will perform a reduction on the gradients to a parameter from all replicas before applying the update. All-reduce is an algorithm for performing a reduction on values from multiple devices and making the result available on all of those devices.

• Mirrored variables: These are variables that are created on multiple devices, where we keep the variables in sync by applying the same updates to every copy. Mirrored variables are created with tf.Variable(...synchronization=tf.VariableSynchronization.ON_WRITE...). Normally they are only used in synchronous training.

• SyncOnRead variables

  SyncOnRead variables are created by tf.Variable(...synchronization=tf.VariableSynchronization.ON_READ...), and they are created on multiple devices. In replica context, each component variable on the local replica can perform reads and writes without synchronization with each other. When the SyncOnRead variable is read in cross-replica context, the values from component variables are aggregated and returned.

  SyncOnRead variables bring a lot of custom configuration difficulty to the underlying logic, so we do not encourage users to instantiate and use SyncOnRead variable on their own. We have mainly used SyncOnRead variables for use cases such as batch norm and metrics. For performance reasons, we often don't need to keep these statistics in sync every step and they can be accumulated on each replica independently. The only time we want to sync them is reporting or checkpointing, which typically happens in cross-replica context. SyncOnRead variables are also often used by advanced users who want to control when variable values are aggregated. For example, users sometimes want to maintain gradients independently on each replica for a couple of steps without aggregation.

• Distribute-aware layers

  Layers are generally called in a replica context, except when defining a Keras functional model. tf.distribute.in_cross_replica_context will let you determine which case you are in. If in a replica context, the tf.distribute.get_replica_context function will return the default replica context outside a strategy scope, None within a strategy scope, and a tf.distribute.ReplicaContext object inside a strategy scope and within a tf.distribute.Strategy.run function. The ReplicaContext object has an all_reduce method for aggregating across all replicas.

Note that we provide a default version of tf.distribute.Strategy that is used when no other strategy is in scope, that provides the same API with reasonable default behavior.

Modules

cluster_resolver module: Library imports for ClusterResolvers.

experimental module: Experimental Distribution Strategy library.

Classes

class CrossDeviceOps: Base class for cross-device reduction and broadcasting algorithms.

class DistributedDataset: Represents a dataset distributed among devices and machines.

class DistributedIterator: An iterator over tf.distribute.DistributedDataset.

class DistributedValues: Base class for representing distributed values.

class HierarchicalCopyAllReduce: Reduction using hierarchical copy all-reduce.

class InputContext: A class wrapping information needed by an input function.

class InputOptions: Run options for experimental_distribute_dataset(s_from_function).

class InputReplicationMode: Replication mode for input function.

class MirroredStrategy: Synchronous training across multiple replicas on one machine.

class NcclAllReduce: Reduction using NCCL all-reduce.

class OneDeviceStrategy: A distribution strategy for running on a single device.

class ReduceOp: Indicates how a set of values should be reduced.

class ReductionToOneDevice: Always do reduction to one device first and then do broadcasting.

class ReplicaContext: tf.distribute.Strategy API when in a replica context.

class RunOptions: Run options for strategy.run.

class Server: An in-process TensorFlow server, for use in distributed training.

class Strategy: A state & compute distribution policy on a list of devices.

class StrategyExtended: Additional APIs for algorithms that need to be distribution-aware.

class TPUStrategy: Synchronous training on TPUs and TPU Pods.

Functions

experimental_set_strategy(...): Set a tf.distribute.Strategy as current without with strategy.scope().

get_replica_context(...): Returns the current tf.distribute.ReplicaContext or None.

get_strategy(...): Returns the current tf.distribute.Strategy object.

has_strategy(...): Return if there is a current non-default tf.distribute.Strategy.

in_cross_replica_context(...): Returns True if in a cross-replica context.