mixed_precision.rst

.. _guide-mixed_precision:

Chapter 8: Mixed Precision Training
===================================
DGL is compatible with the `PyTorch Automatic Mixed Precision (AMP) package
<https://pytorch.org/docs/stable/amp.html>`_
for mixed precision training, thus saving both training time and GPU memory
consumption. This feature requires DGL 0.9+.

Message-Passing with Half Precision
-----------------------------------
DGL allows message-passing on ``float16 (fp16)`` features for both
UDFs (User Defined Functions) and built-in functions (e.g., ``dgl.function.sum``,
``dgl.function.copy_u``).

The following example shows how to use DGL's message-passing APIs on half-precision
features:

    >>> import torch
    >>> import dgl
    >>> import dgl.function as fn
    >>> dev = torch.device('cuda')
    >>> g = dgl.rand_graph(30, 100).to(dev)  # Create a graph on GPU w/ 30 nodes and 100 edges.
    >>> g.ndata['h'] = torch.rand(30, 16).to(dev).half()  # Create fp16 node features.
    >>> g.edata['w'] = torch.rand(100, 1).to(dev).half()  # Create fp16 edge features.
    >>> # Use DGL's built-in functions for message passing on fp16 features.
    >>> g.update_all(fn.u_mul_e('h', 'w', 'm'), fn.sum('m', 'x'))
    >>> g.ndata['x'].dtype
    torch.float16
    >>> g.apply_edges(fn.u_dot_v('h', 'x', 'hx'))
    >>> g.edata['hx'].dtype
    torch.float16

    >>> # Use UDFs for message passing on fp16 features.
    >>> def message(edges):
    ...     return {'m': edges.src['h'] * edges.data['w']}
    ...
    >>> def reduce(nodes):
    ...     return {'y': torch.sum(nodes.mailbox['m'], 1)}
    ...
    >>> def dot(edges):
    ...     return {'hy': (edges.src['h'] * edges.dst['y']).sum(-1, keepdims=True)}
    ...
    >>> g.update_all(message, reduce)
    >>> g.ndata['y'].dtype
    torch.float16
    >>> g.apply_edges(dot)
    >>> g.edata['hy'].dtype
    torch.float16

End-to-End Mixed Precision Training
-----------------------------------
DGL relies on PyTorch's AMP package for mixed precision training,
and the user experience is exactly
the same as `PyTorch's <https://pytorch.org/docs/stable/notes/amp_examples.html>`_.

By wrapping the forward pass with ``torch.cuda.amp.autocast()``, PyTorch automatically
selects the appropriate datatype for each op and tensor. Half precision tensors are memory
efficient, most operators on half precision tensors are faster as they leverage GPU tensorcores.

.. code::

    import torch.nn.functional as F
    from torch.cuda.amp import autocast

    def forward(g, feat, label, mask, model, use_fp16):
        with autocast(enabled=use_fp16):
            logit = model(g, feat)
            loss = F.cross_entropy(logit[mask], label[mask])
            return loss

Small Gradients in ``float16`` format have underflow problems (flush to zero).
PyTorch provides a ``GradScaler`` module to address this issue. It multiplies
the loss by a factor and invokes backward pass on the scaled loss to prevent
the underflow problem. It then unscales the computed gradients before the optimizer
updates the parameters. The scale factor is determined automatically.

.. code::

    from torch.cuda.amp import GradScaler

    scaler = GradScaler()

    def backward(scaler, loss, optimizer):
        scaler.scale(loss).backward()
        scaler.step(optimizer)
        scaler.update()

The following example trains a 3-layer GAT on the Reddit dataset (w/ 114 million edges).
Pay attention to the differences in the code when ``use_fp16`` is activated or not.

.. code::

    import torch
    import torch.nn as nn
    import dgl
    from dgl.data import RedditDataset
    from dgl.nn import GATConv
    from dgl.transforms import AddSelfLoop

    use_fp16 = True

    class GAT(nn.Module):
        def __init__(self,
                     in_feats,
                     n_hidden,
                     n_classes,
                     heads):
            super().__init__()
            self.layers = nn.ModuleList()
            self.layers.append(GATConv(in_feats, n_hidden, heads[0], activation=F.elu))
            self.layers.append(GATConv(n_hidden * heads[0], n_hidden, heads[1], activation=F.elu))
            self.layers.append(GATConv(n_hidden * heads[1], n_classes, heads[2], activation=F.elu))

        def forward(self, g, h):
            for l, layer in enumerate(self.layers):
                h = layer(g, h)
                if l != len(self.layers) - 1:
                    h = h.flatten(1)
                else:
                    h = h.mean(1)
            return h

    # Data loading
    transform = AddSelfLoop()
    data = RedditDataset(transform)
    dev = torch.device('cuda')

    g = data[0]
    g = g.int().to(dev)
    train_mask = g.ndata['train_mask']
    feat = g.ndata['feat']
    label = g.ndata['label']

    in_feats = feat.shape[1]
    n_hidden = 256
    n_classes = data.num_classes
    heads = [1, 1, 1]
    model = GAT(in_feats, n_hidden, n_classes, heads)
    model = model.to(dev)
    model.train()

    # Create optimizer
    optimizer = torch.optim.Adam(model.parameters(), lr=1e-3, weight_decay=5e-4)

    for epoch in range(100):
        optimizer.zero_grad()
        loss = forward(g, feat, label, train_mask, model, use_fp16)

        if use_fp16:
            # Backprop w/ gradient scaling
            backward(scaler, loss, optimizer)
        else:
            loss.backward()
            optimizer.step()

        print('Epoch {} | Loss {}'.format(epoch, loss.item()))

On a NVIDIA V100 (16GB) machine, training this model without fp16 consumes
15.2GB GPU memory; with fp16 turned on, the training consumes 12.8G
GPU memory, the loss converges to similar values in both settings.
If we change the number of heads to ``[2, 2, 2]``, training without fp16
triggers GPU OOM(out-of-memory) issue while training with fp16 consumes
15.7G GPU memory.

DGL is still improving its half-precision support and the compute kernel's
performance is far from optimal, please stay tuned to our future updates.