Pax is a framework to configure and run machine learning experiments on top of Jax.

We refer to this page for more exhaustive documentation about starting a Cloud TPU project. The following command is sufficient to create a Cloud TPU VM with 8 cores from a corp machine.

export ZONE=us-central2-b
export VERSION=tpu-vm-v4-base
export PROJECT=<your-project>
export ACCELERATOR=v4-8
export TPU_NAME=paxml

#create a TPU VM
gcloud compute tpus tpu-vm create $TPU_NAME --zone=$ZONE --version=$VERSION --project=$PROJECT --accelerator-type=$ACCELERATOR

The corresponding VM instance can then be accessed via ssh.

gcloud compute tpus tpu-vm ssh $TPU_NAME --zone=$ZONE

After ssh-ing the VM, paxml can be installed using pip.

$ python3 -m pip install -U pip
$ python3 -m pip install paxml jax[tpu] \
-f https://storage.googleapis.com/jax-releases/libtpu_releases.html

For the exact version of dependencies used to build/test each release, go to the corresponding release branch rX.Y.Z and check out paxml/pip_package/requirements.txt

# example model using pjit (SPMD)
python3 .local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/paxml/main.py \
--exp=tasks.lm.params.lm_cloud.LmCloudSpmd2BLimitSteps \
--job_log_dir=gs:https://<your-bucket>

# example model using pmap
python3 .local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/paxml/main.py \
--exp=tasks.lm.params.lm_cloud.LmCloudTransformerAdamLimitSteps \
--job_log_dir=gs:https://<your-bucket> \
--pmap_use_tensorstore=True

Here are some sample convergence runs on c4 dataset.

You can run a 1B params model on c4 dataset on TPU v4-8using the config C4Spmd1BAdam4Replicasfrom c4.py as follows:

python3 .local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/paxml/main.py \
--exp=tasks.lm.params.c4.C4Spmd1BAdam4Replicas \
--job_log_dir=gs:https://<your-bucket> 

You can observe loss curve and log perplexity graph as follows:

You can run a 16B params model on c4 dataset on TPU v4-64using the config C4Spmd16BAdam32Replicasfrom c4.py as follows:

python3 .local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/paxml/main.py \
--exp=tasks.lm.params.c4.C4Spmd16BAdam32Replicas \
--job_log_dir=gs:https://<your-bucket> 

You can observe loss curve and log perplexity graph as follows:

You can run the GPT3-XL model on c4 dataset on TPU v4-128using the config C4SpmdPipelineGpt3SmallAdam64Replicasfrom c4.py as follows:

python3 .local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/paxml/main.py \
--exp=tasks.lm.params.c4.C4SpmdPipelineGpt3SmallAdam64Replicas \
--job_log_dir=gs:https://<your-bucket> 

You can observe loss curve and log perplexity graph as follows:

The PaLM paper introduced an efficiency metric called Model FLOPs Utilization (MFU). This is measured as the ratio of the observed throughput (in, for example, tokens per second for a language model) to the theoretical maximum throughput of a system harnessing 100% of peak FLOPs. It differs from other ways of measuring compute utilization because it doesn’t include FLOPs spent on activation rematerialization during the backward pass, meaning that efficiency as measured by MFU translates directly into end-to-end training speed.

To evaluate the MFU of a key class of workloads on TPU v4 Pods with Pax, we carried out an in-depth benchmark campaign on a series of decoder-only Transformer language model (GPT) configurations that range in size from billions to trillions of parameters on the c4 dataset. The following graph shows the training efficiency using the "weak scaling" pattern where we grew the model size in proportion to the number of chips used.

Input is an instance of the BaseInput class for getting data into model for train/eval/decode.

class BaseInput:

  def get_next(self):
    pass

  def reset(self):
    pass

It acts like an iterator: get_next() returns a NestedMap, where each field is a numerical array with batch size as its leading dimension.

Each input is configured by a subclass of BaseInput.HParams. In this page, we use p to denote an instance of a BaseInput.Params, and it instantiates to input.

In Pax, data is always multihost: Each Jax process will have a separate, independent input instantiated. Their params will have different p.infeed_host_index, set automatically by Pax.

Hence, the local batch size seen on each host is p.batch_size, and the global batch size is (p.batch_size * p.num_infeed_hosts). One will often see p.batch_size set to jax.local_device_count() * PERCORE_BATCH_SIZE.

Due to this multihost nature, input must be sharded properly.

For training, each input must never emit identical batches, and for eval on a finite dataset, each input must terminate after the same number of batches. The best solution is to have the input implementation properly shard the data, such that each input on different hosts do not overlap. Failing that, one can also use different random seed to avoid duplicate batches during training.

input.reset() is never called on training data, but it can for eval (or decode) data.

For each eval (or decode) run, Pax will fetch N batches from input by calling input.get_next() N times, after which Pax will optionally reset by calling input.reset(), depending on the value of p.reset_for_eval.

The number of batches used, N, can be a fixed number specified by user, via p.eval_loop_num_batches; or N can be dynamic (p.eval_loop_num_batches=None), in which case we call input.get_next() until we exhaust all of its data (by raising StopIteration or tf.errors.OutOfRange).

For the "eval on exactly one epoch" use case with p.reset_for_eval=True, p.eval_loop_num_batches=None, input must handle sharding correctly such that each shard raises at the same step after exactly the same number of batches are produced. This usually means that the input must pad the eval data. This is done automatically by SeqIOInput and LingvoEvalAdaptor (see more below).

For the majority of inputs, we only ever call get_next() on them to get batches of data. One type of eval data is an exception to this, where "how to compute metrics" is also defined on the input object as well.

This is only supported with SeqIOInput that defines some caonical eval benchmark. Specifically, Pax uses predict_metric_fns and score_metric_fns() defined on the SeqIO task to compute eval metrics (although Pax does not depend on SeqIO evaluator directly).

When a model uses multiple inputs, either between train/eval or different training data between pretraining/finetuning, users must ensure that the tokenizers used by the inputs are identical, especially when importing different inputs implemented by others.

Users can sanity check the tokenizers by decoding some ids with input.ids_to_strings().

It's always a good idea to sanity check the data by looking at a few batches. Users can easily reproduce the param in a colab and inspect the data:

p = ... # specify the intended input param
inp = p.Instantiate()
b = inp.get_next()
print(b)

Training data typically should not use a fixed random seed. This is because if the training job is preempted, training data will start to repeat itself. In particular, for Lingvo inputs, we recommend setting p.input.file_random_seed = 0 for training data.

To test for whether sharding is handled correctly, users can manually set different values for p.num_infeed_hosts, p.infeed_host_index and see whether the instantiated inputs emit different batches.

Pax supports 3 types of inputs: SeqIO, Lingvo, and custom.

SeqIOInput can be used to import datasets.

SeqIO inputs handle correct sharding and padding of eval data automatically.

LingvoInputAdaptor can be used to import datasets.

The input is fully delegated to the Lingvo implementation, which may or may not handle sharding automatically.

For GenericInput based Lingvo input implementation using a fixed packing_factor, we recommend to use LingvoInputAdaptorNewBatchSize to specify a bigger batch size for the inner Lingvo input and put the desired (usually much smaller) batch size on p.batch_size.

For eval data, we recommend using LingvoEvalAdaptor to handle sharding and padding for running eval over one epoch.

Custom subclass of BaseInput. Users implement their own subclass, typically with tf.data or SeqIO.

Users can also inherit an existing input class to only customize post processing of batches. For example:

class MyInput(base_input.LingvoInputAdaptor):

  def get_next(self):
    batch = super().get_next()
    # modify batch: batch.new_field = ...
    return batch

#Key Pax components:

Hyperparameters are an important part of defining models and configuring experiments.

To integrate better with Python tooling, Pax/Praxis uses a pythonic dataclass based configuration style for hyperparameters.

class Linear(base_layer.BaseLayer):
  """Linear layer without bias."""

  class HParams(BaseHParams):
    """Associated hyperparams for this layer class.

    Attributes:
      input_dims: Depth of the input.
      output_dims: Depth of the output.
    """
    input_dims: int = 0
    output_dims: int = 0

It's also possible to nest HParams dataclasses, in the example below, the linear_tpl attribute is a nested Linear.HParams.

class FeedForward(base_layer.BaseLayer):
  """Feedforward layer with activation."""

  class HParams(BaseHParams):
    """Associated hyperparams for this layer class.

    Attributes:
      input_dims: Depth of the input.
      output_dims: Depth of the output.
      has_bias: Adds bias weights or not.
      linear_tpl: Linear layer params.
      activation_tpl: Activation layer params.
    """
    input_dims: int = 0
    output_dims: int = 0
    has_bias: bool = True
    linear_tpl: BaseHParams = sub_config_field(Linear.HParams)
    activation_tpl: activations.BaseActivation.HParams = sub_config_field(
        ReLU.HParams)

A Layer represents an arbitrary function possibly with trainable parameters. A Layer can contain other Layers as children. Layers are the essential building blocks of models. Layers inherit from the Flax nn.Module.

Typically layers define two methods:

This method creates trainable weights and child layers.

This method defines the forward propagation function, computing some output based on the inputs. Additionally, fprop might add summaries or track auxiliary losses.

Fiddle is an open-sourced Python-first configuration library designed for ML applications. Pax/Praxis supports interoperability with Fiddle Config/Partial(s) and some advanced features like eager error checking and shared parameters.

fdl_config = Linear.HParams.config(input_dims=1, output_dims=1)

# A typo.
fdl_config.input_dimz = 31337  # Raises an exception immediately to catch typos fast!


fdl_partial = Linear.HParams.partial(input_dims=1)

Using Fiddle, layers can be configured to be shared (eg: instantiated only once with shared trainable weights).

A model defines solely the network, typically a collection of Layers and defines interfaces for interacting with the model such as decoding, etc.

Some example base models include:

• LanguageModel
• SequenceModel
• ClassificationModel

A Task contains one more more Models and Learner/Optimizers. The simplest Task subclass is a SingleTask which requires the following Hparams:

  class HParams(base_task.BaseTask.HParams):
    """Task parameters.

    Attributes:
      name: Name of this task object, must be a valid identifier.
      model: The underlying JAX model encapsulating all the layers.
      train: HParams to control how this task should be trained.
      metrics: A BaseMetrics aggregator class to determine how metrics are
         computed.
      loss_aggregator: A LossAggregator aggregator class to derermine how the
        losses are aggregated (e.g single or MultiLoss)
      vn: HParams to control variational noise.

Copyright 2022 Google LLC

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

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