Training reproducibility improvements

[AyushExel]

Followed suggestions from:
pytorch/pytorch#7068 (comment)
https://www.mldawn.com/reproducibility-in-pytorch/

🛠️ PR Summary

_{Made with ❤️ by Ultralytics Actions}

🌟 Summary

Introduced a global training seed option for enhanced reproducibility.

📊 Key Changes

• Added a new --seed command-line argument to specify the global training seed.
• Modified init_seeds method to accept a deterministic parameter and implemented deterministic behavior when activated.
• Updated init_seeds to use PyTorch's use_deterministic_algorithms() and set the CUBLAS_WORKSPACE_CONFIG environment variable for PyTorch versions >= 1.12.0.

🎯 Purpose & Impact

• 👨‍🔬 Enhanced Reproducibility: The changes allow for more reproducible training results, which is particularly important for experiments and comparisons.
• 🧮 Consistent Training Behaviour: Users can expect consistent model performance when retraining with the same seed, reducing variability due to random processes.
• 🤖 Developer Convenience: By introducing a command-line argument for seeding, developers have an easier time setting and managing the seeds within their training scripts.

[glenn-jocher]

@AyushExel thanks for the PR!

Can you please provide before and after results, i.e. 3 runs from master and 3 runs from PR? The scenario can be small, i.e. COCO128 YOLOv5s 30 epochs, but it's important to compare changes to the current baseline. Thanks!

[AyushExel]

@glenn-jocher

• All red lines are master runs and blue are runs from this branch.
• The metrics section shows similar variance for both as the scores are very small, only 3rd decimal places
• But for train and val metrics this branch shows much less variance than master.
  Again, due to small scale of the dataset and small numerical values involved, this test needs to be verified using a larger dataset.
  Dashboard

[glenn-jocher]

@AyushExel got it, perfect!

I will check out this branch and run full YOLOv5s COCO trainings on the 8 GPUs today.

[AyushExel]

@glenn-jocher nice. You also have the same test for master branch already right?

[glenn-jocher]

@AyushExel yes, these are the differences between min and max [email protected]:0.95:

• Master (37.46-38.13@epoch300): https://wandb.ai/glenn-jocher/test-speed
• Master with pip uninstall albumentations (37.54-37.93@epoch300): https://wandb.ai/glenn-jocher/test-reproduce-noalbumentations
• This PR(21.63-22.11@epoch10): https://wandb.ai/glenn-jocher/test-reproduce-pr
• Master with --workers 0 (TODO-TODO@epoch10): https://wandb.ai/glenn-jocher/test-reproduce-workers0

[glenn-jocher]

@AyushExel seems to show identical variation to master at epoch 8 (about 0.4%), so seems like no change in randomness.

What happened to the torch.use_deterministic_algorithms() that I sugested?

[glenn-jocher]

@AyushExel also your dataloader init function seems to be lacking python and torch seed inits as in this example: https://discuss.pytorch.org/t/reproducibility-with-all-the-bells-and-whistles/81097

[AyushExel]

@glenn-jocher The dataloader init_fn only requires np random seed as mentioned in official pytorch issues here and here

The torch.use_deterministic_algorithms() is not exception safe. There are many operations that'll just throw runtime error when this is enabled. Also to work for CUDA 10.2 and above correctly some environ variables need to be set or it'll cause runtime exceptions. More details here in the last section https://pytorch.org/docs/stable/generated/torch.use_deterministic_algorithms.html#torch.use_deterministic_algorithms
Enabling this seems way too risky

[AyushExel]

@glenn-jocher Also after reading a lot of discussions on various platforms( github, kaggle, pytorch discourse) I haven't found anyone who has actually been able to accurately reproduce their large model experiments. All solutions are just there to reduce the variance
It might happen due to the numerical instability of due to the estimation of floating point gradients.

[glenn-jocher]

@AyushExel ok I'm going to cancel this training and try new experiments:

1. Train with workers=0
2. Train with AMP disabled (needs new branch)
3. We can try the additional python and torch seeds to see if they help (please update this PR's init_fcn for this)

[AyushExel]

@glenn-jocher I'll do the 3rd on this branch in some time.

[glenn-jocher]

@AyushExel ok got it! --workers 0 experiment started in new project, tracking results in same comment #8213 (comment). Each epoch there takes 30 min so we'll have the epoch 10 results in about 5 hours.

The good news is the randomness at epoch 10 is a great benchmark, no need to wait 300 epochs.

[AyushExel]

@glenn-jocher I was just testing torch.use_deterministic_alg on my branch. The training ran successfully but there's one operation post training that throws runtime error. I'll test more to see if its actually deterministic. If so, we can change the implementation of the operation that throws error. If not, let's leave it alone.

 File "/home/yolov5/utils/torch_utils.py", line 205, in fuse_conv_and_bn
    fusedconv.weight.copy_(torch.mm(w_bn, w_conv).view(fusedconv.weight.shape))
RuntimeError: Deterministic behavior was enabled with either `torch.use_deterministic_algorithms(True)` or `at::Context::setDeterministicAlgorithms(true)`, but this operation is not deterministic because it uses CuBLAS and you have CUDA >= 10.2. To enable deterministic behavior in this case, you must set an environment variable before running your PyTorch application: CUBLAS_WORKSPACE_CONFIG=:4096:8 or CUBLAS_WORKSPACE_CONFIG=:16:8. For more information, go to https://docs.nvidia.com/cuda/cublas/index.html#cublasApi_reproducibility

[AyushExel]

@glenn-jocher keep an eye on https://wandb.ai/cayush/use_deter?workspace=user-cayush
Training yolov5n from scratch for 50 epochs with deteministic_alg enabled

[AyushExel]

@glenn-jocher Okay so I've set the warn_only flag of torch.use_deterministic_alg to True which means it won't throw error after training. But this also means that if something goes wrong with reproduciblity ,it'll fail silently. We'll need to keep that in mind when creating new operations.
That aside, these are the best results that I've got. All metrics are coinciding perfectly
Dash

EDIT: It seems like additional seed inn dataloader init fn is not required. So leaving it as it is right now. It only affects DDP mode which I can't test locally

[AyushExel]

@glenn-jocher You'll need to run these tests:

• One same as yesterday. train 8 yolov5s on 8GPUs from this branch. These metrics should all perfectly match
• if the above is successful, also test reproducibility in DDP mode. train 4 models in DDP across 8 GPUs( 2 for each training)
  The 2nd test will confirm if we need any changes in init_fn method of the dataloader. I've run tests on multiple devices and my results for single worker training is perfectly reproducible( to the 4th decimal place)

[glenn-jocher]

@AyushExel got it. Running 8 YOLOv5s now at https://wandb.ai/glenn-jocher/test-reproduce-pr2

[AyushExel]

@glenn-jocher great. How long does 1 epoch usually take? From the benchmark runs you posted above:

• This master branch run take ~5min for each train epoch https://wandb.ai/glenn-jocher/test-speed/runs/skny7ifr/logs
• This again from master branch takes ~30mins per epoch https://wandb.ai/glenn-jocher/test-reproduce-workers0/runs/3gtrixbr/logs
  Isn't that difference too large? They should take similar time right?

[AyushExel]

@glenn-jocher
good thing:

• All metrics are matching perfectly.
  Bad thing:
• The maps are 0, flat line
  No idea why this is happening. Asked a question on Pytorch forums

[glenn-jocher]

@AyushExel yes I see this also. Losses are all identical but mAP is 0. Usually when mAP is 0 it's due to AMP/CUDA/Windows/Conda issues, but I've recently added AMP checks and these are passing for PR trainings in https://wandb.ai/glenn-jocher/test-reproduce-pr3

AMP checks run inference on pretrained model (or YOLOv5n downloaded model if not pretrained model) to verify that AMP inference and default inference produce similar results. This was added in #7917 and improved in #7937

[AyushExel]

@glenn-jocher No responses on the pytorch forum issue. I'm trying to debug this using pdb. Hopefully the bug is occurring during the calculation of maps with deterministic algorithms. I'll verify if the model is actually learning anything or not by plotting results in each epoch.

[AyushExel]

@glenn-jocher The error is with calculation. I plotted BBoxDebugger for 1st epoch in VOC training and most objects are detected correctly so map shouldn't be 0. https://wandb.ai/cayush/use_deter_s/
EDIT:
Okay found the issue. This line is always false when deterministic alg is set -> https://github.com/ultralytics/yolov5/blob/master/val.py#L265
This happens because stats[0].any() returns false. When not using deterministic alg, it returns true. So the bug is somewhere in the process_batch function.
The iou values on the first epoch are very low when deterministic_alg is set.
EDIT2:
Okay I tried a lot of tracebacks. No idea where things are going wrong

[glenn-jocher]

@AyushExel I overlaid a master run against current PR: train losses, val losses, learning rates are all identical, but all metrics are zero. Very strange. Obviously the latest commit 254d379 caused this. Looking at the commit it has two changes, so let's try to isolate one change at a time to identify the cause. I'll comment out one line and retry a new training.

[glenn-jocher]

@glenn-jocher The error is with calculation. I plotted BBoxDebugger for 1st epoch in VOC training and most objects are detected correctly so map shouldn't be 0. https://wandb.ai/cayush/use_deter_s/ EDIT: Okay found the issue. This line is always false when deterministic alg is set -> https://github.com/ultralytics/yolov5/blob/master/val.py#L265 This happens because stats[0].any() returns false. When not using deterministic alg, it returns true. So the bug is somewhere in the process_batch function. The iou values on the first epoch are very low when deterministic_alg is set. EDIT2: Okay I tried a lot of tracebacks. No idea where things are going wrong

I see what you're saying here. So this is good news, it means the models are actually learning and are identical, it's just the validation that seems problematic. But the validation is always deterministic anyways, it never varies so maybe we can set flags to enable/disable deterministic mode in val.py as a quick fix.

[glenn-jocher]

@UnglvKitDe okay got it. Thanks for pointing out. Do let us know about your findings. @glenn-jocher I think we need to run another test with torch 1.12, this time without resetting the deterministic operation after every epoch

@UnglvKitDe thanks for the feedback! I've made updates to only run the command once if torch 1.12 is installed. torch < 1.12 we'll leave alone.

EDIT: Will run a new training today with these settings.

[UnglvKitDe]

@UnglvKitDe okay got it. Thanks for pointing out. Do let us know about your findings. @glenn-jocher I think we need to run another test with torch 1.12, this time without resetting the deterministic operation after every epoch

@UnglvKitDe thanks for the feedback! I've made updates to only run the command once if torch 1.12 is installed. torch < 1.12 we'll leave alone.

EDIT: Will run a new training today with these settings.

@glenn-jocher @AyushExel I did 5 run with coco128. In one of 5 runs I get the 0 results again. A similar picture on my custom data (1 of 8 has the 0 problem again). Very strange. I have set up a clean conda installation with torch 1.12 and cuda 11.6.

[glenn-jocher]

@UnglvKitDe this is not the zero mAP problem. zero mAP means zero mAP at all times. In your training your validation loses are unstable and increasing leading to logically low mAP.

[glenn-jocher]

Tested PR in Colab with 1.12. Looks good, all 3 identical and high mAP.

!git clone https://github.com/AyushExel/yolov5 -b init_seeds  # clone
%cd yolov5
%pip install -qr requirements.txt torch==1.12 torchvision==0.13  # install

import torch
import utils
display = utils.notebook_init()  # checks

# Train YOLOv5s on COCO128 for 10 epochs
!python train.py --img 640 --batch 16 --epochs 10 --data coco128.yaml --weights yolov5s.pt --cache --seed 0
!python train.py --img 640 --batch 16 --epochs 10 --data coco128.yaml --weights yolov5s.pt --cache --seed 0
!python train.py --img 640 --batch 16 --epochs 10 --data coco128.yaml --weights yolov5s.pt --cache --seed 0

[glenn-jocher]

Testing vs master on COCO in https://wandb.ai/glenn-jocher/test-reproduce-pr4

EDIT: Unable to test on Multi-GPU systems per torch 1.12 YOLOv5 bug in #8395

[UnglvKitDe]

@UnglvKitDe this is not the zero mAP problem. zero mAP means zero mAP at all times. In your training your validation loses are unstable and increasing leading to logically low mAP.

@glenn-jocher Then we talked about other issues. When I used use_deterministic_algorithms, I got the problem described above (AP 0 at the end).

[glenn-jocher]

W&B trainings have been cancelled because unable to test on Multi-GPU systems per torch 1.12 YOLOv5 bug in #8395

[UnglvKitDe]

@AyushExel @glenn-jocher With torch 1.12 there is a issue with multi gpu training when I insert the reproducibility as described in the doc. For some reason, CUDA runs out of memory. On the master it works without problems (~5.1/12 GB VRAM).

[UnglvKitDe]

ok, so i tried debugging this today, but i don't understand why the problem occurs. if i use a different number of workers it works. unfortunately ( at the moment ) i can't recreate it with any public record.

@UnglvKitDe okay got it. Thanks for pointing out. Do let us know about your findings. @glenn-jocher I think we need to run another test with torch 1.12, this time without resetting the deterministic operation after every epoch

@UnglvKitDe thanks for the feedback! I've made updates to only run the command once if torch 1.12 is installed. torch < 1.12 we'll leave alone.
EDIT: Will run a new training today with these settings.

@glenn-jocher @AyushExel I did 5 run with coco128. In one of 5 runs I get the 0 results again. A similar picture on my custom data (1 of 8 has the 0 problem again). Very strange. I have set up a clean conda installation with torch 1.12 and cuda 11.6.

ok, so i tried debugging the above problem today, but i don't understand why the problem occurs. if i use a different number of workers it works. unfortunately (as of now) i can't recreate it with any public dataset. Very strange. @glenn-jocher Have you ever seen such a problem?

[glenn-jocher]

@UnglvKitDe it's not uncommon for gradient/training instabilities to lead to higher losses and diverged results. This is just a fact of life with nonlinear optimization problems.

The reproducibility part we are trying to work on with this PR of course though.

[glenn-jocher]

@AyushExel I think this PR is good to merge. I added a deterministic=False argument to init_seeds()

[glenn-jocher]

@AyushExel PR is merged! The new deterministic policy is that init_seeds() defaults to False but we pass true in train.py.

init_seeds(opt.seed + 1 + RANK, deterministic=True)

I also added init_seeds to classifier.py and observed deterministic behavior without having to set deterministic=True, but also test it with True and saw no errors (strange). Anyway I think we are done here and can move on to other things!

[lijiajun3029]

good job

[glenn-jocher]

@lijiajun3029 thank you! 🙏 This is a team effort and your valuable feedback and testing have been instrumental in improving YOLOv5. We're always here if you have more questions or need further assistance.