Using AMP: Automatic Mixed Precision

Training Deep Learning networks is a very computationally intensive task. Novel model architectures tend to have increasing number of layers and parameters, which slows down training. Fortunately, new generations of training hardware as well as software optimizations, make it a feasible task.

However, where most of the (both hardware and software) optimization opportunities exists is in exploiting lower precision (like FP16) to, for example, utilize Tensor Cores available on new Volta and Turing GPUs. While training in FP16 showed great success in image classification tasks, other more complicated neural networks typically stayed in FP32 due to difficulties in applying the FP16 training guidelines.

That is where AMP (Automatic Mixed Precision) comes into play. It automatically applies the guidelines of FP16 training, using FP16 precision where it provides the most benefit, while conservatively keeping in full FP32 precision operations unsafe to do in FP16.

This tutorial shows how to get started with mixed precision training using AMP for MXNet. As an example of a network we will use SSD network from GluonCV.

Data loader and helper functions

For demonstration purposes we will use synthetic data loader.

import os
import logging
import warnings
import time
import numpy as np
import mxnet as mx
import mxnet.gluon as gluon
from mxnet import autograd
import gluoncv as gcv
from gluoncv.model_zoo import get_model

data_shape = 512
batch_size = 8
lr = 0.001
wd = 0.0005
momentum = 0.9

# training devices
device = [mx.gpu(0)]

# set up logger
logging.basicConfig()
logger = logging.getLogger()
logger.setLevel(logging.INFO)

ce_metric = mx.metric.Loss('CrossEntropy')
smoothl1_metric = mx.metric.Loss('SmoothL1')

class SyntheticDataLoader(object):
    def __init__(self, data_shape, batch_size):
        super(SyntheticDataLoader, self).__init__()
        self.counter = 0
        self.epoch_size = 200
        shape = (batch_size, 3, data_shape, data_shape)
        cls_targets_shape = (batch_size, 6132)
        box_targets_shape = (batch_size, 6132, 4)
        self.data = mx.np.random.uniform(-1, 1, size=shape, device=mx.cpu_pinned())
        self.cls_targets = mx.np.random.uniform(0, 1, size=cls_targets_shape, device=mx.cpu_pinned())
        self.box_targets = mx.np.random.uniform(0, 1, size=box_targets_shape, device=mx.cpu_pinned())

    def next(self):
        if self.counter >= self.epoch_size:
            self.counter = self.counter % self.epoch_size
            raise StopIteration
        self.counter += 1
        return [self.data, self.cls_targets, self.box_targets]

    __next__ = next

    def __iter__(self):
        return self

train_data = SyntheticDataLoader(data_shape, batch_size)

def get_network():
    # SSD with RN50 backbone
    net_name = 'ssd_512_resnet50_v1_coco'
    with warnings.catch_warnings(record=True) as w:
        warnings.simplefilter("ignore")
        net = get_model(net_name, pretrained_base=True, norm_layer=gluon.nn.BatchNorm)
        net.initialize()
        net.reset_device(device)

    return net

Training in FP32

First, let us create the network.

net = get_network()
net.hybridize(static_alloc=True, static_shape=True)

Next, we need to create a Gluon Trainer.

trainer = gluon.Trainer(
    net.collect_params(), 'sgd',
    {'learning_rate': lr, 'wd': wd, 'momentum': momentum})

mbox_loss = gcv.loss.SSDMultiBoxLoss()

for epoch in range(1):
    ce_metric.reset()
    smoothl1_metric.reset()
    tic = time.time()
    btic = time.time()

    for i, batch in enumerate(train_data):
        batch_size = batch[0].shape[0]
        data = gluon.utils.split_and_load(batch[0], ctx_list=device, batch_axis=0)
        cls_targets = gluon.utils.split_and_load(batch[1], ctx_list=device, batch_axis=0)
        box_targets = gluon.utils.split_and_load(batch[2], ctx_list=device, batch_axis=0)
        with autograd.record():
            cls_preds = []
            box_preds = []
            for x in data:
                cls_pred, box_pred, _ = net(x)
                cls_preds.append(cls_pred)
                box_preds.append(box_pred)
            sum_loss, cls_loss, box_loss = mbox_loss(
                cls_preds, box_preds, cls_targets, box_targets)
            autograd.backward(sum_loss)
        trainer.step(1)
        ce_metric.update(0, [l * batch_size for l in cls_loss])
        smoothl1_metric.update(0, [l * batch_size for l in box_loss])
        if not (i + 1) % 50:
            name1, loss1 = ce_metric.get()
            name2, loss2 = smoothl1_metric.get()
            logger.info('[Epoch {}][Batch {}], Speed: {:.3f} samples/sec, {}={:.3f}, {}={:.3f}'.format(
                epoch, i, batch_size/(time.time()-btic), name1, loss1, name2, loss2))
        btic = time.time()

output

INFO:root:[Epoch 0][Batch 49], Speed: 58.105 samples/sec, CrossEntropy=1.190, SmoothL1=0.688
INFO:root:[Epoch 0][Batch 99], Speed: 58.683 samples/sec, CrossEntropy=0.693, SmoothL1=0.536
INFO:root:[Epoch 0][Batch 149], Speed: 58.915 samples/sec, CrossEntropy=0.500, SmoothL1=0.453
INFO:root:[Epoch 0][Batch 199], Speed: 58.422 samples/sec, CrossEntropy=0.396, SmoothL1=0.399

Training with AMP

AMP initialization

In order to start using AMP, we need to import and initialize it. This has to happen before we create the network.

from mxnet import amp

amp.init()

output:

INFO:root:Using AMP

After that, we can create the network exactly the same way we did in FP32 training.

net = get_network()
net.hybridize(static_alloc=True, static_shape=True)

For some models that may be enough to start training in mixed precision, but the full FP16 recipe recommends using dynamic loss scaling to guard against over- and underflows of FP16 values. Therefore, as a next step, we create a trainer and initialize it with support for AMP’s dynamic loss scaling. Currently, support for dynamic loss scaling is limited to trainers created with update_on_kvstore=False option, and so we add it to our trainer initialization.

trainer = gluon.Trainer(
    net.collect_params(), 'sgd',
    {'learning_rate': lr, 'wd': wd, 'momentum': momentum},
    update_on_kvstore=False)

amp.init_trainer(trainer)

Dynamic loss scaling in the training loop

The last step is to apply the dynamic loss scaling during the training loop and . We can achieve that using the amp.scale_loss function.

mbox_loss = gcv.loss.SSDMultiBoxLoss()

for epoch in range(1):
    ce_metric.reset()
    smoothl1_metric.reset()
    tic = time.time()
    btic = time.time()

    for i, batch in enumerate(train_data):
        batch_size = batch[0].shape[0]
        data = gluon.utils.split_and_load(batch[0], ctx_list=device, batch_axis=0)
        cls_targets = gluon.utils.split_and_load(batch[1], ctx_list=device, batch_axis=0)
        box_targets = gluon.utils.split_and_load(batch[2], ctx_list=device, batch_axis=0)
        with autograd.record():
            cls_preds = []
            box_preds = []
            for x in data:
                cls_pred, box_pred, _ = net(x)
                cls_preds.append(cls_pred)
                box_preds.append(box_pred)
            sum_loss, cls_loss, box_loss = mbox_loss(
                cls_preds, box_preds, cls_targets, box_targets)
            with amp.scale_loss(sum_loss, trainer) as scaled_loss:
                autograd.backward(scaled_loss)
        trainer.step(1)
        ce_metric.update(0, [l * batch_size for l in cls_loss])
        smoothl1_metric.update(0, [l * batch_size for l in box_loss])
        if not (i + 1) % 50:
            name1, loss1 = ce_metric.get()
            name2, loss2 = smoothl1_metric.get()
            logger.info('[Epoch {}][Batch {}], Speed: {:.3f} samples/sec, {}={:.3f}, {}={:.3f}'.format(
                epoch, i, batch_size/(time.time()-btic), name1, loss1, name2, loss2))
        btic = time.time()

output

INFO:root:[Epoch 0][Batch 49], Speed: 93.585 samples/sec, CrossEntropy=1.166, SmoothL1=0.684
INFO:root:[Epoch 0][Batch 99], Speed: 93.773 samples/sec, CrossEntropy=0.682, SmoothL1=0.533
INFO:root:[Epoch 0][Batch 149], Speed: 93.399 samples/sec, CrossEntropy=0.493, SmoothL1=0.451
INFO:root:[Epoch 0][Batch 199], Speed: 93.674 samples/sec, CrossEntropy=0.391, SmoothL1=0.397

We got 60% speed increase from 3 additional lines of code!

Inference with AMP

To do inference with mixed precision for a trained model in FP32, you can use the conversion API amp.convert_hybrid_block for gluon models. The conversion APIs will take the FP32 model as input and will return a mixed precision model, which can be used to run inference. Below, we demonstrate for a gluon model: - Conversion from FP32 model to mixed precision model. - Run inference on the mixed precision model.

with mx.Context(mx.gpu(0)):
    # Below is an example of converting a gluon hybrid block to a mixed precision block
    with warnings.catch_warnings(record=True) as w:
        warnings.simplefilter("ignore")
        model = get_model("resnet50_v1")
        model.initialize(device=mx.current_device())
        model.hybridize()
        model(mx.np.zeros((1, 3, 224, 224)))
        converted_model = amp.convert_hybrid_block(model)

    # Run dummy inference with the converted gluon model
    result = converted_model.forward(mx.np.random.uniform(size=(1, 3, 224, 224),
                                                          dtype=np.float32))

    print("Conversion and Inference completed successfully")

You can also customize the operators to run in FP16 versus the operator to run in FP32 or to conditionally run in FP32. Also, you can force cast the params wherever possible to FP16.

Current limitations of AMP

• AMP’s dynamic loss scaling currently supports only Gluon trainer with update_on_kvstore=False option set

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