Paxml (aka Pax)

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

Setting up a Cloud TPU VM

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.

$ TPU_NAME=pax-8
$ gcloud alpha compute tpus tpu-vm create ${TPU_NAME} --zone us-central2-b --accelerator-type v4-8 --version v2-nightly-tpuv4 --project tpu-prod-env-one-vm

The corresponding VM instance can then be accessed via ssh.

gcloud alpha compute tpus tpu-vm ssh ${TPU_NAME} --zone us-central2-b --project tpu-prod-env-one-vm

Installing Pax

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

$ python3 -m pip install -U pip
$ python3 -m pip install paxml praxis

Data inputs

Intro

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.

Multihost infeed

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 for eval data

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).

Eval metrics

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).

Best practices

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.

Input types

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

SeqIO

SeqIOInput can be used to import datasets.

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

Lingvo

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

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

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

Nesting

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: Activation function to use. Options are RELU, RELU6, RELU^2,
        RELU^3, LEAKY_RELU, SIGMOID, TANH, GELU, NONE.
      negative_slope: Negative slope of LEAKY_RELU activation.
    """
    input_dims: int = 0
    output_dims: int = 0
    has_bias: bool = True
    linear_tpl: BaseHParams = sub_config_field(Linear.HParams)
    activation: str = 'RELU'
    negative_slope: Optional[float] = None

Layers

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:

setup

This method creates trainable weights and child layers.

fprop

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

Fiddle and Shared layers

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).

Model

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

Task

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

    https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
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