big change: add pretraining resumption logic so that checkpoints can now be approximately resumed and training can continue. this is useful for very long runs when you don't want the anxiety of your run crashing for some reason. alternatively, it's a way to recover training in the event of loss spikes. i mean, this should have been there in v0 but it's ok. the resumption is approximate to control complexity and bloat, but it's possible we want to change that in the future. to use, set --save_every to a step interval to write checkpoints with, and then use --resume_from_step to resume optimization from a given step. only base model training (pretraining) supports this atm, but it's ok because midtraining is comparably quite a bit faster.

scripts/base_train.py

@@ -20,10 +20,10 @@ import wandb
 import torch
 
 from nanochat.gpt import GPT, GPTConfig
-from nanochat.dataloader import tokenizing_distributed_data_loader
+from nanochat.dataloader import tokenizing_distributed_data_loader, tokenizing_distributed_data_loader_with_state
 from nanochat.common import compute_init, compute_cleanup, print0, DummyWandb, print_banner, get_base_dir, autodetect_device_type
 from nanochat.tokenizer import get_tokenizer, get_token_bytes
-from nanochat.checkpoint_manager import save_checkpoint
+from nanochat.checkpoint_manager import save_checkpoint, load_checkpoint
 from nanochat.loss_eval import evaluate_bpb
 from nanochat.engine import Engine
 from scripts.base_eval import evaluate_model
@@ -52,12 +52,14 @@ grad_clip = 1.0 # gradient clipping value (0.0 = disabled)
 warmup_ratio = 0.0 # ratio of iterations for LR warmup
 warmdown_ratio = 0.2 # ratio of iterations for LR warmdown
 final_lr_frac = 0.0 # final LR is this fraction of the initial LR
+resume_from_step = -1 # resume training from this step of the optimization (-1 = disable)
 # Evaluation
 eval_every = 250 # every how many steps to evaluate the model for val bpb
 eval_tokens = 20*524288 # number of tokens to evaluate val loss on
 core_metric_every = 2000 # every how many steps to evaluate the core metric (-1 = disable)
 core_metric_max_per_task = 500 # examples per task in estimating the core metric
 sample_every = 2000 # every how many steps to sample from the model
+save_every = -1 # every how many steps to save model checkpoints (-1 = disable, and save only at the end of the run)
 # Output
 model_tag = "" # optionally override the model tag for the output checkpoint directory name
 # now allow CLI to override the settings via the configurator lol
@@ -103,16 +105,31 @@ grad_accum_steps = total_batch_size // world_tokens_per_fwdbwd
 print0(f"Tokens / micro-batch / rank: {device_batch_size} x {max_seq_len} = {tokens_per_fwdbwd:,}")
 print0(f"Tokens / micro-batch: {world_tokens_per_fwdbwd:,}")
 print0(f"Total batch size {total_batch_size:,} => gradient accumulation steps: {grad_accum_steps}")
+
 # -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 # Initialize the Model
+
+# Create a new model with random weights
 model_config_kwargs = dict(sequence_len=max_seq_len, vocab_size=vocab_size, n_layer=num_layers, n_head=num_heads, n_kv_head=num_kv_heads, n_embd=model_dim)
 with torch.device("meta"):
     model_config = GPTConfig(**model_config_kwargs)
     model = GPT(model_config)
 model.to_empty(device=device)
 model.init_weights()
-orig_model = model # original, uncompiled model, for saving raw model state_dict
-model = torch.compile(model, dynamic=False) # TODO: dynamic True/False think through
+
+# If we are resuming, overwrite the model parameters with those of the checkpoint
+base_dir = get_base_dir()
+output_dirname = model_tag if model_tag else f"d{depth}" # e.g. d12
+checkpoint_dir = os.path.join(base_dir, "base_checkpoints", output_dirname)
+resuming = resume_from_step != -1
+if resuming:
+    print0(f"Resuming optimization from step {resume_from_step}")
+    model_data, optimizer_data, meta_data = load_checkpoint(checkpoint_dir, resume_from_step, device, load_optimizer=True, rank=ddp_rank)
+    model.load_state_dict(model_data, strict=True, assign=True)
+    del model_data # free up this memory after the copy
+
+orig_model = model # original, uncompiled model, for saving raw model state_dict and for inference/evaluation (because the shapes may change shape)
+model = torch.compile(model, dynamic=False) # the inputs to model will never change shape so dynamic=False is safe
 num_params = sum(p.numel() for p in model.parameters())
 print0(f"Number of parameters: {num_params:,}")
 num_flops_per_token = model.estimate_flops()
@@ -143,12 +160,18 @@ print0(f"Total training FLOPs estimate: {num_flops_per_token * total_tokens:e}")
 optimizers = model.setup_optimizers(unembedding_lr=unembedding_lr, embedding_lr=embedding_lr, matrix_lr=matrix_lr, weight_decay=weight_decay)
 adamw_optimizer, muon_optimizer = optimizers
 
+if resuming:
+    for opt, dat in zip(optimizers, optimizer_data):
+        opt.load_state_dict(dat)
+    del optimizer_data # free up the memory
+
+# -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 # Initialize the DataLoaders for train/val
-base_dir = get_base_dir()
 tokens_dir = os.path.join(base_dir, "tokenized_data")
-train_loader = tokenizing_distributed_data_loader(device_batch_size, max_seq_len, split="train", device=device)
+dataloader_resume_state_dict = None if not resuming else meta_data["dataloader_state_dict"]
+train_loader = tokenizing_distributed_data_loader_with_state(device_batch_size, max_seq_len, split="train", device=device, resume_state_dict=dataloader_resume_state_dict)
 build_val_loader = lambda: tokenizing_distributed_data_loader(device_batch_size, max_seq_len, split="val", device=device)
-x, y = next(train_loader) # kick off load of the very first batch of data
+x, y, dataloader_state_dict = next(train_loader) # kick off load of the very first batch of data
 
 # -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 # Set up hyperparameter schedulers
@@ -171,15 +194,25 @@ def get_muon_momentum(it):
     momentum = (1 - frac) * 0.85 + frac * 0.95
     return momentum
 
+# -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
+# Loop state (variables updated by the training loop)
+
+if not resuming:
+    step = 0
+    min_val_bpb = float("inf")
+    smooth_train_loss = 0 # EMA of training loss
+    total_training_time = 0 # total wall-clock time of training
+else:
+    step = meta_data["step"]
+    loop_state = meta_data["loop_state"]
+    min_val_bpb = loop_state["min_val_bpb"]
+    smooth_train_loss = loop_state["smooth_train_loss"]
+    total_training_time = loop_state["total_training_time"]
+
 # -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 # Training loop
-min_val_bpb = float("inf")
-smooth_train_loss = 0 # EMA of training loss
-ema_beta = 0.9 # EMA decay factor
-total_training_time = 0 # total wall-clock time of training
-# note that we run +1 steps only so that we can eval and save at the end
-for step in range(num_iterations + 1):
-    last_step = step == num_iterations
+while True:
+    last_step = step == num_iterations # loop runs num_iterations+1 times so that we can eval/save at the end
     flops_so_far = num_flops_per_token * total_batch_size * step
 
     # once in a while: evaluate the val bpb (all ranks participate)
@@ -237,25 +270,31 @@ for step in range(num_iterations + 1):
             print0(tokenizer.decode(sample[0]))
         model.train()
 
-    # save checkpoint at the end of the run (only on master process)
-    if master_process and last_step:
-        output_dirname = model_tag if model_tag else f"d{depth}" # e.g. d12
-        checkpoint_dir = os.path.join(base_dir, "base_checkpoints", output_dirname)
+    # save checkpoint: at the end of the run, or every save_every steps, except at the first step or the resume step
+    if last_step or (step > 0 and step != resume_from_step and save_every > 0 and step % save_every == 0):
         save_checkpoint(
             checkpoint_dir,
             step,
-            orig_model.state_dict(),
-            [opt.state_dict() for opt in optimizers], # TODO: make sure saving across ranks is done correctly
-            {
+            orig_model.state_dict(), # model parameters
+            [opt.state_dict() for opt in optimizers], # optimizer states
+            { # metadata saved as json
                 "step": step,
                 "val_bpb": val_bpb, # loss at last step
                 "model_config": model_config_kwargs,
                 "user_config": user_config, # inputs to the training script
                 "device_batch_size": device_batch_size,
                 "max_seq_len": max_seq_len,
-            }
+                "dataloader_state_dict": dataloader_state_dict,
+                "loop_state": { # all loop state (other than step) so that we can resume training
+                    "min_val_bpb": min_val_bpb,
+                    "smooth_train_loss": smooth_train_loss,
+                    "total_training_time": total_training_time,
+                },
+            },
+            rank=ddp_rank,
         )
 
+    # termination conditions (TODO: possibly also add loss explosions etc.)
     if last_step:
         break
 
@@ -270,7 +309,7 @@ for step in range(num_iterations + 1):
         train_loss = loss.detach() # for logging
         loss = loss / grad_accum_steps # each .backward() is a grad sum => normalize loss here
         loss.backward()
-        x, y = next(train_loader) # prefetch the next batch while the GPU is busy with forward/backward
+        x, y, dataloader_state_dict = next(train_loader) # prefetch the next batch while the GPU is busy with forward/backward
     # gradient clipping
     grad_clip_enabled = grad_clip > 0.0
     if grad_clip_enabled:
@@ -293,6 +332,7 @@ for step in range(num_iterations + 1):
     # -------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
     # logging
+    ema_beta = 0.9 # EMA decay factor for some smoothing just for nicer logging
     smooth_train_loss = ema_beta * smooth_train_loss + (1 - ema_beta) * train_loss.item() # EMA the training loss
     debiased_smooth_loss = smooth_train_loss / (1 - ema_beta**(step + 1)) # debias the EMA
     pct_done = 100 * step / num_iterations
@@ -319,6 +359,9 @@ for step in range(num_iterations + 1):
             log_data["train/grad_norm"] = grad_norm
         wandb_run.log(log_data)
 
+    # state update
+    step += 1
+
 # print a few more stats
 print0(f"Peak memory usage: {get_max_memory() / 1024 / 1024:.2f}MiB")
 print0(f"Total training time: {total_training_time/60:.2f}m")