Tiresias -- A GPU Cluster Manager for Distributed Deep Learning Training without complete job information
Tiresias is a GPU cluster resource manager that aims at minimizing distributed deep learning (DDL) jobs’ completion times with partial or no a priori knowledge. It does not rely on any intermediate DL algorithm states (e.g., training loss values) or framework specifics (e.g., tensors-to-parameter server mapping).
DDL training jobs bring some unique challenges to the cluster manager:
- unpredictable training time
- over-aggressive job consolidation
- all-or-nothing resource allocation
- inflexibility in GPU sharing (job preemption and resumption)
Tiresias tackles those challenges with the Discretized-2DAS (two-dimensional age/attained-service based) scheduler and the model profile-based job placement scheme. The 2DAS scheduler, which considers both the spatial (GPU requirements) and temporal (job's executed time) aspects of DDL jobs, has two scheduling algorithms (Discretized 2D-LAS and Discretized 2D-Gittins Index). They can minimize the average JCT with no and partial job knowledge, respectively. The profile-based job placement scheme can appropriately relax the consolidation constraints and maintain the resource (GPU) utilization of cluster without hurting jobs’ performance.
Out testbed experiments and large-scale trace-driven simulations show that Tiresias improves the average JCT by up to 5.5x (2x) over current production solutions (state-of-the-art DDL cluster scheduler), and it performs comparably to the solution using perfect knowledge of all job characteristics.
Detailed design and performance are available in our NSDI'19 paper.
- Discrete-time simulator of GPU cluster manager for DL training jobs (with both the job scheduler and placement scheme)
Coming soon ...
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Network(RDMA)-level message profiler for DL models
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What's LAS (Least-Attained Service) algorithm?
Nuyens, Misja, and Adam Wierman. "The foreground–background queue: a survey." Performance evaluation 65.3-4 (2008): 286-307. -
What's Gittins Index policy?
Gittins, John, Kevin Glazebrook, and Richard Weber. Multi-armed bandit allocation indices. John Wiley & Sons, 2011.