Improve Scalability on Multi-Core CPUs

Graph Neural Network (GNN) training suffers from low scalability on multi-core CPUs. Specificially, the performance often caps at 16 cores, and no improvement is observed when applying more than 16 cores [1]. ARGO is a runtime system that offers scalable performance. With ARGO enabled, we are able to scale over 64 cores, allowing ARGO to speedup GNN training (in terms of epoch time) by up to 4.30x and 3.32x on a Xeon 8380H and a Xeon 6430L, respectively [2]. This chapter focus on how to setup ARGO to unleash the potential of multi-core CPUs to speedup GNN training.

Installation

ARGO utilizes the scikit-optimize library for auto-tuning. Please install scikit-optimize to run ARGO: .. code-block:: shell

conda install -c conda-forge “scikit-optimize>=0.9.0”

or .. code-block:: shell

pip install scikit-optimize>=0.9

Enabling ARGO on your own GNN program

In this section, we provide a step-by-step tutorial on how to enable ARGO on a DGL program. We use the ogb_example.py [3] as an example. .. note:

We also provide the complete example file *ogb_example_ARGO.py* [#f4]_
which followed the steps below to enable ARGO on *ogb_example.py*.

Step 1

First, include all necessary packages on top of the file. Please place your file and argo.py [5] in the same directory.

Step 2

Setup PyTorch Distributed Data Parallel (DDP)

2.1. Add the initialization function on top of the training program, and wrap the `model` with the DDP wrapper .. code-block:: python

def train(…):

dist.init_process_group(‘gloo’, rank=rank, world_size=world_size) # newly added model = SAGE(…) # original code model = DistributedDataParallel(model) # newly added …

2.2. In the main program, add the following before launching the training function .. code-block:: python

… os.environ[‘MASTER_ADDR’] = ‘127.0.0.1’ os.environ[‘MASTER_PORT’] = ‘29501’ mp.set_start_method(‘fork’, force=True) train(args, device, data) # original code for launching the training function

Step 3

Enable ARGO by initializing the runtime system, and wrapping the training function .. code-block:: python

runtime = ARGO(n_search = 15, epoch = args.num_epochs, batch_size = args.batch_size) # initialization runtime.run(train, args=(args, device, data)) # wrap the training function

Note

ARGO takes three input parameters: number of searches n_search, number of epochs, and the mini-batch size. Increasing n_search potentially leads to a better configuration with less epoch time; however, searching itself also causes extra overhead. We recommend setting n_search from 15 to 45 for an optimal overall performance.

Step 4

Modify the input of the training function, by directly adding ARGO parameters after the original inputs.

This is the original function: .. code-block:: python

def train(args, device, data):

Add the following variables: rank, world_size, comp_core, load_core, counter, b_size, ep .. code-block:: python

def train(args, device, data, rank, world_size, comp_core, load_core, counter, b_size, ep):

Step 5

Modify the dataloader function in the training function .. code-block:: python

dataloader = dgl.dataloading.DataLoader(

g, train_nid, sampler, batch_size=b_size, # modified shuffle=True, drop_last=False, num_workers=len(load_core), # modified use_ddp = True) # newly added

Step 6

Enable core-binding by adding enable_cpu_affinity() before the training for-loop, and also change the number of epochs into the variable ep: .. code-block:: python

with dataloader.enable_cpu_affinity(loader_cores=load_core, compute_cores=comp_core):

for epoch in range(ep): # change num_epochs to ep

Step 7

Last step! Load the model before training and save it afterward.

Original Program: .. code-block:: python

with dataloader.enable_cpu_affinity(loader_cores=load_core, compute_cores=comp_core):

for epoch in range(ep): … # training operations

Modified: .. code-block:: python

PATH = “model.pt” if counter[0] != 0:

checkpoint = th.load(PATH) model.load_state_dict(checkpoint[‘model_state_dict’]) optimizer.load_state_dict(checkpoint[‘optimizer_state_dict’]) epoch = checkpoint[‘epoch’] loss = checkpoint[‘loss’]

with dataloader.enable_cpu_affinity(loader_cores=load_core, compute_cores=comp_core):

for epoch in range(ep): … # training operations

dist.barrier() if rank == 0:

th.save({‘epoch’: counter[0],

‘model_state_dict’: model.state_dict(), ‘optimizer_state_dict’: optimizer.state_dict(), ‘loss’: loss, }, PATH)

Step 8

Done! You can now run your GNN program with ARGO enabled. .. code-block:: shell

python <your_code>.py

Footnotes

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