Accumulate grads over N micro-batches, then one AdamW step + zero_grad,
for an effective batch of N×micro at one micro-batch's activation cost.
Each micro-loss is scaled by 1/N before backward (the tape SUM-accumulates
the scaled grads) so the boundary grad equals a single step over an N×
batch. accum==1 skips the scale → bit-identical to the pre-T16 path.
DDP: the cross-rank all-reduce fires ONLY at the accumulation boundary
(intermediate micro-steps are local-only, no NCCL); the /world average is
orthogonal to the per-micro 1/N, so the boundary grad is the effective
global-batch mean. New --accum-steps flag in both train binaries; effective
batch is printed.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Feed a real batch of B sequences as ONE batched forward/backward, replacing the
"loop B times + let the tape SUM grads + clip ×1/B" hack. CE mean over B*S rows
is already the batch-mean loss, so backward yields the batch-mean gradient
directly → clip pre-scale = 1.0.
DDP stays equivalent: each rank runs one batched forward over its b_local =
B_global/world sequences (local-mean grad Σ_local/b_local); all_reduce_average
(sum across ranks /world) = Σ_global/B_global = global batch-mean → clip
pre-scale 1.0. The ddp_correctness single-GPU baseline batches the same way.
DDP loss matches single-GPU 5.7e-7, cross-rank params bit-identical (0.0).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The T8 DDP path now matches the single-GPU `bin/train`: CLI-tunable arch
(scaling-ladder rung), the cached token-id stream (`load_cached`), held-out
val-loss eval + best-val checkpointing, and LR warmup→cosine. Rank 0 owns the
val corpus and runs the no-grad eval / writes the best checkpoint (params are
bit-identical across ranks). The eval/checkpoint logic is reused from
`xtrain-train` (`eval_loss`, `checkpoint::save`) rather than duplicated.
- DdpConfig gains eval_every / eval_batches / ckpt_path.
- train_rank takes `valid: Option<&Corpus>` and returns DdpResult
(losses + evals + best_val); launch threads the val corpus to rank 0 only.
- bin/train_ddp reworked to the bin/train CLI (positional tokenizer/corpus +
--dim/--heads/--head-dim/--layers/--ffn/--steps/--batch/--seq/--max-lr/
--val-tokens/--eval-every/--ckpt), reusing the u16 cache.
- DDP correctness test updated to the new signatures (semantics unchanged).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
dash5 verify: loss trajectory matches single-GPU to max_rel 1.16e-7 and
cross-rank params are bit-identical (0.0), but DDP-vs-single-GPU per-param rel
diff is ~2.8e-3 after 20 AdamW steps — expected, since the two differ only in
gradient summation order (fp add isn't associative) and that rounding compounds.
Bump check (c) 1e-3 -> 1e-2 (a/b stay tight). Also remove an unused DType import.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
DDP training step (train_rank) on top of DdpContext: each rank advances the
SAME RNG, draws the whole global batch, and runs forward+backward only on its
shard (i % world == rank) so the union over ranks is the single-GPU batch in the
same order. After backward, all-reduce-average the device grads, then finish the
mean with clip(pre_scale = 1/b_local) -> Sigma_global/B_global, identical to the
single-GPU clip(1/B). Each rank then runs its own GpuAdamW.step; same init +
same averaged grad + same optimizer state keep params bit-identical across ranks.
Adds a deterministic build_model (same LCG init as bin/train) shared by ranks +
baseline, a per-step loss all-reduce for the reported global-mean loss, and the
thread-per-GPU launch() helper (thread::scope; Var graph is !Send so each rank
builds its model thread-locally, only UniqueId/config/&Corpus cross threads).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
