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PyTorch Release 19.12

The NVIDIA container image for PyTorch, release 19.12, is available on NGC.

Contents of the PyTorch container

This container image contains the complete source of the version of PyTorch in /opt/pytorch. It is pre-built and installed in Conda default environment (/opt/conda/lib/python3.6/site-packages/torch/) in the container image. The container also includes the following:

Driver Requirements

Release 19.12 is based on NVIDIA CUDA 10.2.89, which requires NVIDIA Driver release 440.30. However, if you are running on Tesla (for example, T4 or any other Tesla board), you may use NVIDIA driver release 396, 384.111+, 410, 418.xx or 440.30. The CUDA driver's compatibility package only supports particular drivers. For a complete list of supported drivers, see the CUDA Application Compatibility topic. For more information, see CUDA Compatibility and Upgrades.

GPU Requirements

Release 19.12 supports CUDA compute capability 6.0 and higher. This corresponds to GPUs in the Pascal, Volta, and Turing families. Specifically, for a list of GPUs that this compute capability corresponds to, see CUDA GPUs. For additional support details, see Deep Learning Frameworks Support Matrix.

Key Features and Enhancements

This PyTorch release includes the following key features and enhancements.

Announcements

  • Deep learning framework containers 19.11 and later include experimental support for Singularity v3.0.

Automatic Mixed Precision (AMP)

NVIDIA’s Automatic Mixed Precision (AMP) for PyTorch is available in this container through a preinstalled release of Apex. AMP enables users to try mixed precision training by adding only 3 lines of Python to an existing FP32 (default) script. Amp will choose an optimal set of operations to cast to FP16. FP16 operations require 2X reduced memory bandwidth (resulting in a 2X speedup for bandwidth-bound operations like most pointwise ops) and 2X reduced memory storage for intermediates (reducing the overall memory consumption of your model). Additionally, GEMMs and convolutions with FP16 inputs can run on Tensor Cores, which provide an 8X increase in computational throughput over FP32 arithmetic.

Comprehensive guidance and examples demonstrating AMP for PyTorch can be found in the documentation.

For more information about AMP, see the Training With Mixed Precision Guide.

Tensor Core Examples

The tensor core examples provided in GitHub and NVIDIA GPU Cloud (NGC) focus on achieving the best performance and convergence from NVIDIA Volta tensor cores by using the latest deep learning example networks and model scripts for training. Each example model trains with mixed precision Tensor Cores on Volta and Turing, therefore you can get results much faster than training without Tensor Cores. This model is tested against each NGC monthly container release to ensure consistent accuracy and performance over time. This container includes the following tensor core examples.

Known Issues

  • There is up to 70% performance drop on Waveglow training in the 19.12 container compared to 19.10; due to a magma-CUDA bug recreating cuBLAS handles. You can minimize this regression by setting the CUBLAS_WORKSPACE_CONFIG=:16:8 environment variable before running the Waveglow code.

  • There is up to 20% performance drop for SSD training on Pascal GPUs in the 19.12 container compared to 19.11.

  • There is up to 8% performance drop on BERT Large mixed-precision training in the 19.12 container compared to 19.10.

  • The mixed-precision recipe for Transformer training might create unexpectedly NaN outputs. We recommend to use FP32 or AMP with opt_level=’O0’ with the 19.12 container.

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