pytorch

2beb9690 - Change AccumulateGrad to yield `.grad`s that match weights' memory layout (#34904)

Change AccumulateGrad to yield `.grad`s that match weights' memory layout (#34904) Summary: Currently, whether `AccumulateGrad` [steals](https://github.com/pytorch/pytorch/blob/67cb0184625ca3c30f44e02cc21ebfa7382c75c5/torch/csrc/autograd/functions/accumulate_grad.h#L42) or [clones](https://github.com/pytorch/pytorch/blob/67cb0184625ca3c30f44e02cc21ebfa7382c75c5/torch/csrc/autograd/functions/accumulate_grad.h#L80) an incoming gradient, the gradient ends up rowmajor contiguous, regardless of its param's layout. If the param's layout is channels last, or otherwise not rowmajor contigous, later kernels that apply gradients to params are forced into an uncoalesced memory access pattern for either the param or the gradient. This may not sound like a big deal but for any binary op on large tensors it's a >3X increase in gmem traffic => 3X slowdown. The present PR changes `AccumulateGrad` to prefer, where possible, stashing gradients that match their params' layouts (["Gradient Layout Contract"](https://github.com/pytorch/pytorch/pull/34904/files#diff-ef1a56d24f66b280dcdb401502d6a796R29-R38)). Allowing `AccumulateGrad` to stash non-rowmajor-contiguous grads means DDP allreduces and DP reduces must allow non-rowmajor-contiguous grads. This PR extends DDP and DP to allow gradients with non-rowmajor-contiguous strides as long as their layout is nonoverlapping and dense. For good measure, I include changes that allow all five nccl primitives (allreduce, reduce, broadcast, allgather, reducescatter) to act on non-rowmajor-contiguous tensors (again as long as each input's layout is nonoverlapping and dense, and as long as all tensors participating in a given collective have the same layout). The primitive comm changes aren't necessary to enable the DDP changes, but I wasn't sure this would end up true until I had written both sets of changes. I think primitive comm enablement is reasonable to keep in the PR, especially since the code for it is simple. Channels last params will be a major beneficiary of this PR, but I don't see it as channels-last-specific fix. The spirit is layout matching in general: - Grads should be stashed with memory layouts matching their params. - Src and dst tensors on opposite ends of collectives should have matching dense layouts. This PR also updates autograd docs to describe potential BC-breaking changes below. ## BC notes ngimel albanD gchanan #### BC-breaking In the common case where the user lets AccumulateGrad decide grad layouts, strides for grads of dense but non-rowmajor-contiguous params will change. Any user code that was accustomed to `view(-1)`ing these grads will break. Also, the circumstances under which a grad can be stolen directly from the backward function that created it, as opposed to deep-copied by AccumulateGrad, have changed. In most cases we expect silent performance improvement, because we expect channels-last-aware backward kernels will create channels last gradients for channels last params. Now those can be stolen, whereas before this PR they were cloned and made rowmajor contiguous. IMO this is a mild BC breakage. Param backward hooks still see grads come in with whatever format the backward kernel gave them. The only BC breakage potential I see is if user code relies somehow on a grad in a hook having or not having the same deep memory as the eventual `param.grad`. Any such users hopefully know they're off the edge of the map and understand how to update their expectations. #### BC escape hatches At alband's recommendation, this PR's changes to AccumulateGrad do not alter the pre-PR code's decisions about whether grad is accumulated in or out of place. Accumulations of new grads onto an existing `.grad` attribute were (usually) in-place before this PR and remain in-place after this PR, keeping the existing `.grad`'s layout. After this PR, if the user wants to force accumulation into a grad with a particular layout, they can preset `param.grad` to a zeroed tensor with the desired strides or call `grad.contiguous(desired format)`. This likely won't be as performant as letting AccumulateGrad establish grad layouts by cloning or stealing grads with contract-compliant strides, but at least users have a control point. One limitation (present before this PR and unchanged by this PR): Presetting `param.grad` does not ensure in-place accumulation all the time. For example, if `create_graph=True`, or if incoming `new_grad` is dense and existing `variable_grad` is sparse, accumulation occurs out of place, and the out-of-place result may not match the existing grad's strides. ---------------------------- I also noticed some potential DDP improvements that I considered out of scope but want to mention for visibility: 1. make sure Reducer's ops sync with AccumulateGrad streams 2. ~to reduce CPU overhead and incur fewer kernel launches, lazily create flat `contents` tensors by a single `cat` kernel only when a bucket is full, instead of `copy_`ing grads into `contents` individually as soon as they are received.~ PR includes a [minor change](https://github.com/pytorch/pytorch/pull/34904/files#diff-c269190a925a4b0df49eda8a8f6c5bd3R312-R315) to divide grads while copying them into flat buffers, instead of copying them in, then dividing separately. Without cat+div fusion, div-while-copying is the best we can do. 3. https://github.com/pytorch/pytorch/issues/38942 Pull Request resolved: https://github.com/pytorch/pytorch/pull/34904 Differential Revision: D20496044 Pulled By: albanD fbshipit-source-id: 248d680f4b1bf77b0a986451844ec6e254469217