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ColossalAI/docs/zero.md

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# Zero Redundancy optimizer and zero offload
The Zero Redundancy Optimizer (ZeRO) removes the memory redundancies across data-parallel processes by partitioning three
model states (optimizer states, gradients, and parameters) across data-parallel processes instead of replicating them.
By doing so, memory efficiency is boosted drastically compared to classic data parallelism while the computational granularity
and communication efficiency are retained.
1. **ZeRO Level 1**: The optimizer states (e.g., for [Adam optimizer](https://arxiv.org/abs/1412.6980), 32-bit weights, and the
first and second momentum estimates) are partitioned across the processes, so that each process updates only its partition.
2. **ZeRO Level 2**: The reduced 32-bit gradients for updating the model weights are also partitioned such that each process
only stores the gradients corresponding to its partition of the optimizer states.
3. **ZeRO Level 3**: The 16-bit model parameters are partitioned across the processes. ZeRO-3 will automatically collect and
partition them during the forward and backward passes.
## Getting Started with ZeRO
If you are training models with Colossal-AI, enabling ZeRO-3 offload is as simple as enabling it in your Colossal-AI configuration!
Below are a few examples of ZeRO-3 configurations.
### Example of ZeRO-3 Configurations
Here we use `Adam` as the initial optimizer.
1. Use ZeRO to partition the optimizer states (level 1), gradients (level 2), and parameters (level 3).
```python
optimizer = dict(
type='Adam',
lr=0.001,
weight_decay=0
)
zero = dict(
type='ZeroRedundancyOptimizer_Level_3',
dynamic_loss_scale=True,
clip_grad=1.0
)
```
2. Additionally offload the optimizer states and computations to the CPU.
```python
zero = dict(
offload_optimizer_config=dict(
device='cpu',
pin_memory=True,
fast_init=True
),
...
)
```
3. Save even more memory by offloading parameters to the CPU memory.
```python
zero = dict(
offload_optimizer_config=dict(
device='cpu',
pin_memory=True,
fast_init=True
),
offload_param_config=dict(
device='cpu',
pin_memory=True,
fast_init=OFFLOAD_PARAM_MAX_IN_CPU
),
...
)
```
4. Save even MORE memory by offloading to NVMe (if available on your system):
```python
zero = dict(
offload_optimizer_config=dict(
device='nvme',
pin_memory=True,
fast_init=True,
nvme_path='/nvme_data'
),
offload_param_config=dict(
device='nvme',
pin_memory=True,
max_in_cpu=OFFLOAD_PARAM_MAX_IN_CPU,
nvme_path='/nvme_data'
),
...
)
```
Note that `fp16` is automatically enabled when using ZeRO.
### Training
Once you have completed your configuration, just use `colossalai.initialize()` to initialize your training.