Lightning-AI / Lightning-AI/pytorch-lightning

[RFC] "auto" precision support

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#12,895 2 comments 3 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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design feature plugin precision: amp precision: apex (removed) trainer: argument
Dominant language
Python
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Description

## 🚀 Feature
Introducing the support for `precision="auto"`, which enables AMP whenever available and falls back to fp32 otherwise.

### Motivation

After introducing `accelerator="auto"` support, it is hard to determine the precision type to use.
Personally, I use AMP, whenever running on GPU and the GPU supports it. Otherwise I use fp32. Since precision has to be set at the same time, we specify the accelerator, with `accelerator="auto"` we cannot easily at that time determine on which accelerator it will be running (well we could, but that would be kind of duplicating logic we use for accelerator-detection internally) without a larger amount of boilerplate.

### Pitch

Have `precision="auto"` to switch between AMP and fp32 depending on the accelerator and whether the accelerator on hand does support AMP.

### Alternatives

Manually write out all the boilerplate.

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cc @borda @tchaton @justusschock @awaelchli @carmocca @akihironitta @rohitgr7 @kaushikb11 @ananthsub

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by tracing the existing accelerator="auto" support and the code that handles AMP precision selection. Determine where precision is resolved relative to accelerator detection, then verify that precision="auto" selects AMP when supported and fp32 otherwise with suitable tests.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python, pytorch
Domain
machine-learning
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
30/100

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