NVIDIA-Merlin / NVIDIA-Merlin/Transformers4Rec

[BUG] Loss drops to 0 after a few thousand steps when using fp16=True

Open
#493 7 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

bug P1
Dominant language
Python
Stars
1.3k
Forks
165
Avg merge
1m
Merged PRs (30d)
2

Description

The model training loss is suddenly dropping to 0 after over 1000 steps. I've tried iterating over different dataset as well but got the same behaviour.

Details

I am following the notebook Transformers4Rec/examples/tutorial, to train a next item click prediction model for my own dataset on sequence of items.

Params which I've changed are: learning_rate=0.01, fp16=True, per_device_train_batch_size = 64, d_model=16, rest are as in the notebook. Following are the logs for 1st day of data.

{'loss': 14.3249, 'learning_rate': 0.009976389135451803, 'epoch': 0.01}
{'loss': 14.083, 'learning_rate': 0.009964554115628145, 'epoch': 0.01}
{'loss': 13.9319, 'learning_rate': 0.009953074146399196, 'epoch': 0.01}
{'loss': 13.8982, 'learning_rate': 0.009947452511982957, 'epoch': 0.02}
{'loss': 12.6002, 'learning_rate': 0.009938812947511687, 'epoch': 0.02}
{'loss': 0.0, 'learning_rate': 0.009926977927688029, 'epoch': 0.02}
{'loss': 0.0, 'learning_rate': 0.00991514290786437, 'epoch': 0.03}
{'loss': 0.0, 'learning_rate': 0.009903307888040712, 'epoch': 0.03}
{'loss': 0.0, 'learning_rate': 0.009891472868217054, 'epoch': 0.04}
{'loss': 0.0, 'learning_rate': 0.009879637848393396, 'epoch': 0.04}
{'loss': 0.0, 'learning_rate': 0.009867802828569739, 'epoch': 0.04}
{'loss': 0.0, 'learning_rate': 0.00985596780874608, 'epoch': 0.05}
{'loss': 0.0, 'learning_rate': 0.009844132788922422, 'epoch': 0.05}
{'loss': 0.0, 'learning_rate': 0.009832297769098764, 'epoch': 0.05}
{'loss': 0.0, 'learning_rate': 0.009820462749275106, 'epoch': 0.06}
{'loss': 0.0, 'learning_rate': 0.009808627729451447, 'epoch': 0.06}
{'loss': 0.0, 'learning_rate': 0.00979679270962779, 'epoch': 0.06}
{'loss': 0.0, 'learning_rate': 0.00978495768980413, 'epoch': 0.07}
{'loss': 0.0, 'learning_rate': 0.009773122669980473, 'epoch': 0.07}
{'loss': 0.0, 'learning_rate': 0.009761287650156814, 'epoch': 0.07}
{'loss': 0.0, 'learning_rate': 0.009749452630333156, 'epoch': 0.08}
{'loss': 0.0, 'learning_rate': 0.009737617610509498, 'epoch': 0.08}
{'loss': 0.0, 'learning_rate': 0.00972578259068584, 'epoch': 0.09}
{'loss': 0.0, 'learning_rate': 0.009713947570862181, 'epoch': 0.09}
{'loss': 0.0, 'learning_rate': 0.009702112551038523, 'epoch': 0.09}
{'loss': 0.0, 'learning_rate': 0.009690277531214864, 'epoch': 0.1}
{'loss': 0.0, 'learning_rate': 0.009678442511391206, 'epoch': 0.1}
{'loss': 0.0, 'learning_rate': 0.009666607491567548, 'epoch': 0.1}
{'loss': 0.0, 'learning_rate': 0.00965477247174389, 'epoch': 0.11}
{'loss': 0.0, 'learning_rate': 0.009642937451920231, 'epoch': 0.11}```

Additionally, I am using merlin container nvcr.io/nvidia/merlin/merlin-pytorch-training:22.05 for training.

Any suggestions on what might be the issue here?

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 with examples/tutorial/03-Session-based-recsys.ipynb and review the training configuration, especially learning_rate=0.01, fp16=True, batch size 64, and d_model=16. Reproduce the reported loss transition using the provided container and logs, then determine whether the loss remains meaningful during mixed-precision training and document the confirmed cause or workaround.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python, pytorch
Domain
machine-learning
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
30/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.