ml-explore / ml-explore/mlx-data
Set seed with prefetch for reproducibility
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- Dominant language
- C++
- Stars
- 483
- Forks
- 62
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Description
Currently, the only way to the seed is with mlx.data.core.set_state, but this only controls the seed for .shuffle(). When using .prefetch with num_threads > 1, the samples returned are not deterministic and therefore not reproducible.
Is there a way to set the seed when prefetching with more than one thread?
import mlx.data.core as dmx
from mlx.data.datasets import load_mnist
dmx.set_state(42)
train = load_mnist(root=None, train=True)
dset = (
train.shuffle()
.to_stream()
.key_transform("image", lambda x: x.astype("float32") / 255)
.batch(32)
.prefetch(prefetch_size=4, num_threads=4) # non-deterministic with > 1 thread
)
for i, data in enumerate(dset):
print(data["image"].sum())
if i == 2:
break
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
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- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start by tracing dmx.set_state and the prefetch(prefetch_size=4, num_threads=4) entry point shown in the Python example. Investigate how multiple prefetch threads affect sample ordering and seed state. Done means repeated runs with the same seed and more than one thread return the same samples and batch values.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- cpp, python
- Domain
- data-engineering
- Issue type
- Bug
- Difficulty
- 4/5
- Estimated time
- 3-5 days
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 35/100