MAD Max Beyond Single-Node: Enabling Large Machine Learning Model Acceleration on Distributed Systems
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Abstract (arXiv)
Training and deploying large-scale machine learning models is time-consuming, requires significant distributed computing infrastructures, and incurs high operational costs. Our analysis, grounded in real-world large model training on datacenter-scale infrastructures, reveals that 14~32% of all GPU hours are spent on communication with no overlapping computation. To minimize this outstanding communication latency and other inherent at-scale inefficiencies, we introduce an agile performance modeling framework, MAD-Max. This framework is designed to optimize parallelization strategies and facilitate hardware-software co-design opportunities. Through the application of MAD-Max to a suite of real-world large-scale ML models on state-of-the-art GPU clusters, we showcase potential throughput enhancements of up to 2.24x for pre-training and up to 5.2x for inference scenarios, respectively.
Key facts. Cited by 14 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 53 of its 84 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 4 Oct 2023.
Builds on
53 of 84 references.
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Citing papers per year: 2023: 1; 2024: 7; 2025: 2; 2026: 4.
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- 2023A Survey of Serverless Machine Learning Model Inferencecited by 0
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