Accelerating Large Language Model Training with 4D Parallelism and Memory Consumption Estimator

In large language model (LLM) training, several parallelization strategies, including Tensor Parallelism (TP), Pipeline Parallelism (PP), Data Parallelism (DP), as well as Sequence Parallelism (SP) and Context Parallelism (CP), are employed to distribute model parameters, activations, and optimizer states across devices. Identifying the optimal parallelization configuration for each environment while avoiding GPU memory overflow remains a challenging task. In this study, we provide precise formulas to estimate the memory consumed by parameters, gradients, optimizer states, and activations for 4D parallel training (DP, TP, PP, CP) in the Llama architecture. We conducted 454 experiments on A100 and H100 GPUs, incorporating often neglected factors such as temporary buffers and memory fragmentation into our analysis. Results indicate that when the estimated memory usage is below 80% of the available GPU memory, the training never encounters out-of-memory errors. This simple yet effective formula allows us to identify parallelization configurations that could lead to memory overflow in advance, significantly reducing the configuration search space. Additionally, through a comprehensive exploration of optimal configurations in 4D parallelism, our analysis of the 454 experimental results provides empirical insights into optimal 4D parallelism configurations.