# PowerAI DDL

Source: [PowerAI DDL](<https://www.sota2.com/research/paper/68fa638c1e209131ce9ff813>)

Collection index: [llms.txt](<https://www.sota2.com/research/llms.txt>)

Data updated: 2025-10-25T20:44:17.219Z

Authors: Minsik Cho, Ulrich Finkler, Sameer Kumar, David Kung, Vaibhav Saxena, Dheeraj Sreedhar

Published: 2017-08-07T16:24:00.000Z

## Abstract

As deep neural networks become more complex and input datasets grow larger, it can take days or even weeks to train a deep neural network to the desired accuracy. Therefore, distributed Deep Learning at a massive scale is a critical capability, since it offers the potential to reduce the training time from weeks to hours. In this paper, we present a software-hardware co-optimized distributed Deep Learning system that can achieve near-linear scaling up to hundreds of GPUs. The core algorithm is a multi-ring communication pattern that provides a good tradeoff between latency and bandwidth and adapts to a variety of system configurations. The communication algorithm is implemented as a library for easy use. This library has been integrated into Tensorflow, Caffe, and Torch. We train Resnet-101 on Imagenet 22K with 64 IBM Power8 S822LC servers (256 GPUs) in about 7 hours to an accuracy of 33.8 % validation accuracy. Microsoft's ADAM and Google's DistBelief results did not reach 30 % validation accuracy for Imagenet 22K. Compared to Facebook AI Research's recent paper on 256 GPU training, we use a different communication algorithm, and our combined software and hardware system offers better communication overhead for Resnet-50. A PowerAI DDL enabled version of Torch completed 90 epochs of training on Resnet 50 for 1K classes in 50 minutes using 64 IBM Power8 S822LC servers (256 GPUs).

## Recorded benchmark results

A research result applies to its stated dataset, split, metric and evaluation configuration. Compare like-for-like settings, preserve the metric's unit and direction, and distinguish paper-reported results from independent reproduction. The best result recorded here is not a claim of exhaustive, current global coverage.

## Original sources and implementation

[Original paper](<https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.02188>)

[PDF](<https://arxiv.org/pdf/1708.02188.pdf>)