huggingface-accelerate

SKILL.md preview

---
name: huggingface-accelerate
description: Simplest distributed training API. 4 lines to add distributed support to any PyTorch script. Unified API for DeepSpeed/FSDP/Megatron/DDP. Automatic device placement, mixed precision (FP16/BF16/FP8). Interactive config, single launch command. HuggingFace ecosystem standard.
version: 1.0.0
author: Orchestra Research
license: MIT
dependencies: [accelerate, torch, transformers]
platforms: [linux, macos, windows]
metadata:
  hermes:
    tags: [Distributed Training, HuggingFace, Accelerate, DeepSpeed, FSDP, Mixed Precision, PyTorch, DDP, Unified API, Simple]

---

# HuggingFace Accelerate - Unified Distributed Training

## Quick start

Accelerate simplifies distributed training to 4 lines of code.

**Installation**:
```bash
pip install accelerate
```

**Convert PyTorch script** (4 lines):
```python
import torch
+ from accelerate import Accelerator

+ accelerator = Accelerator()

  model = torch.nn.Transformer()
  optimizer = torch.optim.Adam(model.parameters())
  dataloader = torch.utils.data.DataLoader(dataset)

+ model, optimizer, dataloader = accelerator.prepare(model, optimizer, dataloader)

  for batch in dataloader:
      optimizer.zero_grad()
      loss = model(batch)
-     loss.backward()
+     accelerator.backward(loss)
      optimizer.step()
```

**Run** (single command):
```bash
accelerate launch train.py
```

## Common workflows

### Workflow 1: From single GPU to multi-GPU

**Original script**:
```python
# train.py
import torch

model = torch.nn.Linear(10, 2).to('cuda')
optimizer = torch.optim.Adam(model.parameters())
dataloader = torch.utils.data.DataLoader(dataset, batch_size=32)

for epoch in range(10):
    for batch in dataloader:
        batch = batch.to('cuda')
        optimizer.zero_grad()
        loss = model(batch).mean()
        loss.backward()
        optimizer.step()
```

**With Accelerate** (4 lines added):
```python
# train.py
import torch
from accelerate import Accelerator  # +1

accelerator = Accelerator()  # +2

model = torch.nn.Linear(10, 2)
optimizer = torch.optim.Adam(model.parameters())
dataloader = torch.utils.data.DataLoader(dataset, batch_size=32)

model, optimizer, dataloader = accelerator.prepare(model, optimizer, dataloader)  # +3

for epoch in range(10):
    for batch in dataloader:
        # No .to('cuda') needed - automatic!
        optimizer.zero_grad()
        loss = model(batch).mean()
        accelerator.backward(loss)  # +4
        optimizer.step()
```

**Configure** (interactive):
```bash
accelerate config
```

**Questions**:
- Which machine? (single/multi GPU/TPU/CPU)
- How many machines? (1)
- Mixed precision? (no/fp16/bf16/fp8)
- DeepSpeed? (no/yes)

**Launch** (works on any setup):
```bash
# Single GPU
accelerate launch train.py

# Multi-GPU (8 GPUs)
accelerate launch --multi_gpu --num_processes 8 train.py

# Multi-node
accelerate launch --multi_gpu --num_processes 16 \
  --num_machines 2 --machine_rank 0 \
  --main_process_ip $MASTER_ADDR \
  train.py
```

### Workflow 2: Mixed precision training

**Enable FP16/BF16**:
```python
from accelerate import Accelerator

# FP16 (with gradient scaling)
accelerator = Accelerator(mixed_precision='fp16')

# BF16 (no scaling, more stable)
accelerator = Accelerator(mixed_precision='bf16')

# FP8 (H100+)
accelerator = Accelerator(mixed_precision='fp8')

model, optimizer, dataloader = accelerator.prepare(model, optimizer, dataloader)

# Everything else is automatic!
for batch in dataloader:
    with accelerator.autocast():  # Optional, done automatically
        loss = model(batch)
    accelerator.backward(loss)
```

### Workflow 3: DeepSpeed ZeRO integration

**Enable DeepSpeed ZeRO-2**:
```python
from accelerate import Accelerator

accelerator = Accelerator(
    mixed_precision='bf16',
    deepspeed_plugin={
        "zero_stage": 2,  # ZeRO-2
        "offload_optimizer": False,
        "gradient_accumulation_steps": 4
    }
)

# Same code as before!
model, optimizer, dataloader = accelerator.prepa

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