profine 0.3.4

Deterministic GPU training profiling and optimization CLI for PyTorch models

profine

Check us out at profine.ai

Profile your PyTorch code on real GPUs. Get a transparent rewrite. Ship measured speedups before the multi-hour run.

Demo

▶ Watch the demo on YouTube

Results

On Karpathy's minGPT (single A100, measured end-to-end by profine):

Metric	Baseline	profine	Δ
Step time (ms)	25.22	8.11	−67.8% (3.11× faster)
Peak memory (GB)	1.43	0.45	−68.7%
Correctness (loss curves match)	✓	✓	within BF16-widened tolerance

Stack applied: BF16 Mixed Precision + TF32 matmul + torch.compile (max-autotune) + SDPA + Fused AdamW. Reproducible with:

profine run-all examples/minGPT/projects/chargpt/chargpt.py \
  --hardware 1x_a100 --steps 25 --warmup 10 --seed 42

Full artifacts (JSON + Markdown reports for every pipeline step) live in examples/minGPT/profine_output/ — read SUMMARY.md first. As shown in the demo.

Install

pip install profine

Requires:

• A Modal account (GPU execution backend)
• An LLM. OpenAI, Anthropic, or any OpenAI-compatible local server (Ollama, vLLM, LM Studio, llama.cpp, LiteLLM)

export MODAL_TOKEN_ID=...
export MODAL_TOKEN_SECRET=...

# Pick one LLM:
export OPENAI_API_KEY=...                                  # OpenAI
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=...                               # Anthropic
# ...or run a local server (no API key needed) — see "Local LLMs" below

export HF_TOKEN=...                                        # optional, for gated models

Local LLMs

profine talks to any OpenAI-compatible server. Run with --provider local, supply --model, and (optionally) --base-url.

Ollama (default endpoint http://localhost:11434/v1):

ollama serve &
ollama pull llama3.1:8b
profine run-all path/to/train.py --provider local --model llama3.1:8b

vLLM:

profine run-all path/to/train.py \
  --provider local \
  --model meta-llama/Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct \
  --base-url http://localhost:8000/v1

LM Studio / llama.cpp server / LiteLLM: point --base-url at the server. The endpoint can also be set via the PROFINE_LOCAL_BASE_URL environment variable.

Note: the agent loop expects strong instruction-following and clean JSON output. Smaller open models (≤7B) may struggle on the interpret and suggest steps; we recommend 70B-class models or higher for end-to-end reliability.

Pipeline

read → profile → interpret → suggest → edit → benchmark

Each step reads the previous step's output from profine_output/.

Global flags (all commands): --provider {openai,anthropic,local} (default openai), --api-key, --model, --base-url (for local), -o/--output (default profine_output), --prefs.

Auto (run-all)

Run the entire pipeline end-to-end on one script.

profine run-all examples/minGPT/projects/chargpt/chargpt.py --hardware 1x_a100

Flag	Default	Description
--hardware	1x_a100	Hardware preset
--steps	60	Total optimizer steps
--warmup	30	Warmup steps
--timeout	900	Modal container timeout (s)
--warmstart	off	Reuse deployed Modal app between runs
--top	all	Apply top N ranked optimizations
--rtol / --atol	0.01 / 0.0001	Loss tolerances (auto-widened for precision/quantization)

Aborts on any failed step. Per-step artifacts land in their usual subdirectories under profine_output/.

1. Read

Extract model architecture, optimizer, dataloader, precision, and distributed strategy via AST + LLM.

profine read nanoGPT/train.py

No additional flags. Output: profine_output/read/architecture_record.json

2. Profile

Instrument the script and run on Modal with torch.profiler; collects step times, kernel breakdown, GPU utilization, and memory.

profine profile nanoGPT/train.py --hardware 1x_a100 --steps 20 --warmup 10

Flag	Default	Description
--hardware	1x_a100	Hardware preset name
--steps	60	Total optimizer steps
--warmup	30	Warmup steps (discarded)
--timeout	900	Modal container timeout (s)
--warmstart	off	Reuse deployed Modal app between runs

Output: profine_output/profile/profile_record.json

3. Interpret

Deterministic analysis (cost, memory utilization, per-category kernel times) + LLM bottleneck diagnosis.

profine interpret --profile-dir profine_output/profile

Flag	Default	Description
--profile-dir	required	Directory containing profile_record.json

Output: profine_output/interpret/bottleneck_report.json

4. Suggest

Filter applicable optimizations from the catalog; LLM ranks by ROI.

profine suggest --interpret-dir profine_output/interpret

Flag	Default	Description
--interpret-dir	required	Directory containing bottleneck_report.json
--arch-dir	auto	Directory containing architecture_record.json
--profile-dir	auto	Directory containing profile_record.json

Output: profine_output/suggest/suggestion_report.json

5. Edit

Apply an optimization. Multi-file aware: discovers local modules the entry script imports and edits whichever file owns the code being optimized. Patched library files land under profine_output/edit/files/<rel-path> — your source tree is never modified.

profine edit nanoGPT/train.py --suggestion-dir profine_output/suggest
profine edit nanoGPT/train.py --suggestion-dir profine_output/suggest --optimization torch_compile
profine edit nanoGPT/train.py --suggestion-dir profine_output/suggest --top 3

Flag	Default	Description
--suggestion-dir	required	Directory containing suggestion_report.json
--optimization	1	Rank (1, 2, ...) or entry ID (torch_compile). Ignored when --top is set.
--top	unset	Apply top N ranked optimizations sequentially, stacked.

With --top N, per-iteration artifacts go in profine_output/edit/01_<entry_id>/, 02_<entry_id>/, etc.; cumulative result at profine_output/edit/edited_train.py. Optimizations the LLM declines are recorded in the manifest's skipped list and the loop continues.

Output: profine_output/edit/edited_train.py, profine_output/edit/files/, profine_output/edit/change_manifest.json

6. Benchmark

Run original and optimized back-to-back on the same hardware. Patched library files in profine_output/edit/files/ are overlaid on the optimized run. Loss tolerance auto-widens for numerics-perturbing classes (BF16/mixed precision: rtol 5%, quantization: rtol 10%).

profine benchmark nanoGPT/train.py --optimized profine_output/edit/edited_train.py --hardware 1x_a100 --steps 20 --warmup 10

Flag	Default	Description
--optimized	required	Path to the optimized script
--hardware	1x_a100	Hardware preset name
--steps	60	Total optimizer steps
--warmup	30	Warmup steps
--rtol	0.01	Relative tolerance for loss check (auto-widened)
--atol	0.0001	Absolute tolerance for loss check (auto-widened)
--edit-dir	<output>/edit	Directory whose files/ subtree is overlaid
--timeout	900	Modal container timeout (s)
--warmstart	off	Reuse deployed Modal app between runs

Output: profine_output/benchmark/

Hardware Presets

Defined in profine/config/hardware.yaml.

Preset	GPU	VRAM	Cost/hr
1x_t4	T4	16 GB	$0.59
1x_l4	L4	24 GB	$0.80
1x_a10g	A10G	24 GB	$1.10
1x_a100	A100	80 GB	$2.50
1x_h100	H100	80 GB	$3.95

Prices from modal.com/pricing.

All data tables (hardware, optimization catalog, kernel patterns, extractor patterns) live in profine/config/*.yaml and can be extended without code changes.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.