veccl 0.1.1

A high-performance communication library for AI training and inference, designed as a drop-in replacement for NCCL.

veCCL

Introduction

During the process of large-scale AI training and inference, the requirements for infrastructure such as communication and networking have become extremely demanding. The specific requirements are concentrated in aspects such as high performance, rapid adaptation to new machine models, quick fault location, ensuring business stability, and business traffic planning. To meet these needs, we have developed the veCCL communication library.

veCCL is meant to be a drop-in replacement for NCCL and is distributed in .so library form.

Prerequisites

To ensure compatibility, we use manylinux_2_28 to build the pip wheel, which means veCCL comes with the CUDA runtime library and all dependent libraries embedded.

Built wheels are expected to be compatible with any distros using glibc 2.28 or later, including:

• Debian 10+
• Ubuntu 18.10+
• Fedora 29+
• CentOS/RHEL 8+

The user only needs to ensure they have a driver installed that supports CUDA 12 (>=525.60.13).

Install

To install veCCL on the system:

pip install veccl

Usage

import veccl
import os
import subprocess
veccl.enable() # this sets LD_PRELOAD, NCCL_NET_PLUGIN, and LD_LIBRARY_PATH
os.environ['NCCL_DEBUG'] = 'VERSION'
torchrun_command = ["/path/to/torchrun","--nproc_per_node=8","your_training_script.py","--arg1", "value1","--arg2", "value2"]
try:
    subprocess.run(torchrun_command, check=True)
except subprocess.CalledProcessError as e:
    print(f"torchrun failed with error: {e}")

However, LD_PRELOAD only works for subsequently spawned processes, so users need to set the LD_PRELOAD environment variable or call veccl.enable() before the process that will use NCCL starts. For example:

#!/bin/bash
export LD_PRELOAD=$(python3 -c "import veccl; print(veccl.lib_paths())"):${LD_PRELOAD}
export NCCL_NET_PLUGIN=soft-bonding
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$(python3 -c "import veccl; print(veccl.ld_library_path())"):$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
NCCL_DEBUG=VERSION torchrun --nproc_per_node=8 your_training_script.py --arg1 value1 --arg2 value2

or

import veccl
import os
import subprocess

veccl.enable()
os.environ['NCCL_DEBUG'] = 'VERSION'

torchrun_command = [
    "/path/to/torchrun",
    "--nproc_per_node=8",
    "your_training_script.py",
    "--arg1", "value1",
    "--arg2", "value2"
]

try:
    subprocess.run(torchrun_command, check=True)
except subprocess.CalledProcessError as e:
    print(f"torchrun failed with error: {e}")

Here's a minimal pytorch script for testing:

import os
import torch
import torch.distributed as dist

def main():
    rank = int(os.environ["RANK"])
    local_rank = int(os.environ["LOCAL_RANK"])
    world_size = int(os.environ["WORLD_SIZE"])

    torch.cuda.set_device(local_rank)
    dist.init_process_group(backend="nccl")

    tensor = torch.randn(1024, device=f"cuda:{local_rank}")
    dist.all_reduce(tensor, op=dist.ReduceOp.SUM)

    print(f"Rank {rank}: tensor sum = {tensor.sum().item()}")
    dist.destroy_process_group()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

License

veCCL is licensed under the terms of Beijing Volcano Engine Technology Ltd. Copyright. The LICENSE and THIRD_PARTY_NOTICE files are included in the package distribution metadata within the veccl-[version].dist-info directory.