The Scalability for Parallel Machine Learning Training Algorithm: Dataset Matters

Abstract: To gain a better performance, many researchers put more computing resource into an application. However, in the AI area, there is still a lack of a successful large-scale machine learning training application: The scalability and performance reproducibility of parallel machine learning training algorithm are limited and there are a few pieces of research focusing on why these indexes are limited but there are very few research efforts explaining the reasons in essence. In this paper, we propose that the sample difference in dataset plays a more prominent role in parallel machine learning algorithm scalability. Dataset characters can measure sample difference. These characters include the variance of the sample in a dataset, sparsity, sample diversity and similarity in sampling sequence. To match our proposal, we choose four kinds of parallel machine learning training algorithms as our research objects: (1) Asynchronous parallel SGD algorithm (Hogwild! algorithm) (2) Parallel model average SGD algorithm (Mini-batch SGD algorithm) (3) Decenterilization optimization algorithm, (4) Dual Coordinate Optimization (DADM algorithm). These algorithms cover different types of machine learning optimization algorithms. We present the analysis of their convergence proof and design experiments. Our results show that the characters datasets decide the scalability of the machine learning algorithm. What is more, there is an upper bound of parallel scalability for machine learning algorithms.