Deep Learning software packages

PowerAI release 3.3 provides software packages for several Deep Learning frameworks, supporting libraries, and tools:

All the packages are intended for use with Ubuntu 16.04 on POWER with NVIDIA CUDA 8.0 and cuDNN v5.1 packages.

For more information visit https://ibm.biz/powerai.

System set up

Operating System

The Deep Learning packages require Ubuntu 16.04 for IBM POWER8. Ubuntu installation images can be downloaded from:

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/server/power8

NOTE: After installing Ubuntu 16.04 update the libc6 package to version 2.23-0ubuntu5 or higher. That version fixes problems affecting Torch and TensorFlow. You may need to enable the updates repository to install this update.

NVIDIA components

The Deep Learning packages require NVIDIA CUDA 8.0 and cuDNN 5.1, which can be installed as follows:

  1. Download and install NVIDIA CUDA 8.0 from https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-downloads
  2. Download NVIDIA cuDNN 5.1 for CUDA 8.0 Power8 Deb packages from https://developer.nvidia.com/cudnn (Registration in NVIDIA's Accelerated Computing Developer Program is required)

  3. Install the cuDNN v5.1 packages

       $ sudo dpkg -i libcudnn5*deb

CUDA version 8.0.44 is or higher is required. 8.0.61 is recommended.

NVIDIA driver version 361.93.03 or higher is required. 361.119 is recommended.

NVIDIA GPU driver update

NVIDIA driver updates for POWER8 are available from https://www.nvidia.com (select DRIVERS then All NVIDIA Drivers).

Installing the Deep Learning Frameworks

Software repository Setup

The Deep Learning packages are published as an Ubuntu package that sets up an installation repository on the local machine. The repository can be enabled as follows:

  1. Download the latest mldl-repo-local .deb file from https://download.boulder.ibm.com/ibmdl/pub/software/server/mldl/

  2. Install the repository package:

       $ sudo dpkg -i mldl-repo-local*.deb

  3. Update the package cache

       $ sudo apt-get update

Installing all frameworks at once

All the Deep Learning frameworks can be installed at once using the power-mldl meta-package:

    $ sudo apt-get install power-mldl

Installing frameworks individually

The Deep Learning frameworks can be installed individually if preferred. The framework packages are:

Each can be installed with:

    $ sudo apt-get install <framework>

Installation note for DIGITS

The digits and python-socketio-server packages conflict with Ubuntu's older python-socketio package. Please uninstall the python-socketio package before installing DIGITS.

Tuning recommendations

Recommended settings for optimal Deep Learning performance on the S822LC for High Performance Computing are:

Getting started with MLDL Frameworks

General setup

Each framework package provides a shell script to simplify environmental setup.

We recommend that users update their shell rc file (e.g. .bashrc) to source the desired setup scripts. For example:

    source /opt/DL/<framework>/bin/<framework>-activate

Each frame also provides a test script to verify basic function:

    $ <framework>-test

Getting started with Caffe

Caffe alternatives

Packages are provided for upstream BVLC Caffe (/opt/DL/caffe-bvlc), IBM optimized BVLC Caffe (/opt/DL/caffe-ibm), and NVIDIA's Caffe (/opt/DL/caffe-nv). The system default Caffe (/opt/DL/caffe) can be selected using Ubuntu's alternatives system:

    $ sudo update-alternatives --config caffe
    There are 3 choices for the alternative caffe (providing /opt/DL/caffe).

      Selection    Path                Priority   Status
    ------------------------------------------------------------
    * 0            /opt/DL/caffe-ibm    100       auto mode
      1            /opt/DL/caffe-bvlc   50        manual mode
      2            /opt/DL/caffe-ibm    100       manual mode
      3            /opt/DL/caffe-nv     75        manual mode

    Press <enter> to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number:

Users can activate the system default caffe:

    source /opt/DL/caffe/bin/caffe-activate

Or they can activate a specific variant. For example:

    source /opt/DL/caffe-bvlc/bin/caffe-activate

Attempting to activate multiple Caffe packages in a single login session will cause unpredictable behavior.

Caffe samples and examples

Each Caffe package includes example scripts and sample models, etc. A script is provided to copy the sample content into a specified directory:

    $ caffe-install-samples <somedir>

NVIDIA Caffe versions

This PowerAI release includes packages for both NV Caffe 0.14.5 and 0.15.13. The versions may behave differently (e.g. in performance or convergence) with different models.

NV Caffe 0.15.13 is NCCL enabled and will be installed by default. Version 0.14.5 can be installed as follows:

More info

Visit Caffe's website (http://caffe.berkeleyvision.org/) for tutorials and example programs that you can run to get started.

Here are links to a couple of the example programs:

Getting started with Chainer

The Chainer home page at http://chainer.org/ includes documentation for the Chainer project, including a Quick Start example.

Getting started with Tensorflow

The TensorFlow homepage (https://www.tensorflow.org/) has a variety of information, including Tutorials, How Tos, and a Getting Started guide.

Additional tutorials and examples are available from the community, for example:

API changes and sample models

Note that the TensorFlow API is updated in version 1.0, so programs written for earlier versions of TensorFlow may need to be updated. The TensorFlow v1.0.0 release notes describe the changes and link to a conversion tool. See: https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/releases/tag/v1.0.0

The TensorFlow team provides example models on GitHub at https://github.com/tensorflow/models Some of the example models may not be updated for the new API.

For the inception/imagenet_train example:

Additional features

The PowerAI TensorFlow packages include TensorBoard. See: https://www.tensorflow.org/get_started/summaries_and_tensorboard

The TensorFlow 1.0 package also includes NCCL support, and experimental suppport for XLA JIT compilation. See: https://www.tensorflow.org/versions/master/experimental/xla/

TensorFlow versions

This PowerAI release includes packages for both TensorFlow versions 0.12 and 1.0 The versions may behave differently (e.g. in performance or convergence) with different models.

TensorFlow version 1.0 will be installed by default. TensorFlow 0.12 can be installed as follows:

Getting started with Torch

The Torch Cheatsheet contains lots of info for people new to Torch, including tutorials and examples.

The Torch project has a demos repository at https://github.com/torch/demos

Tutorials can be found at https://github.com/torch/tutorials

Visit Torch's website for the latest from Torch.

Torch samples and examples

The Torch package includes example scripts and samples models. A script is provided to copy the sample content into a specified directory:

    $ torch-install-samples <somedir>

Among these are the Imagenet examples from https://github.com/soumith/imagenet-multiGPU.torch with a few modifications.

Extending Torch with additional Lua rocks

The Torch package includes several Lua rocks useful for creating Deep Learning applications. Additional Lua rocks can be installed locally to extend functionality. For example a rock providing NCCL bindings can be installed by:

    $ source /opt/DL/torch/bin/torch-activate
    $ source /opt/DL/nccl/bin/nccl-activate

    $ luarocks install --local --deps-mode=all "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ngimel/nccl.torch/master/nccl-scm-1.rockspec"
    ...
    nccl scm-1 is now built and installed in /home/user/.luarocks/ (license: BSD)

    $ luajit
    LuaJIT 2.1.0-beta1 -- Copyright (C) 2005-2015 Mike Pall. http://luajit.org/
    JIT: OFF
    > require 'torch'
    > require 'nccl'
    >

Getting started with Theano

Here are some links to help you get started with Theano:

Visit Theano's website for the latest from Theano.

Getting started with DIGITS

The first time it's run digits-activate will create a .digits subdirectory containing the DIGITS jobs directory, as well as the digits.log file

Multiple instances of the DIGITS server can be run at once, including by different users, but users may need to set the network port number to avoid conflicts.

To start DIGITS server with default port (5000):

    $ digits-devserver

To start DIGITS server with specific port

    $ digits-devserver -p <port_num>

NVIDIA's DIGITS site has more information about DIGITS.

The DIGITS Getting Started guide describes how to train a network model to classify the MNIST hand-written digits dataset.

Additional DIGITS examples are available at https://github.com/NVIDIA/DIGITS/tree/master/examples

Using Torch with DIGITS

Using Torch with DIGITS requires additional packages that are not part of this PowerAI release distribution.

Torch can be made to work with DIGITS as follows:

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