mmocr/docs/en/training.md

# Training

## Training on a Single Machine


You can use `tools/train.py` to train a model in a single machine with one or more GPUs.

Here is the full usage of the script:

```shell
python tools/train.py ${CONFIG_FILE} [ARGS]
```


| ARGS      | Type                  |  Description                                                 |
| -------------- | --------------------- |  ----------------------------------------------------------- |
| `--work-dir`          | str                   |  The target folder to save logs and checkpoints. Defaults to `./work_dirs`. |
| `--load-from`   | str                   |  The checkpoint file to load from. |
| `--resume-from`        | bool |  The checkpoint file to resume the training from.|
| `--no-validate` | bool |  Disable checkpoint evaluation during training. Defaults to `False`. |
| `--gpus`       | int                   |  Numbers of gpus to use. Only applicable to non-distributed training. |
| `--gpu-ids`       | int*N                   | A list of GPU ids to use. Only applicable to non-distributed training. |
| `--seed`      | int                   |  Random seed. |
| `--deterministic`       | bool                   |  Whether to set deterministic options for CUDNN backend. |
| `--cfg-options`       | str                   |          Override some settings in the used config, the key-value pair in xxx=yyy format will be merged into the config file. If the value to be overwritten is a list, it should be of the form of either key="[a,b]" or key=a,b. The argument also allows nested list/tuple values, e.g. key="[(a,b),(c,d)]". Note that the quotation marks are necessary and that no white space is allowed.|
| `--launcher`       | 'none', 'pytorch', 'slurm', 'mpi' |  Options for job launcher. |
| `--local_rank`       | int                   |Used for distributed training.|
| `--mc-config`       | str                   |Memory cache config for image loading speed-up during training.|


## Training on Multiple Machines

MMOCR implements **distributed** training with `MMDistributedDataParallel`. (Please refer to [datasets.md](datasets.md) to prepare your datasets)

```shell
[PORT={PORT}] ./tools/dist_train.sh ${CONFIG_FILE} ${WORK_DIR} ${GPU_NUM} [PY_ARGS]
```

| Arguments      | Type                  |  Description                                                 |
| -------------- | --------------------- |  ----------------------------------------------------------- |
| `PORT`          | int                   |  The master port that will be used by the machine with rank 0. Defaults to 29500. **Note:** If you are launching multiple distrbuted training jobs on a single machine, you need to specify different ports for each job to avoid port conflicts.|
| `PY_ARGS`   | str                   |  Arguments to be parsed by `tools/train.py`.         |



## Training with Slurm

If you run MMOCR on a cluster managed with [Slurm](https://slurm.schedmd.com/), you can use the script `slurm_train.sh`.

```shell
[GPUS=${GPUS}] [GPUS_PER_NODE=${GPUS_PER_NODE}] [CPUS_PER_TASK=${CPUS_PER_TASK}] [SRUN_ARGS=${SRUN_ARGS}] ./tools/slurm_train.sh ${PARTITION} ${JOB_NAME} ${CONFIG_FILE} ${WORK_DIR} [PY_ARGS]
```

| Arguments      | Type                  |  Description                                                 |
| -------------- | --------------------- |  ----------------------------------------------------------- |
| `GPUS`          | int                   |  The number of GPUs to be used by this task. Defaults to 8. |
| `GPUS_PER_NODE`   | int                   |  The number of GPUs to be allocated per node. Defaults to 8. |
| `CPUS_PER_TASK`   | int                   |  The number of CPUs to be allocated per task. Defaults to 5. |
| `SRUN_ARGS`        | str                   |  Arguments to be parsed by srun. Available options can be found [here](https://slurm.schedmd.com/srun.html). |
| `PY_ARGS`   | str                   |  Arguments to be parsed by `tools/train.py`.         |

Here is an example of using 8 GPUs to train a text detection model on the dev partition.

```shell
./tools/slurm_train.sh dev psenet-ic15 configs/textdet/psenet/psenet_r50_fpnf_sbn_1x_icdar2015.py /nfs/xxxx/psenet-ic15
```

### Running Multiple Training Jobs on a Single Machine
If you are launching multiple training jobs on a single machine with Slurm, you may need to modify the port in configs to avoid communication conflicts.

For example, in `config1.py`,
```python
dist_params = dict(backend='nccl', port=29500)
```

In `config2.py`,
```python
dist_params = dict(backend='nccl', port=29501)
```

Then you can launch two jobs with `config1.py` ang `config2.py`.

```shell
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0,1,2,3 GPUS=4 ./tools/slurm_train.sh ${PARTITION} ${JOB_NAME} config1.py ${WORK_DIR}
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=4,5,6,7 GPUS=4 ./tools/slurm_train.sh ${PARTITION} ${JOB_NAME} config2.py ${WORK_DIR}
```

## Commonly Used Training Configs

Here we list some configs that are frequently used during training for quick reference.

```python
total_epochs = 1200
data = dict(
    # Note: User can configure general settings of train, val and test dataloader by specifying them here. However, their values can be overridden in dataloader's config.
    samples_per_gpu=8, # Batch size per GPU
    workers_per_gpu=4, # Number of workers to process data for each GPU
    train_dataloader=dict(samples_per_gpu=10, drop_last=True),   # Batch size = 10, workers_per_gpu = 4
    val_dataloader=dict(samples_per_gpu=6, workers_per_gpu=1),  # Batch size = 6, workers_per_gpu = 1
    test_dataloader=dict(workers_per_gpu=16),  # Batch size = 8, workers_per_gpu = 16
    ...
)
# Evaluation
evaluation = dict(interval=1, by_epoch=True)  # Evaluate the model every epoch
# Saving and Logging
checkpoint_config = dict(interval=1)  # Save a checkpoint every epoch
log_config = dict(
    interval=5,  # Print out the model's performance every 5 iterations
    hooks=[
        dict(type='TextLoggerHook')
    ])
# Optimizer
optimizer = dict(type='SGD', lr=0.02, momentum=0.9, weight_decay=0.0001)  # Supports all optimizers in PyTorch and shares the same parameters
optimizer_config = dict(grad_clip=None)  # Parameters for the optimizer hook. See https://github.com/open-mmlab/mmcv/blob/master/mmcv/runner/hooks/optimizer.py for implementation details
# Learning policy
lr_config = dict(policy='poly', power=0.9, min_lr=1e-7, by_epoch=True)
```