Memory leak problem with new API fluid

[TomorrowIsAnOtherDay]

With new API fluid, I tried to re-produce some models written in Tensorflow. But the memory usage of fluid program were rising all the time, While the program of TF was OK.

Here is my code

[QiJune]

You can run fluid program with following commands to track the memory usage:

FLAGS_benchmark=true GLOG_vmodule=executor=2 GLOG_logtostderr=1 python train.py

It will print accurate memory usage after each operator running.

[TomorrowIsAnOtherDay]

Thanks for your comment.
With debug command I got memory usage of program

[TomorrowIsAnOtherDay]

Thanks to @QiJune 's advice.
After removing prune, memory usage is ok.
But why using prune would cause memory leak?

[dzhwinter]

Our design is fresh new and totally different from tensorflow. We do not have a concept of graph of operators, we only have the program, so the dependency analysis is more complicated. For this bug you encountered, prune return a different program (some part of the main program). Maybe there is some variable referenced cannot be deleted in time.

[TomorrowIsAnOtherDay]

Memory leak problem wasn't solved after removing prune, but it would decrease the speed of it.

[TomorrowIsAnOtherDay]

It can be re-produced by running the official model code ：）
https://github.com/PaddlePaddle/models/tree/develop/fluid/policy_gradient
@QiJune @dzhwinter

[dzhwinter]

Thanks for the reporting. We are looking into the issue.

[QiJune]

@TomorrowIsAnOtherDay Yes, I have reproduce the problem.
Prune will greatly increase memory. We should not use prune.
And after remove prune, memory will increase very slowly.

[TomorrowIsAnOtherDay]

@dzhwinter @QiJune
Any fresh developments？

[dzhwinter]

I have double the operators involved, there are no memory issues inside. Currently, I suspect that there is some variable referenced in pybind is not released, but still not convinced by the experiment yet.

[dzhwinter]

Here are some clues I find today. I run the reinforcement learning demo in models and tracked the buddy allocator used memory, and find that the GPU memory cost didn't increase even further after 2000 epochs. In detail, the memory cost increase in a wave-like way in 0-2000 epochs, from 2000-10000 epochs, it stays at a stable number and doesn't change anymore.

But the same time, I tracked the python process memory in holding, find it always increase by small numbers.

  714 root      20   0 38.454g 1.355g 345428 R 100.0  0.4   0:28.36 python
  714 root      20   0 38.461g 1.362g 345428 R 100.3  0.4   0:31.41 python
  714 root      20   0 38.480g 1.380g 345428 R 100.0  0.4   0:34.46 python
  714 root      20   0 38.483g 1.384g 345428 R 100.0  0.4   0:37.51 python
  714 root      20   0 38.489g 1.390g 345428 R 100.0  0.4   0:40.55 python
  714 root      20   0 38.489g 1.391g 345428 R 100.0  0.4   0:43.60 python
  714 root      20   0 38.491g 1.392g 345428 R 100.3  0.4   0:46.65 python
  714 root      20   0 38.495g 1.396g 345428 R 100.0  0.4   0:49.70 python
  714 root      20   0 38.498g 1.399g 345428 R 100.0  0.4   0:52.74 python
  714 root      20   0 38.505g 1.406g 345428 R 100.0  0.4   0:55.79 python
  714 root      20   0 38.507g 1.408g 345428 R 100.3  0.4   0:58.84 python
  714 root      20   0 38.510g 1.411g 345428 R  99.7  0.4   1:01.88 python
  714 root      20   0 38.510g 1.412g 345428 R 100.0  0.4   1:04.93 python
  714 root      20   0 38.513g 1.414g 345428 R 100.3  0.4   1:07.98 python

[dzhwinter]

In the very beginning, I also doubt that maybe there is some circle referenced Python object cannot be deleted in-time

[TomorrowIsAnOtherDay]

Thanks for your time：）

[dzhwinter]

To draw a more concrete conclusion, I added some new features and has done some experiments based the features as below.
If user set the FLAGS FLAGS_fraction_of_gpu_memory_to_use=0.0

Paddle/paddle/fluid/platform/gpu_info.cc

Line 21 in 8f87286

DEFINE_double(fraction_of_gpu_memory_to_use, 0.92,

, then the buddy_allocator will be disabled. Then we can track the GPU memory cost by nvidia-smi -l 1. If you run the model on a GPU node. Needs to notice that all the fluid memory are managed by Tensor. Therefore, if the GPU memory cost is not increased during the training, it will convince us all the Tensor is deleted in time, and vice visa.

Experiment https://github.com/PaddlePaddle/models/blob/develop/fluid/policy_gradient/README.md
This script adds the fluid objects/ variables reference counting inside. You can try it by replace the default brain.py.
https://gist.github.com/dzhwinter/f7bfb5ad693fdc277b85b339cf719a8d

configuration

FLAGS_fraction_of_gpu_memory_to_use=0.0 FLAGS_benchmark=true python policy_gradient/run.py --device=GPU

Then we track cpu memory with top, and gpu memory with nvidia-smi. The gpu memory stay 297M and waves between batches(python garbage collection). The cpu memory increases slowly as
previous comment shows.
It is interesting that showing variable reference is not changed either.

{}
{'fc_0.b_0@GRAD': 1, 'fc_0.tmp_0@GRAD': 1, 'cross_entropy_0.tmp_0': 1, 'cross_entropy_0.tmp_0@GRAD': 1, 'vt': 1, 'fc_1.b_0': 1, 'reduce_mean_0.tmp_0': 1, 'fc_1.b_0@GRAD': 1, 'elementwise_mul_0.tmp_0@GRAD': 1, 'acts': 1, 'fc_0.b_0': 1, 'reduce_mean_0.tmp_0@GRAD': 1, 'fc_1.w_0@GRAD': 1, 'fc_0.tmp_2': 1, 'fc_0.tmp_0': 1, 'fc_0.tmp_1': 1, 'fc_1.w_0': 1, 'fc_0.w_0': 1, 'elementwise_mul_0.tmp_0': 1, 'fc_1.tmp_0@GRAD': 1, 'fc_1.tmp_2@GRAD': 1, 'fc_0.w_0@GRAD': 1, 'fc_1.tmp_2': 1, 'fc_1.tmp_1': 1, 'fc_1.tmp_0': 1, 'learning_rate_0': 1, 'fc_1.tmp_1@GRAD': 1, 'fc_0.tmp_2@GRAD': 1, 'fc_0.tmp_1@GRAD': 1, 'obs': 1}
{'fc_0.b_0@GRAD': 1, 'fc_0.tmp_0@GRAD': 1, 'cross_entropy_0.tmp_0': 1, 'cross_entropy_0.tmp_0@GRAD': 1, 'vt': 1, 'fc_1.b_0': 1, 'reduce_mean_0.tmp_0': 1, 'fc_1.b_0@GRAD': 1, 'elementwise_mul_0.tmp_0@GRAD': 1, 'acts': 1, 'fc_0.b_0': 1, 'reduce_mean_0.tmp_0@GRAD': 1, 'fc_1.w_0@GRAD': 1, 'fc_0.tmp_2': 1, 'fc_0.tmp_0': 1, 'fc_0.tmp_1': 1, 'learning_rate_0': 1, 'fc_0.w_0': 1, 'elementwise_mul_0.tmp_0': 1, 'fc_1.tmp_0@GRAD': 1, 'fc_1.tmp_2@GRAD': 1, 'fc_0.w_0@GRAD': 1, 'fc_1.tmp_2': 1, 'fc_1.tmp_1': 1, 'fc_1.tmp_0': 1, 'fc_1.w_0': 1, 'fc_1.tmp_1@GRAD': 1, 'fc_0.tmp_2@GRAD': 1, 'fc_0.tmp_1@GRAD': 1, 'obs': 1}