Phantora: Maximizing Code Reuse in Simulation-based Machine Learning System Performance Estimation

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Qin, Jianxing, Chen, Jingrong, Kong, Xinhao, Wu, Yongji, Yuan, Tianjun, Luo, Liang, Wang, Zhaodong, Zhang, Ying, Chen, Tingjun, Lebeck, Alvin R., Zhuo, Danyang
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Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Qin, Jianxing
Chen, Jingrong
Kong, Xinhao
Wu, Yongji
Yuan, Tianjun
Luo, Liang
Wang, Zhaodong
Zhang, Ying
Chen, Tingjun
Lebeck, Alvin R.
Zhuo, Danyang
author_facet Qin, Jianxing
Chen, Jingrong
Kong, Xinhao
Wu, Yongji
Yuan, Tianjun
Luo, Liang
Wang, Zhaodong
Zhang, Ying
Chen, Tingjun
Lebeck, Alvin R.
Zhuo, Danyang
contents Modern machine learning (ML) training workloads place substantial demands on both computational and communication resources. Consequently, accurate performance estimation has become increasingly critical for guiding system design decisions, such as the selection of parallelization strategies, cluster configurations, and hardware provisioning. Existing simulation-based performance estimation requires reimplementing the ML framework in a simulator, which demands significant manual effort and is hard to maintain as ML frameworks evolve rapidly. This paper introduces Phantora, a hybrid GPU cluster simulator designed for performance estimation of ML training workloads. Phantora executes unmodified ML frameworks as is within a distributed, containerized environment. Each container emulates the behavior of a GPU server in a large-scale cluster, while Phantora intercepts and simulates GPU- and communication-related operations to provide high-fidelity performance estimation. We call this approach hybrid simulation of ML systems, in contrast to traditional methods that simulate static workloads. The primary advantage of hybrid simulation is that it allows direct reuse of ML framework source code in simulation, avoiding the need for reimplementation. Our evaluation shows that Phantora provides accuracy comparable to static workload simulation while supporting three state-of-the-art LLM training frameworks out-of-the-box. In addition, Phantora operates on a single GPU, eliminating the need for the resource-intensive trace collection and workload extraction steps required by traditional trace-based simulators. Phantora is open-sourced at https://github.com/QDelta/Phantora.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_01616
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Phantora: Maximizing Code Reuse in Simulation-based Machine Learning System Performance Estimation
Qin, Jianxing
Chen, Jingrong
Kong, Xinhao
Wu, Yongji
Yuan, Tianjun
Luo, Liang
Wang, Zhaodong
Zhang, Ying
Chen, Tingjun
Lebeck, Alvin R.
Zhuo, Danyang
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Machine Learning
Performance
Modern machine learning (ML) training workloads place substantial demands on both computational and communication resources. Consequently, accurate performance estimation has become increasingly critical for guiding system design decisions, such as the selection of parallelization strategies, cluster configurations, and hardware provisioning. Existing simulation-based performance estimation requires reimplementing the ML framework in a simulator, which demands significant manual effort and is hard to maintain as ML frameworks evolve rapidly. This paper introduces Phantora, a hybrid GPU cluster simulator designed for performance estimation of ML training workloads. Phantora executes unmodified ML frameworks as is within a distributed, containerized environment. Each container emulates the behavior of a GPU server in a large-scale cluster, while Phantora intercepts and simulates GPU- and communication-related operations to provide high-fidelity performance estimation. We call this approach hybrid simulation of ML systems, in contrast to traditional methods that simulate static workloads. The primary advantage of hybrid simulation is that it allows direct reuse of ML framework source code in simulation, avoiding the need for reimplementation. Our evaluation shows that Phantora provides accuracy comparable to static workload simulation while supporting three state-of-the-art LLM training frameworks out-of-the-box. In addition, Phantora operates on a single GPU, eliminating the need for the resource-intensive trace collection and workload extraction steps required by traditional trace-based simulators. Phantora is open-sourced at https://github.com/QDelta/Phantora.
title Phantora: Maximizing Code Reuse in Simulation-based Machine Learning System Performance Estimation
topic Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Machine Learning
Performance
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.01616