For example, in freeze training [17][18], neural networks usually converge from the bottom-up (i.e., not all layers need to be trained all the way through training). Figure 2 shows an example of how weights gradually stabilize during training in this approach. This observation motivates us to utilize freeze training for distributed training of Transformer models to accelerate training by dynamically allocating resources to focus on a shrinking set of active layers. Such a layer freezing strategy is especially pertinent to pipeline parallelism, as excluding consecutive bottom layers from the pipeline can reduce computation, memory, and communication overhead.



Figure 3. The process of PipeTransformer’s automated and elastic pipelining to accelerate distributed training of Transformer models
