[Docs] Simple example of using MLX distributed (#2973)

Co-authored-by: Awni Hannun <[email protected]>
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stef
2026-01-28 17:14:56 -08:00
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co-authored by Awni Hannun
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commit c86a9bced1
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@@ -117,89 +117,11 @@ The following examples aim to clarify the backend initialization logic in MLX:
world_ring = mx.distributed.init(backend="ring")
world_any = mx.distributed.init() # same as MPI because it was initialized first!
.. _training_example:
Distributed Program Examples
----------------------------
Training Example
----------------
In this section we will adapt an MLX training loop to support data parallel
distributed training. Namely, we will average the gradients across a set of
hosts before applying them to the model.
Our training loop looks like the following code snippet if we omit the model,
dataset and optimizer initialization.
.. code:: python
model = ...
optimizer = ...
dataset = ...
def step(model, x, y):
loss, grads = loss_grad_fn(model, x, y)
optimizer.update(model, grads)
return loss
for x, y in dataset:
loss = step(model, x, y)
mx.eval(loss, model.parameters())
All we have to do to average the gradients across machines is perform an
:func:`all_sum` and divide by the size of the :class:`Group`. Namely we
have to :func:`mlx.utils.tree_map` the gradients with following function.
.. code:: python
def all_avg(x):
return mx.distributed.all_sum(x) / mx.distributed.init().size()
Putting everything together our training loop step looks as follows with
everything else remaining the same.
.. code:: python
from mlx.utils import tree_map
def all_reduce_grads(grads):
N = mx.distributed.init().size()
if N == 1:
return grads
return tree_map(
lambda x: mx.distributed.all_sum(x) / N,
grads
)
def step(model, x, y):
loss, grads = loss_grad_fn(model, x, y)
grads = all_reduce_grads(grads) # <--- This line was added
optimizer.update(model, grads)
return loss
Utilizing ``nn.average_gradients``
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Although the code example above works correctly; it performs one communication
per gradient. It is significantly more efficient to aggregate several gradients
together and perform fewer communication steps.
This is the purpose of :func:`mlx.nn.average_gradients`. The final code looks
almost identical to the example above:
.. code:: python
model = ...
optimizer = ...
dataset = ...
def step(model, x, y):
loss, grads = loss_grad_fn(model, x, y)
grads = mx.nn.average_gradients(grads) # <---- This line was added
optimizer.update(model, grads)
return loss
for x, y in dataset:
loss = step(model, x, y)
mx.eval(loss, model.parameters())
- :ref:`Data Parallelism <data_parallelism>`
- :ref:`Tensor Parallelism <tensor_parallelism>`
.. _ring_section: