Equation 20 · The Network Is the Computer Again
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The bandwidth term converges to 2n as p grows — it stops depending on the number of participants — which is why the ring is the bandwidth-optimal choice for large messages. NVIDIA’s own performance documentation encodes exactly this factor, defining the bus bandwidth of an all-reduce by applying a correction of 2(p-1)/p to the naive size-over-time figure, on the reasoning that an all-reduce requires 2(p-1) data transfers across p links; all-gather, reduce-scatter and all-to-all get a factor of (p-1)/p , while broadcast and reduce get a factor of one because everything must pass through a single root [ 3 ] . The point of the correction is that bus bandwidth should stay roughly constant…
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The bandwidth term converges to 2n as p grows — it stops depending on the number of participants — which is why the ring is the bandwidth-optimal choice for large messages. NVIDIA’s own performance documentation encodes exactly this factor, defining the bus bandwidth of an all-reduce by applying a correction of 2(p-1)/p to the naive size-over-time figure, on the reasoning that an all-reduce requires 2(p-1) data transfers across p links; all-gather, reduce-scatter and all-to-all get a factor of (p-1)/p , while broadcast and reduce get a factor of one because everything must pass through a single root [ 3 ] . The point of the correction is that bus bandwidth should stay roughly constant as ranks increase, so it can be compared against hardware peak.
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