title: Reinforcement Learning through Asynchronous Advantage Actor-Critic on a GPU
abstract: We introduce a hybrid CPU/GPU version of the Asynchronous Advantage Actor-Critic (A3C) algorithm, currently the state-of-the-art method in reinforcement learning for various gaming tasks. We analyze its computational traits and concentrate on aspects critical to leveraging the GPU's computational power. We introduce a system of queues and a dynamic scheduling strategy, potentially helpful for other asynchronous algorithms as well. Our hybrid CPU/GPU version of A3C, based on TensorFlow, achieves a significant speed up compared to a CPU implementation; we make it publicly available to other researchers at <a href="https://github.com/NVlabs/GA3C">https://github.com/NVlabs/GA3C</a>.
authors: Mohammad Babaeizadeh Iuri Frosio Stephen Tyree Jason Clemons Jan Kautz
hIndex: Jan Kautz 74