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<h1 class="relative group"><a id="instantiating-a-big-model" class="header-link block pr-1.5 text-lg no-hover:hidden with-hover:absolute with-hover:p-1.5 with-hover:opacity-0 with-hover:group-hover:opacity-100 with-hover:right-full" href="#instantiating-a-big-model"><span><svg class="" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" aria-hidden="true" role="img" width="1em" height="1em" preserveAspectRatio="xMidYMid meet" viewBox="0 0 256 256"><path d="M167.594 88.393a8.001 8.001 0 0 1 0 11.314l-67.882 67.882a8 8 0 1 1-11.314-11.315l67.882-67.881a8.003 8.003 0 0 1 11.314 0zm-28.287 84.86l-28.284 28.284a40 40 0 0 1-56.567-56.567l28.284-28.284a8 8 0 0 0-11.315-11.315l-28.284 28.284a56 56 0 0 0 79.196 79.197l28.285-28.285a8 8 0 1 0-11.315-11.314zM212.852 43.14a56.002 56.002 0 0 0-79.196 0l-28.284 28.284a8 8 0 1 0 11.314 11.314l28.284-28.284a40 40 0 0 1 56.568 56.567l-28.285 28.285a8 8 0 0 0 11.315 11.314l28.284-28.284a56.065 56.065 0 0 0 0-79.196z" fill="currentColor"></path></svg></span></a>
	<span>Instantiating a big model
	</span></h1>

<p>When you want to use a very big pretrained model, one challenge is to minimize the use of the RAM. The usual workflow
from PyTorch is:</p>
<ol><li>Create your model with random weights.</li>
<li>Load your pretrained weights.</li>
<li>Put those pretrained weights in your random model.</li></ol>
<p>Step 1 and 2 both require a full version of the model in memory, which is not a problem in most cases, but if your model starts weighing several GigaBytes, those two copies can make you got our of RAM. Even worse, if you are using <code>torch.distributed</code> to launch a distributed training, each process will load the pretrained model and store these two copies in RAM.</p>


<div class="course-tip  bg-gradient-to-br dark:bg-gradient-to-r before:border-green-500 dark:before:border-green-800 from-green-50 dark:from-gray-900 to-white dark:to-gray-950 border border-green-50 text-green-700 dark:text-gray-400"><p>Note that the randomly created model is initialized with “empty” tensors, which take the space in memory without filling it (thus the random values are whatever was in this chunk of memory at a given time). The random initialization following the appropriate distribution for the kind of model/parameters instatiated (like a normal distribution for instance) is only performed after step 3 on the non-initialized weights, to be as fast as possible! </p></div>
<p>In this guide, we explore the solutions Transformers offer to deal with this issue. Note that this is an area of active development, so the APIs explained here may change slightly in the future.</p>
<h2 class="relative group"><a id="sharded-checkpoints" class="header-link block pr-1.5 text-lg no-hover:hidden with-hover:absolute with-hover:p-1.5 with-hover:opacity-0 with-hover:group-hover:opacity-100 with-hover:right-full" href="#sharded-checkpoints"><span><svg class="" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" aria-hidden="true" role="img" width="1em" height="1em" preserveAspectRatio="xMidYMid meet" viewBox="0 0 256 256"><path d="M167.594 88.393a8.001 8.001 0 0 1 0 11.314l-67.882 67.882a8 8 0 1 1-11.314-11.315l67.882-67.881a8.003 8.003 0 0 1 11.314 0zm-28.287 84.86l-28.284 28.284a40 40 0 0 1-56.567-56.567l28.284-28.284a8 8 0 0 0-11.315-11.315l-28.284 28.284a56 56 0 0 0 79.196 79.197l28.285-28.285a8 8 0 1 0-11.315-11.314zM212.852 43.14a56.002 56.002 0 0 0-79.196 0l-28.284 28.284a8 8 0 1 0 11.314 11.314l28.284-28.284a40 40 0 0 1 56.568 56.567l-28.285 28.285a8 8 0 0 0 11.315 11.314l28.284-28.284a56.065 56.065 0 0 0 0-79.196z" fill="currentColor"></path></svg></span></a>
	<span>Sharded checkpoints
	</span></h2>

<p>Since version 4.18.0, model checkpoints that end up taking more than 10GB of space are automatically sharded in smaller pieces. In terms of having one single checkpoint when you do <code>model.save_pretrained(save_dir)</code>, you will end up with several partial checkpoints (each of which being of size &lt; 10GB) and an index that maps parameter names to the files they are stored in.</p>
<p>You can control the maximum size before sharding with the <code>max_shard_size</code> parameter, so for the sake of an example, we’ll use a normal-size models with a small shard size: let’s take a traditional BERT model.</p>

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	<pre><!-- HTML_TAG_START --><span class="hljs-keyword">from</span> transformers <span class="hljs-keyword">import</span> AutoModel

model = AutoModel.from_pretrained(<span class="hljs-string">&quot;bert-base-cased&quot;</span>)<!-- HTML_TAG_END --></pre></div>
<p>If you save it using <a href="/docs/transformers/pr_17548/en/main_classes/model#transformers.PreTrainedModel.save_pretrained">save_pretrained()</a>, you will get a new folder with two files: the config of the model and its weights:</p>

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	<pre><!-- HTML_TAG_START --><span class="hljs-meta">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="hljs-keyword">import</span> os
<span class="hljs-meta">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="hljs-keyword">import</span> tempfile

<span class="hljs-meta">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="hljs-keyword">with</span> tempfile.TemporaryDirectory() <span class="hljs-keyword">as</span> tmp_dir:
<span class="hljs-meta">... </span>    model.save_pretrained(tmp_dir)
<span class="hljs-meta">... </span>    <span class="hljs-built_in">print</span>(<span class="hljs-built_in">sorted</span>(os.listdir(tmp_dir)))
[<span class="hljs-string">&#x27;config.json&#x27;</span>, <span class="hljs-string">&#x27;pytorch_model.bin&#x27;</span>]<!-- HTML_TAG_END --></pre></div>
<p>Now let’s use a maximum shard size of 200MB:</p>

	<div class="code-block relative"><div class="absolute top-2.5 right-4"><button class="inline-flex items-center relative text-sm focus:text-green-500 cursor-pointer focus:outline-none transition duration-200 ease-in-out opacity-0 mx-0.5   text-gray-600 " title="code excerpt" type="button"><svg class="" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" aria-hidden="true" fill="currentColor" focusable="false" role="img" width="1em" height="1em" preserveAspectRatio="xMidYMid meet" viewBox="0 0 32 32"><path d="M28,10V28H10V10H28m0-2H10a2,2,0,0,0-2,2V28a2,2,0,0,0,2,2H28a2,2,0,0,0,2-2V10a2,2,0,0,0-2-2Z" transform="translate(0)"></path><path d="M4,18H2V4A2,2,0,0,1,4,2H18V4H4Z" transform="translate(0)"></path><rect fill="none" width="32" height="32"></rect></svg>
	<div class="absolute pointer-events-none transition-opacity bg-black text-white py-1 px-2 leading-tight rounded font-normal shadow left-1/2 top-full transform -translate-x-1/2 translate-y-2 opacity-0"><div class="absolute bottom-full left-1/2 transform -translate-x-1/2 w-0 h-0 border-black border-4 border-t-0" style="border-left-color: transparent; border-right-color: transparent; "></div>
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	<pre><!-- HTML_TAG_START --><span class="hljs-meta">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="hljs-keyword">with</span> tempfile.TemporaryDirectory() <span class="hljs-keyword">as</span> tmp_dir:
<span class="hljs-meta">... </span>    model.save_pretrained(tmp_dir, max_shard_size=<span class="hljs-string">&quot;200MB&quot;</span>)
<span class="hljs-meta">... </span>    <span class="hljs-built_in">print</span>(<span class="hljs-built_in">sorted</span>(os.listdir(tmp_dir)))
[<span class="hljs-string">&#x27;config.json&#x27;</span>, <span class="hljs-string">&#x27;pytorch_model-00001-of-00003.bin&#x27;</span>, <span class="hljs-string">&#x27;pytorch_model-00002-of-00003.bin&#x27;</span>, <span class="hljs-string">&#x27;pytorch_model-00003-of-00003.bin&#x27;</span>, <span class="hljs-string">&#x27;pytorch_model.bin.index.json&#x27;</span>]<!-- HTML_TAG_END --></pre></div>
<p>On top of the configuration of the model, we see three different weights files, and an <code>index.json</code> file which is our index. A checkpoint like this can be fully reloaded using the <a href="/docs/transformers/pr_17548/en/main_classes/model#transformers.PreTrainedModel.from_pretrained">from_pretrained()</a> method:</p>

	<div class="code-block relative"><div class="absolute top-2.5 right-4"><button class="inline-flex items-center relative text-sm focus:text-green-500 cursor-pointer focus:outline-none transition duration-200 ease-in-out opacity-0 mx-0.5   text-gray-600 " title="code excerpt" type="button"><svg class="" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" aria-hidden="true" fill="currentColor" focusable="false" role="img" width="1em" height="1em" preserveAspectRatio="xMidYMid meet" viewBox="0 0 32 32"><path d="M28,10V28H10V10H28m0-2H10a2,2,0,0,0-2,2V28a2,2,0,0,0,2,2H28a2,2,0,0,0,2-2V10a2,2,0,0,0-2-2Z" transform="translate(0)"></path><path d="M4,18H2V4A2,2,0,0,1,4,2H18V4H4Z" transform="translate(0)"></path><rect fill="none" width="32" height="32"></rect></svg>
	<div class="absolute pointer-events-none transition-opacity bg-black text-white py-1 px-2 leading-tight rounded font-normal shadow left-1/2 top-full transform -translate-x-1/2 translate-y-2 opacity-0"><div class="absolute bottom-full left-1/2 transform -translate-x-1/2 w-0 h-0 border-black border-4 border-t-0" style="border-left-color: transparent; border-right-color: transparent; "></div>
	Copied</div></button></div>
	<pre><!-- HTML_TAG_START --><span class="hljs-meta">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="hljs-keyword">with</span> tempfile.TemporaryDirectory() <span class="hljs-keyword">as</span> tmp_dir:
<span class="hljs-meta">... </span>    model.save_pretrained(tmp_dir, max_shard_size=<span class="hljs-string">&quot;200MB&quot;</span>)
<span class="hljs-meta">... </span>    new_model = AutoModel.from_pretrained(tmp_dir)<!-- HTML_TAG_END --></pre></div>
<p>The main advantage of doing this for big models is that during step 2 of the workflow shown above, each shard of the checkpoint is loaded after the previous one, capping the memory usage in RAM to the model size plus the size of the biggest shard.</p>
<p>Beind the scenes, the index file is used to determine which keys are in the checkpoint, and where the corresponding weights are stored. We can load that index like any json and get a dictionary:</p>

	<div class="code-block relative"><div class="absolute top-2.5 right-4"><button class="inline-flex items-center relative text-sm focus:text-green-500 cursor-pointer focus:outline-none transition duration-200 ease-in-out opacity-0 mx-0.5   text-gray-600 " title="code excerpt" type="button"><svg class="" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" aria-hidden="true" fill="currentColor" focusable="false" role="img" width="1em" height="1em" preserveAspectRatio="xMidYMid meet" viewBox="0 0 32 32"><path d="M28,10V28H10V10H28m0-2H10a2,2,0,0,0-2,2V28a2,2,0,0,0,2,2H28a2,2,0,0,0,2-2V10a2,2,0,0,0-2-2Z" transform="translate(0)"></path><path d="M4,18H2V4A2,2,0,0,1,4,2H18V4H4Z" transform="translate(0)"></path><rect fill="none" width="32" height="32"></rect></svg>
	<div class="absolute pointer-events-none transition-opacity bg-black text-white py-1 px-2 leading-tight rounded font-normal shadow left-1/2 top-full transform -translate-x-1/2 translate-y-2 opacity-0"><div class="absolute bottom-full left-1/2 transform -translate-x-1/2 w-0 h-0 border-black border-4 border-t-0" style="border-left-color: transparent; border-right-color: transparent; "></div>
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	<pre><!-- HTML_TAG_START --><span class="hljs-meta">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="hljs-keyword">import</span> json

<span class="hljs-meta">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="hljs-keyword">with</span> tempfile.TemporaryDirectory() <span class="hljs-keyword">as</span> tmp_dir:
<span class="hljs-meta">... </span>    model.save_pretrained(tmp_dir, max_shard_size=<span class="hljs-string">&quot;200MB&quot;</span>)
<span class="hljs-meta">... </span>    <span class="hljs-keyword">with</span> <span class="hljs-built_in">open</span>(os.path.join(tmp_dir, <span class="hljs-string">&quot;pytorch_model.bin.index.json&quot;</span>), <span class="hljs-string">&quot;r&quot;</span>) <span class="hljs-keyword">as</span> f:
<span class="hljs-meta">... </span>        index = json.load(f)

<span class="hljs-meta">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="hljs-built_in">print</span>(index.keys())
dict_keys([<span class="hljs-string">&#x27;metadata&#x27;</span>, <span class="hljs-string">&#x27;weight_map&#x27;</span>])<!-- HTML_TAG_END --></pre></div>
<p>The metadata just consists of the total size of the model for now. We plan to add several other informations in the future:</p>

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	<pre><!-- HTML_TAG_START --><span class="hljs-meta">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span>index[<span class="hljs-string">&quot;metadata&quot;</span>]
{<span class="hljs-string">&#x27;total_size&#x27;</span>: <span class="hljs-number">433245184</span>}<!-- HTML_TAG_END --></pre></div>
<p>The weights map is the main part of this index, which maps each parameter name (as usually found in a PyTorch model <code>state_dict</code>) to the file it’s stored in:</p>

	<div class="code-block relative"><div class="absolute top-2.5 right-4"><button class="inline-flex items-center relative text-sm focus:text-green-500 cursor-pointer focus:outline-none transition duration-200 ease-in-out opacity-0 mx-0.5   text-gray-600 " title="code excerpt" type="button"><svg class="" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" aria-hidden="true" fill="currentColor" focusable="false" role="img" width="1em" height="1em" preserveAspectRatio="xMidYMid meet" viewBox="0 0 32 32"><path d="M28,10V28H10V10H28m0-2H10a2,2,0,0,0-2,2V28a2,2,0,0,0,2,2H28a2,2,0,0,0,2-2V10a2,2,0,0,0-2-2Z" transform="translate(0)"></path><path d="M4,18H2V4A2,2,0,0,1,4,2H18V4H4Z" transform="translate(0)"></path><rect fill="none" width="32" height="32"></rect></svg>
	<div class="absolute pointer-events-none transition-opacity bg-black text-white py-1 px-2 leading-tight rounded font-normal shadow left-1/2 top-full transform -translate-x-1/2 translate-y-2 opacity-0"><div class="absolute bottom-full left-1/2 transform -translate-x-1/2 w-0 h-0 border-black border-4 border-t-0" style="border-left-color: transparent; border-right-color: transparent; "></div>
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	<pre><!-- HTML_TAG_START --><span class="hljs-meta">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span>index[<span class="hljs-string">&quot;weight_map&quot;</span>]
{<span class="hljs-string">&#x27;embeddings.LayerNorm.bias&#x27;</span>: <span class="hljs-string">&#x27;pytorch_model-00001-of-00003.bin&#x27;</span>,
 <span class="hljs-string">&#x27;embeddings.LayerNorm.weight&#x27;</span>: <span class="hljs-string">&#x27;pytorch_model-00001-of-00003.bin&#x27;</span>,
 ...<!-- HTML_TAG_END --></pre></div>
<p>If you want to directly load such a sharded checkpoint inside a model without using <a href="/docs/transformers/pr_17548/en/main_classes/model#transformers.PreTrainedModel.from_pretrained">from_pretrained()</a> (like you would do <code>model.load_state_dict()</code> for a full checkpoint) you should use <a href="/docs/transformers/pr_17548/en/main_classes/model#transformers.modeling_utils.load_sharded_checkpoint">load_sharded_checkpoint()</a>:</p>

	<div class="code-block relative"><div class="absolute top-2.5 right-4"><button class="inline-flex items-center relative text-sm focus:text-green-500 cursor-pointer focus:outline-none transition duration-200 ease-in-out opacity-0 mx-0.5   text-gray-600 " title="code excerpt" type="button"><svg class="" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" aria-hidden="true" fill="currentColor" focusable="false" role="img" width="1em" height="1em" preserveAspectRatio="xMidYMid meet" viewBox="0 0 32 32"><path d="M28,10V28H10V10H28m0-2H10a2,2,0,0,0-2,2V28a2,2,0,0,0,2,2H28a2,2,0,0,0,2-2V10a2,2,0,0,0-2-2Z" transform="translate(0)"></path><path d="M4,18H2V4A2,2,0,0,1,4,2H18V4H4Z" transform="translate(0)"></path><rect fill="none" width="32" height="32"></rect></svg>
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	<pre><!-- HTML_TAG_START --><span class="hljs-meta">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="hljs-keyword">from</span> transformers.modeling_utils <span class="hljs-keyword">import</span> load_sharded_checkpoint

<span class="hljs-meta">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="hljs-keyword">with</span> tempfile.TemporaryDirectory() <span class="hljs-keyword">as</span> tmp_dir:
<span class="hljs-meta">... </span>    model.save_pretrained(tmp_dir, max_shard_size=<span class="hljs-string">&quot;200MB&quot;</span>)
<span class="hljs-meta">... </span>    load_sharded_checkpoint(model, tmp_dir)<!-- HTML_TAG_END --></pre></div>
<h2 class="relative group"><a id="low-memory-loading" class="header-link block pr-1.5 text-lg no-hover:hidden with-hover:absolute with-hover:p-1.5 with-hover:opacity-0 with-hover:group-hover:opacity-100 with-hover:right-full" href="#low-memory-loading"><span><svg class="" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" aria-hidden="true" role="img" width="1em" height="1em" preserveAspectRatio="xMidYMid meet" viewBox="0 0 256 256"><path d="M167.594 88.393a8.001 8.001 0 0 1 0 11.314l-67.882 67.882a8 8 0 1 1-11.314-11.315l67.882-67.881a8.003 8.003 0 0 1 11.314 0zm-28.287 84.86l-28.284 28.284a40 40 0 0 1-56.567-56.567l28.284-28.284a8 8 0 0 0-11.315-11.315l-28.284 28.284a56 56 0 0 0 79.196 79.197l28.285-28.285a8 8 0 1 0-11.315-11.314zM212.852 43.14a56.002 56.002 0 0 0-79.196 0l-28.284 28.284a8 8 0 1 0 11.314 11.314l28.284-28.284a40 40 0 0 1 56.568 56.567l-28.285 28.285a8 8 0 0 0 11.315 11.314l28.284-28.284a56.065 56.065 0 0 0 0-79.196z" fill="currentColor"></path></svg></span></a>
	<span>Low memory loading
	</span></h2>

<p>Sharded checkpoints reduce the memory usage during step 2 of the worflow mentioned above, but when loadin a pretrained model, why keep the random weights in memory? The option <code>low_cpu_mem_usage</code> will destroy the weights of the randomly initialized model, then progressively load the weights inside, then perform a random initialization for potential missing weights (if you are loadding a model with a newly initialized head for a fine-tuning task for instance).</p>
<p>It’s very easy to use, just add <code>low_cpu_mem_usage=True</code> to your call to <a href="/docs/transformers/pr_17548/en/main_classes/model#transformers.PreTrainedModel.from_pretrained">from_pretrained()</a>:</p>

	<div class="code-block relative"><div class="absolute top-2.5 right-4"><button class="inline-flex items-center relative text-sm focus:text-green-500 cursor-pointer focus:outline-none transition duration-200 ease-in-out opacity-0 mx-0.5   text-gray-600 " title="code excerpt" type="button"><svg class="" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" aria-hidden="true" fill="currentColor" focusable="false" role="img" width="1em" height="1em" preserveAspectRatio="xMidYMid meet" viewBox="0 0 32 32"><path d="M28,10V28H10V10H28m0-2H10a2,2,0,0,0-2,2V28a2,2,0,0,0,2,2H28a2,2,0,0,0,2-2V10a2,2,0,0,0-2-2Z" transform="translate(0)"></path><path d="M4,18H2V4A2,2,0,0,1,4,2H18V4H4Z" transform="translate(0)"></path><rect fill="none" width="32" height="32"></rect></svg>
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	Copied</div></button></div>
	<pre><!-- HTML_TAG_START --><span class="hljs-keyword">from</span> transformers <span class="hljs-keyword">import</span> AutoModelForSequenceClas

model = AutoModel.from_pretrained(<span class="hljs-string">&quot;bert-base-cased&quot;</span>, low_cpu_mem_usage=<span class="hljs-literal">True</span>)<!-- HTML_TAG_END --></pre></div>
<p>This can be used in conjunction with a sharded checkpoint.</p>


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