### bc-breaking for existing users of the private API:
- Existing policy functions must now change their return value to be [CheckpointPolicy](c0b40ab42e/torch/utils/checkpoint.py (L1204-L1230)) Enum instead of bool.
- To restore previous behavior, return `PREFER_RECOMPUTE` instead of `False` and `{PREFER,MUST}_SAVE` instead of `True` depending whether you prefer the compiler to override your policy.
- Policy function now accepts a `ctx` object instead of `mode` for its first argument.
- To restore previous behavior, `mode = "recompute" if ctx.is_recompute else "forward"`.
- Existing calls to `_pt2_selective_checkpoint_context_fn_gen` must be renamed to `create_selective_checkpoint_contexts `. The way you use the API remains the same. It would've been nice to do something different (not make the user have to use functools.partial?), but this was the easiest to compile (idk if this should actually be a constraint).
Related doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BKyizkZPdri9mHqdDOLAUpkI7SbbKfLHRFVVpK9ZWqo/edit
Memory considerations:
- As with the existing SAC, cached values are cleared upon first use.
- We error if the user wishes to backward a second time on a region forwarded with SAC enabled.
In-place:
- We use version counting to enforce that if any cached tensor has been mutated. In-place operations not mutating cached tensors are allowed.
- `allow_cache_entry_mutation=True` can be passed to disable this check (useful in the case of auto AC where the user is cleverly also saves the output of the in-place)
Randomness, views
- Currently in this PR, we don't do anything special for randomness or views, the author of the policy function is expected to handle them properly. (Would it would be beneficial to error? - we either want to save all or recompute all random tensors)
Tensor object preservation
- ~We guarantee that if a tensor does not requires grad, and it is saved, then what you get out is the same tensor object.~ UPDATE: We guarantee that if a tensor is of non-differentiable dtype AND it is not a view, and it is saved, then what you get out is the same tensor object. This is a nice guarantee for nested tensors which care about the object identity of of the offsets tensor.
Policy function
- Enum values are `{MUST,PREFER}_{SAVE,RECOMPUTE}` (bikeshed welcome). Alternatively there was `{SAVE,RECOMPUTE}_{NON_,}OVERRIDABLE`. The former was preferred bc it seemed clearer that two `MUST` clashing should error, versus it is ambiguous whether two `NON_OVERRIDABLE` being stacked should silently ignore or error.
- The usage of Enum today. There actually is NO API to stack SAC policies today. The only thing the Enum should matter for in the near term is the compiler. The stacking SAC policy would be useful if someone wants to implement something like simple FSDP, but it is not perfect because with a policy of `PREFER_SAVE` you are actually saving more than autograd would save normally (would be fixed with AC v3).
- The number of times we call the policy_fn is something that should be documented as part of public API. We call the policy function for all ops except ~~detach~~ UPDATE : metadata ops listed in `torch.utils.checkpoint.SAC_IGNORED_OPS`) because these ops may be called a different number of times by AC itself between forward and recompute.
- The policy function can be a stateful object (we do NOT make separate copies of this object for forward/recompute, the user is expected to handle that via is_recompute see below).
Tensors guaranteed to be the same tensor as-is
- Policy function signature takes ctx object as its first argument. The ctx function is an object encapsulating info that may be useful to the user, it currently only holds "is_recompute". Adding this indirection gives us flexibility to add more attrs later if necessary.
Pull Request resolved: https://github.com/pytorch/pytorch/pull/125795
Approved by: https://github.com/Chillee, https://github.com/fmassa
1877b7896c
