Deep Learning, GPUs, and NVIDIA: A Brief Overview

To get terminology straight, ‘machine learning,’ or the even more generic term ‘AI’ is sometimes used interchangeably for ‘deep learning.’ Technically, they each refer to different things, with ML being a subset of AI, and DL being a subset of ML.

Picture from Intel

DL acquires its name from ‘deep neural networks,’ which are ultimately designed to recognize patterns in data, produce a related prediction, receive feedback on the prediction’s accuracy, and then adjust itself based on the feedback. When the feedback is based on an expected known output, this is ‘supervised learning.’ The computations occur on ‘nodes’, which are organized into ‘layers’: the original input data is first handled by the ‘input layer’ and the ‘output layer’ pushes out data that represents the model’s prediction. Any layers between those two are referred to as ‘hidden layers,’ of which deep neural networks have many hidden layers; originally, ‘deep’ meant having more than one hidden layer.

Images from DeepLearning4J

These hidden layers can operate in a hierarchy of increasing abstraction so that they can extract and distinguish non-linear features even from complicated input data. A standard example is in image recognition, where initial layers look for certain edges or shapes, which inform later layers that look for noses and eyes, and layers after that might look for faces. The final layers combine all this data to make a classification.

As input data progresses forward through the model, calculations include special internal parameters (weights). At the end, a loss function is produced, representing the error between the model’s prediction and the correct value. This error information is then used in running the model in reverse to calculate weight adjustments that will improve the model’s prediction. The weights are then updated. This sequence of a forward and backward pass (or backpropagation) comprises a single training iteration.

For inferencing, the process naturally excludes a backward pass and ultimately requires less computational intensity than training the model in the first place. In that sense, inferencing also has less need for higher precisions like FP32, and models can be appropriately pruned and optimized for deployment on particular devices. However, inferencing devices become much more sensitive to latency, cost, and power consumption, especially if on the edge.

Convolutional neural networks (CNNs or convnets) and recurrent neural networks are two important subtypes of (deep) neural networks, and the previous example with image recognition would be seen as a CNN. The convolutions themselves are an operation where input data and convolutional kernel are combined to form a feature map of some kind, transforming or filtering the original data to extract features. CNNs typically are ‘feedforward’, in the sense that data flows through the layers without looping. For RNNs (and variants like LSTM and GRU), there exists a separate weight that loops back to itself after every calculation, giving the net a sense of ‘memory.’ This allows the net to make time-aware predictions, useful in scenarios like text analysis, where a network would need to remember all the previous words with respect to the current one.

As much of deep learning math could be boiled down to linear algebra, certain operations can be re-written into GPU-friendlier matrix-matrix multiplications. When NVIDIA first developed and released cuDNN, one of the marquee implementations was accelerating convolutions based on lowering them into matrix multiplications. Among the cuDNN developments over the years is the 'precomputed implicit GEMM' convolution algorithm, which so happens to be the only algorithm that triggers convolution acceleration by tensor cores.

A Deep Learning Renaissance: (NVIDIA) GPUs Ascendant

Particularly for training, GPUs have become the DL accelerator-of-choice as most of these computations are essentially floating-point calculations in parallel, namely lots of matrix multiplications, with optimal performance requiring large amounts of memory bandwidth and size. These requirements neatly line up with the needs of HPC (and to a lesser extent, professional visualization), where GPUs need high precision floating point computation, large amounts of VRAM, and parallel compute capability.

Perhaps most importantly, is the underlying API and frameworks needed to utilize graphics hardware in this manner. For this, NVIDIA’s CUDA had come at the right time, just as deep learning started to regain interest, and was an easy launching point for further development:

The development of CUDA and NVIDIA’s compute business coincided with research advances in machine learning, which had only just re-emerged as ‘deep learning’ around 2006. GPU accelerated neural network models provided orders-of-magnitude speed-ups over CPUs, and in turn re-popularized deep learning into the buzzword it is today. Meanwhile, NVIDIA’s graphics competitor at the time, ATI, was being acquired by AMD in 2006; OpenCL 1.0 itself only arrived in 2009, the same year AMD spun off their fabs as GlobalFoundries.

With DL researchers and academics successfully using CUDA to train neural network models faster, it was only a matter of time before NVIDIA released their cuDNN library of optimized deep learning primitives, of which there was ample precedent with the HPC-focused BLAS (Basic Linear Algebra Subroutines) and corresponding cuBLAS. So cuDNN abstracted away the need for researchers to create and optimize CUDA code for DL performance. As for AMD’s equivalent to cuDNN, MIOpen was only released last year under the ROCm umbrella, though currently is only publicly enabled in Caffe.

So in that sense, NVIDIA GPUs have become the reference implementation with respect to deep learning on GPUs, though the underlying hardware of both vendors are both suitable for DL acceleration.

The NVIDIA Titan V Deep Learning Deep Dive A Shallow Dive Into Tensor Cores


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  • Nate Oh - Wednesday, July 11, 2018 - link

    Thanks for your inquisitive responses throughout :)

    And yes, I was trying to be impartial with AMD's claims about deep learning. Until I have results myself, I offer them a degree of the benefit of the doubt, considering their traditional GPGPU capabilities. Meaning that "image classification for machine learning..." essentially falls under all the deep learning investigations I did for the review. My personal opinion is that 8-bit SAD will be as useful as it was with Kepler/Maxwell in terms of DL acceleration, except with lesser software support; you can make of that as you will. It really gets into the weeds to put AMD's 'machine intelligence' terminology under the scope, and I'd feel more comfortable doing so in an AMD-focused DL/ML investigation. I want to emphasize again that new instructions matter much less in the context of software/library/API support, so the fact that they are absent from the whitepaper directly adds to that observation. If this were a Vega FE DL review, I would certainly pester AMD about that, as much as I put an effort towards TensorRT and FP16 storage/tensor cores here. So encourage AMD to sample me :D


    It is TFLOPS just for DeepBench because that is how Baidu and NV/AMD/Intel present their DeepBench results; you can see for yourselves at the DeepBench Github. We have not independently configured results (for DeepBench) that way, and I apologize if that's how it came across. This also makes it easier to keep us accountable by comparing our results to Baidu's Github. DeepBench is, as stated in the article, completely framework and model agnostic. We use TFLOPS when it is floating point, and we actually use TOPS when it is integer :) I've generalized a bit only because that comment had become so lengthy. This TFLOPS/TOPS usage is limited to solely DeepBench because of how they use pure math kernels, and precisely the reason I included end-to-end results with DAWNBench implementations.

    >Open source

    Indeed, like I've said, I've actually gone and attempted (poorly) to do some dev work myself. The article could *easily* ballooned to double the length, as well. The point I wanted to convey is exactly what you've picked up with AMD. Given the limited scope of the article (and the lack of direct AMD DL investigations), I want to refrain from saying something outright like, 'one of the main reasons we don't currently use AMD,' but I am just aware as you are on this point :) This deduction is unsaid but present throughout, .
  • Nate Oh - Wednesday, July 11, 2018 - link

    Clarification: "so the fact that citations are absent from the whitepaper" Reply
  • mode_13h - Thursday, July 12, 2018 - link


    As a member of the tech press, please don't forget your privileged position of being able to request guidance on how to exercise claimed product features. I think this is a fair question and wouldn't impart any bias. Rather, it would help inform readers of how to exploit these features, and also quantify product performance when used as the designers intended.

    I think it's also fair to ask if they can provide any references (either implementations or papers) to support their claims regarding how SAD can be utilized in machine learning, in cases of doubt.

    Again, I'm saying this mostly in anticipation of your future Vega coverage, whether you choose to follow up with Vega 10, or perhaps you only revisit the matter with Vega 20.

    As for searching & sifting through the sources of MIOpen, I think that's "over and above" what's expected. I'm just pointing out that, sometimes, it's actually surprisingly easy to answer questions by doing simple text searches on the source code. Sometimes, like when checking whether a certain instruction is emitted, it's also possible to save the generated assembly language and search *that*.
  • Demiurge - Friday, July 20, 2018 - link

    Nate gets paid to educate and discuss with you, I don't, but more importantly to me, I made my point that Vega is not "underwhelming" for DL.

    Why should I *convince* you? I don't *need* to convince you. You didn't state Vega was "underwhelming" for DL.
  • Nate Oh - Monday, July 9, 2018 - link

    To put it lightly, use of FP16 in DL training is not on the same level of use of INT8 in training; the latter is basically pure research and highly niche to those specific implementations. FP16 training (with NVIDIA GPUs) has reached a level of maturity and practicality where there is out-of-the-box support for most major frameworks. FP16 training and INT8 inferencing is the current understanding of lower-precision applicability in DL.

    More specifically, the whole field of lower-precision DL training/inference is all about making lower-precision datatypes more important, so of course that's the case for INT8/FP8. FP16 is already relevant for real-world training in certain scenarios; some researchers are *trying* to make INT8 relevant for real-world training in certain scenarios. As mode_13h said, that paper is a custom 8-bit datatype used to approximate 32-bit gradients for parameter updates during the backprop, specifically to speed-up inter-GPU communication for greater parallelism. AKA it is not usage of 8-bit datatypes all around, it's very specific to one aspect. It's essentially a proof-of-concept and pure research. Using INT16 for everything is hard enough; some people (see below) were able to use a custom INT16 format and use INT16/INT32 FMA. And yes, sometimes, companies don't distinguish inference and training as clearly as they should, with the resulting perception of superior general DL performance.

    In any case, DP4A is not really used in training at all and it wasn't designed to do so anyway. You can ‘make’ the exception with research papers like what you cited but you can always find niche exceptions in research because that is its purpose. It was designed for inferencing acceleration and as product segmentation for non-GP100 GPUs. Even now, it's pushed for working with a model that TensorRT converted from higher-precision to INT8.

    (I am splitting this comment up to respond separately on the topic of Vega/instruction set support, but both comments should be considered in tandem)

    References/Links (Custom datatype for INT16/INT32 mixed precision training) (Introduction of DP4A/DP2A)
  • mode_13h - Tuesday, July 10, 2018 - link

    > ... DP4A is not really used in training at all ... It was designed for inferencing acceleration and as product segmentation for non-GP100 GPUs.

    You mean segmentation of GP100 vs. GP102+ ? Or are you saying it's lacking in some of the smaller Pascal GPUs, like GP107? And *why* isn't it listed in the CUDA compute capabilities table ( Grrr!

    Regardless, given that GV100 has it, I get the sense that it was simply an evolution that came too late for the GP100.

    Finally, thank you for another thoughtful and detailed reply.
  • Ryan Smith - Tuesday, July 3, 2018 - link

    The Titan V is such a niche card that I'm not surprised to hear NV hasn't prepared macOS drivers. There are good reasons for them to have drivers ready for their consumer hardware - they need to do the work anyhow to support existing products and make sure they're ready to take a new Apple contract if they win it - but the Titan V/GV100 will never end up in a Mac. So adding that to the mac drivers would be a less beneficial decision. Reply
  • Flunk - Tuesday, July 3, 2018 - link

    I'm surprised any cards not shipped in Mac Models have Mac drivers anymore. It's not like you can add a PCI-E video card to any recent Mac. Reply
  • Strunf - Wednesday, July 4, 2018 - link

    Thunderbolt allows for an external PCI-E card but there's probably just a few guys ready to do this kind of thing... Reply
  • ImSpartacus - Tuesday, July 3, 2018 - link

    Is the new 32GB V100 still on SXM2?

    Several sites mentioned SXM3 in reference to the 32GB refresh of V100, but it's hard to find details on what improved (if anything).

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