swFLOW: A large-scale distributed framework for deep learning on Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer

Deep learning technology is widely used in many modern fields and a number of models and software frameworks have been proposed. However, it is still very difficult to process deep learning tasks efficiently on traditional high performance computing (HPC) systems. In this paper, we propose swFLOW: a large-scale distributed framework for deep learning on Sunway TaihuLight. Based on the performance analysis results of convolutional neural network (CNN), we optimize the convolutional layer, and get 10.42× speedup compared to the original version. As for distributed training, we use elastic averaging stochastic gradient descent (EASGD) algorithm to reduce communication. On 512 processes, we get a parallel efficiency of 81.01% with communication period τ=8. Particularly, a decentralized implementation of distributed swFLOW system is presented to alleviate bottleneck of the central server. By using distributed swFLOW system, we can scale the batch size up to 4096 among 1024 concurrent processes for cancerous region detection algorithm. The successful application on swFLOW reveals the great opportunity for joint combination of deep learning and HPC system.