Content area

Abstract

We introduce NNsight and NDIF, technologies that work in tandem to enable scientific study of very large neural networks. NNsight is an open-source system that extends PyTorch to introduce deferred remote execution. NDIF is a scalable inference service that executes NNsight requests, allowing users to share GPU resources and pretrained models. These technologies are enabled by the intervention graph, an architecture developed to decouple experiment design from model runtime. Together, this framework provides transparent and efficient access to the internals of deep neural networks such as very large language models (LLMs) without imposing the cost or complexity of hosting customized models individually. We conduct a quantitative survey of the machine learning literature that reveals a growing gap in the study of the internals of large-scale AI. We demonstrate the design and use of our framework to address this gap by enabling a range of research methods on huge models. Finally, we conduct benchmarks to compare performance with previous approaches. Code documentation, and materials are available at https://nnsight.net/.

Details

1009240
Title
NNsight and NDIF: Democratizing Access to Open-Weight Foundation Model Internals
Publication title
arXiv.org; Ithaca
Publication year
2024
Publication date
Dec 8, 2024
Section
Computer Science
Publisher
Cornell University Library, arXiv.org
Source
arXiv.org
Place of publication
Ithaca
Country of publication
United States
University/institution
Cornell University Library arXiv.org
e-ISSN
2331-8422
Source type
Working Paper
Language of publication
English
Document type
Working Paper
Publication history
 
 
Online publication date
2024-12-10
Milestone dates
2024-07-18 (Submission v1); 2024-12-08 (Submission v2)
Publication history
 
 
   First posting date
10 Dec 2024
ProQuest document ID
3083764303
Document URL
https://www.proquest.com/working-papers/nnsight-ndif-democratizing-access-open-weight/docview/3083764303/se-2?accountid=208611
Full text outside of ProQuest
Copyright
© 2024. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.
Last updated
2024-12-11
Database
2 databases
  • ProQuest One Academic
  • ProQuest One Academic