Executing RAPIDS from your
computer (without a local GPU)
RAPIDS Series 2: Step-by-step
Python configuration for more efficient computing
Setting the stage
Have you ever found yourself desperately needing more
GPU power to run your deep learning models,
but your local configuration simply can’t carry out? If
so, then this article will show you how to use cloud
GPUs as if they were part of your personal machine.
The usage of GPU computational power in data
science—especially in scenarios where someone is
training and using deep learning models—is becoming
increasingly appealing to our fellow data
scientists and engineers. This comes as no surprise when
comparing the average model training times
on GPU versus CPU.
Lately, more and more technologies are emerging that aim
to bring the GPU processing power into the
data science world – mainly so data scientists can do
their tasks more efficiently. One of these
technologies is NVIDIA RAPIDS, a data
science framework composed of multiple libraries with a
common
goal of executing end-to-end data science pipelines
completely on the GPU.
However, most of us face the problem of not having
laptops with a dedicated GPU, meaning that most
personal computing devices don’t come with a graphical
processing unit integrated in their system. That
means you have to rent a virtual server on the cloud
that has a GPU device connected to it. This solution
has one major setback.—since we are working remotely, we
are unable to use any of the most popular
IDEs (code editors), with an exception for Jupyter
Notebook which might be easy to set up on a virtual
server.
However not everybody is happy with being limited to the
Jupyter Notebook and not being able to use
other code editors. We wanted to explore whether there
is a way to overcome this. There is—and it’s
pretty cool, given that it involves using the remote
Python interpreter (the program executing the
instructions written by the programmers) locally, which
will allow us to use libraries in your local
environment without having a GPU.
This article will present the steps necessary to set up
an Amazon EC2 instance (which is just a fancy
name for a virtual server) with a dedicated GPU, set up
a Python environment with RAPIDS installed on
it, and use the created interpreter locally in PyCharm.
So let’s get started!
Setting up the EC2 Instance
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) provides scalable
computing capacity in the AWS cloud. It allows
the users to rent instances (virtual machines) in
it. Different types of instances exist, and the ones
that
have a GPU included are:
- Amazon EC2 P3 Instances, with up to 8 NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs.
- Amazon EC2 G3 Instances, with up to 4 NVIDIA Tesla M60 GPUs.
- Amazon EC2 G4 Instances, with up to 4 NVIDIA T4 GPUs.
- Amazon EC2 P4 Instances, with up to 8 NVIDIA Tesla A100 GPUs.
For our example, we will be using an g4dn.xlarge
instance, which is a G4 type instance that comes with a
single NVIDIA T4 GPU, 4 vCPUs and 16 Gib of RAM.
To start, just log into your AWS account, go to the EC2
console, select Instances on your left side menu,
and click the orange launch instances button on the
right.
You will then be prompted to select an AMI (Amazon
Machine Image) that will be used to configure your
instance. There are some basic images that only include
the operating system and others that are more
complex. The latter include installing software packages
on top of the operating system, which would be
useful for more specific tasks like building web
applications with a particular framework, a content
management system like WordPress, or hosting a database
server.
In our case we will be using the community Deep Learning AMI (Ubuntu 18.04)
Version 42.1 since it
comes with all the packages and drivers needed, such as
TensorFlow, PyTorch, and support for CUDA. As
the name suggests it is optimized to be used in Deep
Learning projects.
Figure 1 Selecting
the AMI for the instance
Next, you should choose the instance type. Our
recommendation is to use the g4dn.xlarge instance type
since it’s the cheapest one you can use to configure
RAPIDS in AWS.
Figure 2 Selecting an
appropriate instance type
After completing the remaining user specific
details—which include defining a network, network
interface for your instance, adding storage, configuring
security groups, and defining a key pair that will
be used to access your instance through SSH—you are
ready to go. Once you launch, you should see the
instance running and have the ability to connect to it.
To do so, go to the instance summary by selecting it
from the list of available instances and clicking on
the ‘Connect’ button. You will find the instructions to
connect to your instance under the SSH client. You
can use Putty or Git bash as a SSH client for Windows.
Figure 3 Instructions
to SSH into your instance
If you accessed the machine successfully, then you are
right on track and ready to install RAPIDS on your
machine. If not, look back through the steps to make
sure nothing was missed.
Installing RAPIDS
The AMI that we selected comes with the Conda package
and environment management system
preinstalled on it, so we can use it to create an
environment with installed RAPIDS. To do so, just run
the
following command once connected to your virtual
machine:
If you wish, you may also change some of the arguments
as stated here. This will create a
new conda
environment called rapids-0.18 that has everything you
need to run RAPIDS on it.
Setting PyCharm to use remote interpreter
The Professional version offers a compelling feature
that allows you to configure a remote
Python interpreter locally using SSH connection.
This next section provides a step-by-step guide to set
the remote Python interpreter from the
rapids-0.18 conda environment defined in our EC2
instance.
1. Start by creating a new Pure Python project. Check
the radio button to use a previously
configured interpreter then click the “...” button to
add a new one (see visual).
2. From the left menu, select SSH Interpreter. There you
will be asked to enter all the
information necessary so that PyCharm can establish a
SSH connection with the remote
interpreter. Enter the public IP address of the EC2
instance in the Host field, and ubuntu
in the Username field. Click ‘Next’.
3. Configure the path to the secret key file on your
local machine. Click ‘Next’.
4. Once connected, you will be prompted to enter the
file path to the desirable python
interpreter. Insert this: /home/ubuntu/anaconda3/envs/rapids-0.18/bin/python.
Note
that rapids-0.18 refers
to the name of the conda environment that we created in
the
previous steps. If you created an environment with a
different name, use that instead.
Click ‘Finish’ and you will be returned to the primary
window.
5. Lastly, you have the option of setting the path to
the folder where the project will be
stored remotely on the virtual machine. If you want to
specify the folder, you can do so
in the field or you can just leave it to have the
default value. Click ‘Create’ to finish your
set up.
Congratulations! You have successfully created a project
that will use a remote interpreter
located in your EC2 instance.
Conclusion
This article illustrates the rather straightforward
approach to setting up a GPU powered virtual
server on AWS, and makes use of the GPU power locally in
one of the most popular Python
IDEs—PyCharm. It is a simple but useful and powerful
solution for all the folks out there who
want to make the most of the GPU power but don’t own the
physical hardware needed. With
this technique you get the feel of running the code
locally, when in actuality the remote
interpreter is running code remotely on the cloud.
Filip Velkov is a Machine Learning
intern at Loka.
In addition to ML, Filip is currently exploring
the MLOps and DevOps world as part of his internship
program. Filip is a team player and eager
learner who is always seeking new challenges and
opportunities to expand his skillset. When
he’s not at his virtual office, you can catch Filip hiking
or picking up a foreign language for
whatever adventure comes next.
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