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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