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[dist, ci, docs] fix: release reentrant checkpoint input gradients - #1169

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Coach257 merged 3 commits into
ByteDance-Seed:mainfrom
ZHAO-YIFENG:fix/reentrant-checkpoint-grad-release
Sep 28, 2026
Merged

Coach257 merged 3 commits into
ByteDance-Seed:mainfrom
ZHAO-YIFENG:fix/reentrant-checkpoint-grad-release

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@ZHAO-YIFENG

@ZHAO-YIFENG ZHAO-YIFENG commented Sep 8, 2026 •

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What does this PR do?

Release gradients attached to the detached input leaves created during reentrant activation-checkpoint recomputation.

The gradients are first captured for return to the outer autograd graph, then the temporary leaves have their .grad references cleared. This prevents retained recomputation graphs or saved-variable references from keeping an additional stale input-gradient buffer alive across iterations.

Related upstream reports:

Checklist Before Starting

Test

  • pytest -q tests/distributed/test_gradient_checkpointing.py: 6 passed.
  • Ruff 0.13.2 lint and format checks: passed.
  • Pre-commit hooks on all files changed by this PR: passed.
  • Real NVIDIA H100 80GB test with an intentionally retained recomputation graph:
    • Before: each step retained a 32 MiB input-gradient buffer; allocated memory grew by 96 MiB per step.
    • After: recomputed-input .grad remained empty; allocated memory grew by 64 MiB per step.
    • Clearing the retained graph returned allocated memory to 0 GiB.

API and Usage Example

No API or configuration changes.

Design & Code Changes

  • Capture recomputed-input gradients before returning from CheckpointFunction.backward.
  • Clear .grad on the temporary detached input leaves after capture.
  • Add a regression test that retains the recomputation graph, verifies the temporary gradient is released, and verifies the original input gradient remains numerically correct.
  • Run the gradient-checkpointing test file in the GPU unit-test workflow.
  • Update the test-suite overview with the distributed gradient-checkpointing coverage and execution requirements.

Checklist Before Submitting

  • Read the Contribute Guide
  • Applied pre-commit checks
  • Updated the testing documentation for the GPU CI coverage change
  • Added the regression test to the GPU CI workflow

Summary by CodeRabbit

  • Bug Fixes

    • Cleared temporary gradients after gradient-checkpointing backward passes, reducing stale references.
    • Preserved expected gradients for original inputs.
  • Tests

    • Added coverage for gradient release and original-input gradient behavior.
    • Included distributed checkpointing tests in GPU unit-test runs.
  • Documentation

    • Updated distributed testing guidance to cover runtime correctness and gradient checkpointing.
    • Clarified GPU requirements and test execution methods.

@github-actions github-actions Bot added ci ckpt Checkpoint related. fix labels Sep 8, 2026
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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

The checkpoint backward path now clears gradients from detached recomputation inputs. A regression test verifies gradient release and expected input gradients. The GPU workflow and testing documentation include the new coverage.

Changes

Checkpoint gradient cleanup

Layer / File(s) Summary
Clear detached input gradients
veomni/distributed/checkpoint.py
CheckpointFunction.backward sets .grad to None on detached recomputation inputs after collecting gradients.
Add regression coverage and documentation
tests/distributed/test_gradient_checkpointing.py, .github/workflows/gpu_unit_tests.yml, docs/testing.md
The test verifies gradient release and the expected original-input gradient. The GPU workflow runs the test, and the testing documentation describes the coverage.

Priority: ⬇️ Low

Estimated code review effort: 2 (Simple) | ~10 minutes

Change: Bug fix

Suggested reviewers: coach257

Merge Risk: ⚪ Minimal · up to 8d4b4

The regression test exercises gradient cleanup and verifies the original input gradients; the GPU workflow and testing documentation include the coverage. No actionable merge risk remains.

Security Architecture Review

Security architecture risk: 🔵 Low · up to 8d4b4

The change releases temporary gradients after preserving the gradients returned to the original inputs. The covered training path behaves as intended, but compatibility with sharded-training hooks is not fully established.

Retained concerns
No architecture-level concerns identified.

Security review details

Security Blast Radius

  • inferred — Effective production exposure is through the pre-existing reentrant-checkpoint integration, not a new caller or dependency introduced by this PR.

Resilience and Maintainability Implications

  • observed — The sharded post-backward hook is called after temporary gradients are cleared. Its external implementation was not available to establish whether it depends on that state.
🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 4 | ❌ 1

❌ Failed checks (1 warning)

Check name Status Explanation Resolution
Docstring Coverage ⚠️ Warning Docstring coverage is 0.00% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 7 functions across 2 files. (1 skipped: 1 … Write docstrings for the functions missing them to satisfy the coverage threshold.
✅ Passed checks (4 passed)
Check name Status Explanation
Description Check ✅ Passed Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check ✅ Passed The title clearly and concisely describes the main change: releasing input gradients during reentrant checkpointing. The scope tags accurately reflect the distributed, CI, and documentation updates.
Linked Issues check ✅ Passed Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check ✅ Passed Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Full details: Docstring Coverage

Explanation

Docstring coverage is 0.00% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 7 functions across 2 files. (1 skipped: 1 unsupported.)

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Actionable comments posted: 1

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Inline comments:
In @.github/workflows/gpu_unit_tests.yml:
- Line 173: Update the documentation describing GPU CI coverage to include the
distributed gradient-checkpointing test invoked by the workflow command in the
pytest step. Keep the documentation’s existing structure and terminology, and
modify only the relevant documentation or configuration example.

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Comment thread .github/workflows/gpu_unit_tests.yml Resolved
@ZHAO-YIFENG

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@ZHAO-YIFENG ZHAO-YIFENG changed the title [dist, ci] fix: release reentrant checkpoint input gradients [dist, ci, docs] fix: release reentrant checkpoint input gradients Sep 8, 2026
@github-actions github-actions Bot added the doc Improvements or additions to documentation label Sep 8, 2026
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@ZHAO-YIFENG
ZHAO-YIFENG force-pushed the fix/reentrant-checkpoint-grad-release branch from 76b5c17 to d97062b Compare September 22, 2026 08:51
@ZHAO-YIFENG
ZHAO-YIFENG force-pushed the fix/reentrant-checkpoint-grad-release branch from d97062b to 8d4b4e8 Compare September 28, 2026 08:39
@Coach257
Coach257 merged commit 3064b58 into ByteDance-Seed:main Sep 28, 2026
19 checks passed
@ZHAO-YIFENG
ZHAO-YIFENG deleted the fix/reentrant-checkpoint-grad-release branch September 29, 2026 03:21
Coach257 added a commit that referenced this pull request Oct 9, 2026
Merge szl.omniv2-1065-offline-encoding-mixin-v1 at 90ba56e, the head of
#1211. The branch sits on main after #1235, so this also
brings in #1204, #1221 and #1169 from main.

omniv2 already contains #1235 through its unsquashed 1064 branch (083161d),
whose tree matches the squash for every SeedOmni file. The merge was therefore
resolved against 083161d instead of the true merge base: only the changes
in 083161d..90ba56e are applied. Merging from the old base would have
re-added code that omniv2 deleted after the 1064 merge (e.g.
ConversationItem.source) without a conflict.

Conflict resolution:
- mixins/offline_encoding_mixin.py: take #1211. cache_mode becomes a
  constructor kwarg kept on the instance; derive_cache_mode, patch_config,
  RUNTIME_CONFIG_KEYS and the partial-checkpoint hooks are gone. omniv2's
  callers are ported in the next commit.
- seed_omni/__init__.py, mixins/__init__.py: keep omniv2, which also exports
  MetricMeterMixin; the OfflineEncodingMixin export is the same on both sides.
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