feat(doc): add optimizations table of content to our improvements (#3175) [skip ci]

* chore: format

* feat: add usage for alst

* chore: wording

* feat: add optimizations doc

* Apply suggestion from @SalmanMohammadi

Co-authored-by: salman <salman.mohammadi@outlook.com>

* Update docs/dataset-formats/index.qmd

Co-authored-by: salman <salman.mohammadi@outlook.com>

* feat: add alst, act offloading, nd parallelism, use relative links, and fix format

* chore: comments

---------

Co-authored-by: salman <salman.mohammadi@outlook.com>

docs/dataset-formats/index.qmd

@@ -61,7 +61,7 @@ While we recommend `.jsonl`, you can also use the other formats (`csv`, `parquet
 
 ### Pre-training without streaming
 
-On the rare case that the dataset is small and can be loaded entirely into memory, another approach to running pre-training is to use the `completion` format. This would mean that the entire dataset is pre-tokenized instead of on-demand in streaming.
+In the case that the dataset is small and can be loaded entirely into memory, another approach to running pre-training is to use the `completion` format. This would mean that the entire dataset is pre-tokenized instead of on-demand in streaming.
 
 One benefit of this is that the tokenization can be performed separately on a CPU-only machine, and then transferred to a GPU machine for training to save costs.
 

docs/optimizations.qmd

@@ -0,0 +1,133 @@
+---
+title: Optimizations Guide
+description: A guide to the performance and memory optimizations available in Axolotl.
+---
+
+Axolotl includes numerous optimizations to speed up training, reduce memory usage, and handle large models.
+
+This guide provides a high-level overview and directs you to the detailed documentation for each feature.
+
+## Speed Optimizations
+
+These optimizations focus on increasing training throughput and reducing total training time.
+
+### Sample Packing
+
+Improves GPU utilization by combining multiple short sequences into a single packed sequence for training. This requires enabling one of the [attention](#attention-implementations) implementations below.
+
+- **Config:** `sample_packing: true`
+- **Learn more:** [Sample Packing](multipack.qmd)
+
+### Attention Implementations
+
+Using an optimized attention implementation is critical for training speed.
+
+- **[Flash Attention 2](https://github.com/Dao-AILab/flash-attention)**: `flash_attention: true`. **(Recommended)** The industry standard for fast attention on modern GPUs. Requires Ampere or higher. For AMD, check [AMD Support](https://github.com/Dao-AILab/flash-attention?tab=readme-ov-file#amd-rocm-support).
+- **[Flex Attention](https://pytorch.org/blog/flexattention/)**: `flex_attention: true`.
+- **[SDP Attention](https://docs.pytorch.org/docs/stable/generated/torch.nn.functional.scaled_dot_product_attention.html)**: `sdp_attention: true`. PyTorch's native implementation.
+- **[Xformers](https://github.com/facebookresearch/xformers)**: `xformers_attention: true`. Works with FP16.
+
+*Note: You should only enable one attention backend.*
+
+### LoRA Optimizations
+
+Leverages optimized kernels to accelerate LoRA training and reduce memory usage.
+
+- **Learn more:** [LoRA Optimizations Documentation](lora_optims.qmd)
+
+## Memory Optimizations
+
+These techniques help you fit larger models or use bigger batch sizes on your existing hardware.
+
+### Parameter Efficient Finetuning (LoRA & QLoRA)
+
+Drastically reduces memory by training a small set of "adapter" parameters instead of the full model. This is the most common and effective memory-saving technique.
+
+- Examples: Find configs with `lora` or `qlora` in the [examples directory](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl/tree/main/examples/llama-3).
+- Config Reference: See `adapter`, `load_in_4bit`, and `load_in_8bit` in the [Configuration Reference](config-reference.qmd).
+
+### Gradient Checkpointing & Activation Offloading
+
+These techniques save VRAM by changing how activations are handled.
+
+- Gradient Checkpointing: re-computes activations during the backward pass, trading compute time for VRAM.
+- Activation Offloading: moves activations to CPU RAM or disk, trading I/O overhead for VRAM.
+- Learn more: [Gradient Checkpointing and Offloading Docs](gradient_checkpointing.qmd)
+
+### Cut Cross Entropy (CCE)
+
+Reduces VRAM usage by using an optimized cross-entropy loss calculation.
+
+- **Learn more:** [Custom Integrations - CCE](custom_integrations.qmd#cut-cross-entropy)
+
+### Liger Kernels
+
+Provides efficient Triton kernels to improve training speed and reduce memory usage.
+
+- **Learn more:** [Custom Integrations - Liger Kernels](custom_integrations.qmd#liger-kernels)
+
+## Long Context Models
+
+Techniques to train models on sequences longer than their original context window.
+
+### RoPE Scaling
+
+Extends a model's context window by interpolating its Rotary Position Embeddings.
+
+- **Config:** Pass the `rope_scaling` config under the `overrides_of_model_config: `. To learn how to set RoPE, check the respective model config.
+
+### Sequence Parallelism
+
+Splits long sequences across multiple GPUs, enabling training with sequence lengths that would not fit on a single device.
+
+- **Learn more:** [Sequence Parallelism Documentation](sequence_parallelism.qmd)
+
+### Artic Long Sequence Training (ALST)
+
+ALST is a recipe that combines several techniques to train long-context models efficiently. It typically involves:
+
+- TiledMLP to reduce memory usage in MLP layers.
+- Tiled Loss functions (like [CCE](#cut-cross-entropy-(cce) or [Liger](#liger-kernels)).
+- Activation Offloading to CPU.
+
+- Example: [ALST Example Configuration](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl/tree/main/examples/alst)
+
+## Large Models (Distributed Training)
+
+To train models that don't fit on a single GPU, you'll need to use a distributed training strategy like FSDP or DeepSpeed. These frameworks shard the model weights, gradients, and optimizer states across multiple GPUs and nodes.
+
+- **Learn more:** [Multi-GPU Guide](multi-gpu.qmd)
+- **Learn more:** [Multi-Node Guide](multi-node.qmd)
+
+### N-D Parallelism (Beta)
+
+For advanced scaling, Axolotl allows you to compose different parallelism techniques (e.g., Data, Tensor, Sequence Parallelism). This is a powerful approach to train an extremely large model by overcoming multiple bottlenecks at once.
+
+- **Learn more:** [N-D Parallelism Guide](nd_parallelism.qmd)
+
+
+## Quantization
+
+Techniques to reduce the precision of model weights for memory savings.
+
+### 4-bit Training (QLoRA)
+
+The recommended approach for quantization-based training. It loads the base model in 4-bit using `bitsandbytes` and then trains QLoRA adapters. See [Adapter Finetuning](#adapter-finetuning-lora-qlora) for details.
+
+### FP8 Training
+
+Enables training with 8-bit floating point precision on supported hardware (e.g., NVIDIA Hopper series GPUs) for significant speed and memory gains.
+
+- **Example:** [Llama 3 FP8 FSDP Example](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl/blob/main/examples/llama-3/3b-fp8-fsdp2.yaml)
+
+### Quantization Aware Training (QAT)
+
+Simulates quantization effects during training, helping the model adapt and potentially improving the final accuracy of the quantized model.
+
+- **Learn more:** [QAT Documentation](qat.qmd)
+
+### GPTQ
+
+Allows you to finetune LoRA adapters on top of a model that has already been quantized using the GPTQ method.
+
+- **Example:** [GPTQ LoRA Example](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl/blob/main/examples/llama-2/gptq-lora.yml)

docs/qat.qmd

@@ -30,6 +30,7 @@ qat:
 ```
 
 We support the following quantization schemas:
+
 - `Int4WeightOnly` (requires the `fbgemm-gpu` extra when installing Axolotl)
 - `Int8DynamicActivationInt4Weight`
 - `Float8DynamicActivationFloat8Weight`