Make dataset_processes configurable (#651)

I'm using the Axolotl script to train models on https://modal.com serverless GPUs. Unfortunately, their environment seems to have some kind of bug where if I try to run `datasets.filter` with too high a `num_proc`, it throws an error and dies.

This PR adds a new configuration option `dataset_processes`, which lets you explicitly set the number of processes used to map/filter the dataset. If not included, this defaults to the current behavior of setting that to `os.cpu_count()`.

README.md

@@ -487,6 +487,9 @@ datasets:
 dataset_prepared_path: data/last_run_prepared
 # push prepared dataset to hub
 push_dataset_to_hub: # repo path
+# The maximum number of processes to use while preprocessing your input dataset. This defaults to `os.cpu_count()`
+# if not set.
+dataset_processes: # defaults to os.cpu_count() if not set
 # push checkpoints to hub
 hub_model_id: # repo path to push finetuned model
 # how to push checkpoints to hub

src/axolotl/utils/config.py

@@ -75,6 +75,8 @@ def normalize_config(cfg):
     else:
         cfg.torch_dtype = torch.float32
 
+    cfg.dataset_processes = cfg.dataset_processes or os.cpu_count()
+
     model_config = load_model_config(cfg)
     cfg.model_config_type = model_config.model_type
 

src/axolotl/utils/trainer.py

@@ -400,19 +400,25 @@ def disable_datasets_caching():
 def process_datasets_for_packing(cfg, train_dataset, eval_dataset, tokenizer):
     drop_long = partial(drop_long_seq, sequence_len=cfg.sequence_len)
     with zero_first(is_main_process()):
-        train_dataset = train_dataset.filter(drop_long, num_proc=os.cpu_count())
+        train_dataset = train_dataset.filter(drop_long, num_proc=cfg.dataset_processes)
         if eval_dataset:
-            eval_dataset = eval_dataset.filter(drop_long, num_proc=os.cpu_count())
+            eval_dataset = eval_dataset.filter(
+                drop_long, num_proc=cfg.dataset_processes
+            )
 
         if cfg.group_by_length:
-            train_dataset = train_dataset.map(add_length, num_proc=os.cpu_count())
+            train_dataset = train_dataset.map(
+                add_length, num_proc=cfg.dataset_processes
+            )
 
         if cfg.sample_packing:
-            train_dataset = train_dataset.map(add_position_ids, num_proc=os.cpu_count())
+            train_dataset = train_dataset.map(
+                add_position_ids, num_proc=cfg.dataset_processes
+            )
             if cfg.eval_sample_packing is not False:
                 if eval_dataset:
                     eval_dataset = eval_dataset.map(
-                        add_position_ids, num_proc=os.cpu_count()
+                        add_position_ids, num_proc=cfg.dataset_processes
                     )
 
         # Phi doesn't want the attention_mask feature when training