DeepSpeedEngineWrapper.backward() does a bit too much

[zhc7]

The source code of DeepSpeedEngineWrapper:

class DeepSpeedEngineWrapper:
    """
    Internal wrapper for deepspeed.runtime.engine.DeepSpeedEngine. This is used to follow conventional training loop.

    Args:
        engine (deepspeed.runtime.engine.DeepSpeedEngine): deepspeed engine to wrap
    """

    def __init__(self, engine):
        self.engine = engine

    def backward(self, loss, **kwargs):
        # runs backpropagation and handles mixed precision
        self.engine.backward(loss, **kwargs)

        # Deepspeed's `engine.step` performs the following operations:
        # - gradient accumulation check
        # - gradient clipping
        # - optimizer step
        # - zero grad
        # - checking overflow
        # - lr_scheduler step (only if engine.lr_scheduler is not None)
        self.engine.step()
        # and this plugin overrides the above calls with no-ops when Accelerate runs under
        # Deepspeed, but allows normal functionality for non-Deepspeed cases thus enabling a simple
        # training loop that works transparently under many training regimes.

My question is: Why do we need to do self.engine.step() here immediately? This behavior zeros grad and change the parameter without noticing the user. It might be out of expectation. Since backward step is internally binded with zeroing grad and changing parameter, this blocks users from checking the gradient or parameter manually before stepping.

I know deepspeed-wrapped models can't be seen as normal models, but this behavior still elimiates a lot of flexibility.

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[muellerzr]

Hitting this snag right now actually, will see what we decide to do

[muellerzr]

We're working with the DS team to try and remove the engine entirely, however as a user you can always call model.engine.backward() etc manually without harm in accelerate