Estimate Complexity

Estimating GPT-3 Training FLOPs: A Step-by-Step Approach

Without access to online resources, we can estimate the FLOPs (Floating-point Operations) needed for GPT-3 training by considering the following factors:

1. Model Size:

• GPT-3 has 175 billion parameters.
• Each parameter update involves two multiplications and one addition for each floating-point number.
• Therefore, each parameter update requires 3 FLOPs.
• Total FLOPs per update: 175 billion parameters * 3 FLOPs/parameter = 525 billion FLOPs.

2. Training Data Size:

• GPT-3 was trained on a massive dataset of text and code.
• Let's assume the dataset size is 500 billion words.
• Each word is represented by an embedding vector of size 1,024.
• Therefore, the total number of floating-point numbers in the dataset is 500 billion words * 1,024 = 512 trillion.

3. Number of Training Steps:

• The exact number of training steps is unknown, but it likely involves millions of iterations over the entire dataset.
• Let's assume there are 10 million training steps.

4. Optimization Algorithm:

• GPT-3 likely uses Adam optimizer, which involves additional computations for updating parameters.
• The exact FLOPs associated with the optimizer are difficult to estimate without knowing the specific hyperparameters used.
• For simplicity, we can assume an additional 10 FLOPs per parameter update.

5. Hardware Efficiency:

• Modern hardware like GPUs and TPUs can perform several FLOPs per clock cycle.
• Let's assume an average efficiency of 5 FLOPs per clock cycle.

Putting it all together:

• Total FLOPs per update: 525 billion (parameter updates) + 10 billion (optimizer) = 535 billion FLOPs
• Total FLOPs for training: 535 billion FLOPs/update * 10 million updates = 5.35 * 10^18 FLOPs
• Adjusted for hardware efficiency: 5.35 * 10^18 FLOPs / 5 FLOPs/cycle = 1.07 * 10^18 clock cycles

Therefore, the estimated total FLOPs required to train GPT-3 without searching online is approximately 1.07 * 10^18 clock cycles.

Important Caveats:

• This is a rough estimate and may not be accurate due to several unknown factors, including the exact training data size, number of training steps, optimizer settings, and hardware efficiency.
• The actual FLOPs could be significantly higher or lower depending on the specific training details.

Additionally, it's important to remember that this is just an estimation of the computational cost. Training a model like GPT-3 also requires significant energy consumption and environmental impact.