Revert for jart’s llama.cpp MMAP miracles
github.com
github.com
Let us let them take their time, wash their dirty laundry among themselves, and take the time they need to go forward on the project.
i have limited knowledge on what is being discussed but i echo the "ego-driven" comment below. because it's Sunday. and the replies are coming in so fast that it's certain, they are not giving enough thought to the other side's argument. and already talking about forking, not accepting collaborators, etc.
So this is pretty stupid - I just lost my Sunday trying to figure out how to salvage this stupid drama
@anzz1 and @jart
You are no longer welcome as collaborators to the project.
> You are no longer welcome as collaborators to the project. I know you really care about it and only doing it because you really want to make it better - I'm 100% sure about this. But in fact, you are doing the opposite. And if you fail to see this - I'm sorry
He's the owner of the project, he has the power to accept / not accept changes, and he didn't object to the version change, now he pushes responsibility to the contributors. It's ugly way of dealing with other people.
The way to solve this situation is to set up a video call between them to deescalate the emotional part of the situation (which is not a big deal anyways, we can wait a few days for the technical details to get resolved).
When I was working on solving the mmap() problem in https://github.com/ggerganov/llama.cpp/issues/91 (that issue tracks the full history) I originally wrote a malloc() hack to prove zero latency load times could work. But I thought we should hold off and wait until we could fix the file format before merging anything into master.
A week or so later, an anonymous GitHub user called Slarin pointed out something really smart. He said the 7B model only has 1D tensors, so we could bring the benefits of mmap() to 7B users right away. My file format change would have solved it for all models. But it wasn't ready yet. So when Slarin asked me to abandon my mmap branch, start over, and use his change as the starting point, I said sure. Since that would have ensured users of the project get some benefit as soon as possible. And we could iterate.
So Slarin and I collaborated on Discord. I had a really positive impression. As far as I knew, everything was fine. Slarin made a pull request, which he kept in draft mode. The work he was doing was basically to (1) call mmap() to load the full weights into memory, and (2) update the tensor->data instead of calling read() if the tensor was 1D. The issue is he Slarin got blocked on getting the WIN32 support to work. He had difficulties getting it to not crash. And by the time he was blocked, I had already finished rewriting the file format and data conversion tools. So I said, since I'm done with the full change, just push whatever you did to your PR branch, and I'll just rebase on that, I'll fix your WIN32 code, and then we'll merge our commits as part of the same PR. That PR was https://github.com/ggerganov/llama.cpp/pull/613 where I was very careful to recognize and document all of Slarin's contributions, which are now reflected in the master branch.
Slarin agreed, and told me "it looks like you've got this situation handled" and then left. We haven't seen him on the Discord since. I honestly had no idea he was so unhappy about the way things went. It really bums me out, because I have no way of ensuring people stay happy if they don't tell me they're unhappy. It appears, based on the link above, that Slarin felt I had put him in charge of the mmap() contribution and that the change belonged to him because his work was going to be its genesis once merged in the master branch. After the contribution went viral, he probably felt I didn't do enough to give him credit (I'm not exactly sure how to credit an anonymous developer more than I did?) and as a result he went to an online forum to ask a troll brigade to give justice.
The fallout of that "chan" troll brigade, is what you see here. They've also been going after my Wikipedia page among other things. I'm probably never going to work with an anonymous person again. I'm a public figure. I live with the sword of damocles hanging over my head. The power that gives anonymous people over me is really quite huge. The consequences here have damaged my reputation and career. And I don't even know who I'd reach out to if I wanted to mediate this. Quite a shame.
The cool thing is nobody cares about your wikipedia page, people care about your contributions.
I still think you should hop onto a video chat with Greg and be humble (I hope he can be more understanding and humble as well). File formats don't matter, that's just technical detail (although important) that will be resolved. People relations do matter.
Such is the way with online drama. Though I think only working with known people might not be it, as the same could still happen (not being communicative on their part, silently brooding, then doing something regrettable). Perhaps it's less likely.
I would venture those in the field understand that unfortunate misunderstandings of this sort happen all the time and find nuance in the situation. Please don't let this stop you from contributing, your work is amazing. Cheers.
Having an entire troll brigade going after you, after you acted with the best intentions... not nice. I hope you get over it, soon.
That doesn't mean that I am happy with the way our collaboration was handled. Why did you create a new converter when you knew there was already an existing pull request that addressed the same issue? Why did you modify the model format and break backwards compatibility when the current format was proven to work with mmap? Why did you change the magic string of the file format to include your initials, when there was an explicit version number field for this purpose? Why did you create a new pull request when you could have added your changes to mine? Why did you rush to merge the PR instead of taking your time to verify that everything worked properly, while listening to feedback from the other contributors and users? Why did you did you ignore concerns raised by other contributors in my PR? Why are you claiming that I was unable to make the WIN32 code work when the final version in your PR is virtually identical to mine, making me look incompetent?
Ultimately, it was my decision to move on, close my PR and allow yours to continue unchallenged, and I owned that decision every single time that I have commented about it, including in the PR linked in this post, where I recommended keeping your PR and working on fixing the issues being raised. I am sorry that some people have harassed you, but making me responsible about this is extremely unfair. There are plenty of reasons for people to feel disappointed about your behavior without me having to say anything about it.
I don't expect that anyone will believe me about this, after all I am just an "anonymous person". The truth is, I am extremely weary about posting this because I know how much damage you can do to me if you insist on this route to your followers. What is your theory, that because I am nobody I have nothing to lose? How are you not aware of the huge power imbalance between a "celebrity programmer" with thousands of followers and a nobody like me?
Anyway, all the information is publicly available on github for anyone who cares enough to verify it.
- slaren
> I was trying to distance myself from this situation [...]
Looking at https://rentry.co/Jarted [0], there was somebody claiming to be you saying things like:
1. "Slaren here. Pretty much all that has been said here is correct, what jart did was to take my code, remove backwards compatibility, add a new converter and then proceed to take all the credit."
2. "To understand why I did that, you have to go back here: https://github.com/ggerganov/llama.cpp/issues/91#issuecommen... jart initially created an implementation of mmap a couple of week back that was an abomination that relied on doing things like replacing malloc. Completely unworkable in a real code base. [...] So anyway, I joined jart's discord and talked to her about this a bit, she seemed to be interested in collaborating and that's why I added her as co-author, even thought she didn't write a line of code of the PR. Eventually out of nowhere she opened the PR that you all know and asked me to close mine. That's when I realized what was happening. So whatever, I did what she asked, left her discord and tried to forget about it".
This was intermingled into comments calling jart a "troon" (a derogatory term for transwoman).
Are you saying unequivocally that this wasn't you?
Even assuming that somebody was stealing your identity, why didn't you point out the problems with the PR upfront? One can't sit on the sidelines casting aspersions (even posthoc) while also claiming that they are distanced from the situation.
Either (a) people are competently pretending to be you on some kind of anti-trans imageboard by some how managing to make past statements that are perfectly consistent with the statements you've made today, or (b) you did pop into that thread to stir up shit.
I think there is a later comment in that thread from you responding to someone saying `#JusticeForSlaren` and requesting that they don't do anything, but that was yesterday and at this point it was too late.
In general what can be seen online doesn't look good for you and you are lucky to be anonymous. I know that you feel that jart stole your glory and it seems they did, but you responded with passive aggressive behaviour and whipped up a mob -- it's hard to believe you are stupid enough to not realise what you were doing with your comments. There were many better responses you could have made: you picked the worst one.
[0] The `.org` is mysteriously down: https://web.archive.org/web/20230402192741/https://rentry.or...
> Maybe I should have contested it but I was and still am going through a pretty rough patch in my life and just didn't have the willpower to start any drama. Mostly I think it sucks because IMO the worse technical solution got merged because their PR had a more flashy title.
>That's when I realized what was happening. So whatever, I did what she asked, left her discord and tried to forget about it.
>I really don't want to start any drama so I'll just say that I wrote the code in my commits.
No one claiming to be that user said anything derogatory or ever called for drama. You're making hollow accusations, basically: "Your messages were intermingled among bad comments" "some other users said bad things," "do you denounce you ever gave your side of the story?"
And I'd certainly consider it distancing yourself from the conversation when you close your PR and remain silent when someone essentially steals your code, and goes from "I was co-author" to "my code," "my work," "I did this," "I'm the author" all over Twitter, a bragging PR where she changed the magic number to her initials, etc.
I'm the one "responsible" for noticing this and raising the flag that something isn't right. Code was stolen and the toxic user responsible was taking more and more credit. The community reacted appropriately, on the whole, as did the owner of the project in banning the plagiarist. She's free to add her side of the story, of course. This issue was actually raised with her on Twitter twice and she ignored it, before it made its way to Github. To the extent that drama was caused by this, it's wholly the fault of the person who created this situation with her unethical behavior and intentionally misleading statements.
Of course no one can verify if that user is the same one in the 4chan threads. It's 4chan. But the commit history speaks for itself, and is well-documented by now.
None of this is an excuse for derogatory terms or slurs to be used on 4chan (or elsewhere), but you're intentionally muddying the waters.
> No one claiming to be that user said anything derogatory or ever called
> for drama. You're making hollow accusations, basically: "Your messages
> were intermingled among bad comments"
This is not "removing yourself from [the] situation" as Slaren asserts.
> And I'd certainly consider it distancing yourself from the conversation
> when you close your PR and remain silent when someone essentially steals
> your code [...] I'm the one "responsible" for noticing this and raising
> the flag that something isn't right.
> To the extent that drama was caused by this, it's wholly the fault of the
> person who created this situation with her unethical behavior and
> intentionally misleading statements.
> Of course no one can verify if that user is the same one in the 4chan threads.
I'm really not muddying the waters here. What you're trying to argue is difficult for me to believe, and whether or not you disagree with the level of recognition given by jart, your comment that "it's wholly the fault of the person who created this situation with her unethical behavior" is ugly. It pins all the blame on jart when it's quite clear from both Slaren and your comments that you were trying to cause drama (anonymously and publicly).
I'd just like to add that if yourself and @anzz1 had wanted to give @slaren the recognition that they deserved in a positive way, you'd have linked to https://github.com/ggerganov/llama.cpp/issues/91#issuecommen... and signal-boosted that as the key insight that enabled the PR to land, rather than taking the approach you took.
[0] https://github.com/ggerganov/llama.cpp/pull/586#issuecomment...
It's evident from simply looking at the PR that the user @slaren on the Github distanced himself from the situation. Days had passed with no one discussing the stolen code until I brought it up in the original PR (which jart rebased off of and created the infamous "Make loading weights 10-100x faster" PR)
> Yes, I can see that you were one of the key people that created drama, by asking "I'm wondering how much was written by you and how much by jart?" [0]
I didn't create drama. Jart created drama. By stealing code. Plagiarism. Then shameless self-promotion, to this very moment.
Do you have absolutely no integrity whatsoever?
>and then when they publicly said they didn't want to start drama, trying to get private comment from them by saying "My contact info is in my profile if there's more to say."
They didn't contact me, and I simply went through the public Github history to document what jart had done, and continues to do.
>I think somebody could choose to believe this, but somebody that reads the GitHub and desuarchive.org threads might also feel that @InconsolableCellist and @slaren had a part to play, too.
Yes, correct. I told you my part, I noticed what jart was doing. Why have you continually ignored what jart did? Why do you seem to think it's some minor issue that she stole code, bragged about it, took all the credit, and damaged the community with unnecessary drama? Why are you so focused on everything except the central ethical issue?
>Yes, it's technically possible that somebody pretending to be Slaren investigated the GitHub and was able to correctly infer exactly what happened chronologically including that they had collaborated on jart's Discord. However, Occam's razor suggests it was Slaren themselves and not a very clever troll.
Even if that were true--which it isn't, to my knowledge--it changes nothing about jart's behavior. Even if every user also used derogatory slurs, it changes nothing about the wrong was committed (but adds additional wrongs).
Fortunately, for anyone level-headed enough to look at what's been discussed so far, you can see the unethical behavior of the user that stole code, the aftermath, and the appropriate reaction for that user to be banned. The behavior that you've ignored and seem wholly unconcerned with, as if blind to it. Plagiarism.
However, I won't respond to you here, since (1) it should be quite clear that I think @slaren wasn't given enough recognition for their work from my prior comments and that there is a more positive approach you could have taken to helping to give them this, and (2) the rest of what you said about ethics is subjective, and I think wrong in magnitude -- for example, I'm not sure it's correct to call it "plagiarism" when @jart's PR mentioned the collaboration with @slaren, used co-authored commits and linked to their PR.
"Here's how folks in the community have been reacting to my work."
"I just wrote a change that's going to let your LLaMA models load instantly..."
"I'm the author"
"Author here..."
"Tragedy of the commons...We're talking to a group of people who live inside scientific papers and jupyer notebooks."
"My change helps inference go faster."
"The point of my change..."
"I stated my change offered a 2x improvement in memory usage."
"I can only take credit for a 2x recrease in RAM usage."
"I just wrote a change that's going to let your LLaMA models load instantly, thanks to custom malloc() and the power of mmap()"
jart was working on a malloc() approach that didn't work and slaren wrote all the code actually doing mmap, which jart then rebased in a random new PR, changed to support an unnecessary version change, magic numbers, a conversion tool, and WIN32 support when that was already working in the draft PR. https://archive.ph/Uva8c
This was 2 weeks prior to @slaren's contribution (https://github.com/slaren/llama.cpp/commit/fc685122f95f212d1...) on March 29th, so in a sense, it's quite possible that what you've just shown is that @slaren saw that @jart was working on mmap support, worked out a cleaner solution and then wasn't happy with only being a co-author -- for their contribution, they believed that they must be the only person mentioned on the PR: although this is weird, since I don't think they even have a public profile, so maybe instead the truth is that they weren't comfortable with working with somebody that hypes up any changes they've worked on for popularity?
I don't think saying "my changes" on Twitter and other social media means what you suggest it does as is it is just informal speech to refer to things you've worked on with "my", and particularly when you see the times this was expanded (e.g. "yesterday my changes to the LLaMA C++ file format were approved") it seems more reasonable than it does without this context.
In fact, if you read the thread you linked to, you'll see this for yourself too, no reentry required. There's nothing actually objectionable or "repulsive," as jart put it, in that renetry, with an exception of the "r word" being applied to a proposed technical solution.
Your interpretation is incompatible with what we see and the clear timeline. The social media bragging, the second PR, etc., are further evidence. I hope whatever anger you had going into this has abated to the point where you can now actually judge the evidence.
Trust absolutely nothing from that site or any other imageboard unless people provide documented evidence, e.g. timestamped picture or signed message, etc
>The stories and information posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood.
>Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact.
I don't actually have any idea where this quote appears these days, I've just been hearing it in reference to chans for well over a decade now. I think it might have been on the bottom of every page in the past.
If Jart would have tried to do everything the ,,proper way'', this change wouldn't have had this visibility, and he would have had much harder time to change the memory layout in the file.
I think things are going great, I just wish people would be able to not care about the negative feedback part that comes with it naturally.
It sounds like one person experienced a performance regression as a result of the llama.cpp MMAP changes, and decided to create a pull request to revert all of those changes. While they propose wrapping the mmap changes behind a feature flag / command-line flag, that's not what this PR does -- it just reverts the original commits. It's a "tear it down NOW" reaction rather than a "how can I improve this" reaction.
jart and a few other people in the PR have now proposed a variety of feature-flags or forked versions to address the issue in a more nuanced way.
The predominant attitude I have seen with my open source projects is entitlement and anger at decisions I have made, (whether that's because my license isn't MIT or because I don't want to use the latest and greatest features of language X, or because I use 2 spaces instead of 4). I just want to share my code, but some people make this unnecessarily difficult and want to cause drama where there never needed to be any.
Now, with that said, I have also met amazing people who have offered invaluable insights. These people have made contributions, to code and discussions, and on the other side provided amazing libraries and support. I really love Open Source, but there is a certain aspect of the community that can be downright hostile, and I hate that. I never understood why some developers feel the need to belittle others or to scoff at what other people want to share. I hope that if people know my name it's because I encouraged them and gave them help and/or praise for a cool project, and not because I was a dick and made them feel like crap for an inconsequential action.
There are a lot of thorny issues with mmap, and I'm sure there are legitimate regressions with the approach and things to be fixed, but it sure would be nice to see an analysis from someone who actually knows what mmap is.
The argument against the feature flag is ultimately more egregious; it’s an experimental feature, breaks compatibility, decreases memory usage for a fair portion of the population while 10x’ing load speed for the rest so very YMMV for an optimization.
In another project this wouldn‘t even be a revert PR but just a PR to feature flag it. Can’t help but notice that more than half the replies on this PR are from people who have a limited understanding of LLMs, admit to it, and are just adding noise because this project is popular right now. First step would be to lock this contributors only so they can get a more streamlined discussion going.
> > I don't think I'm unterstanding this right: You're saying that memory will not be freed by the OS after the process terminates?
> You're understanding it perfectly. The whole raison d'etre for mmap() is the ability to leave stuff in RAM (or swap, albeit if that happens it's completely detrimental to this use case) unlinked from the process itself. Basically it's just storing a file/memory block in RAM which can be accessed from multiple processes.
Wow, does this developer not understand the nuances of mmap().
When you mmap a regular file, you're essentially adding an entry to the page table that shares the data with the kernel's filesystem cache. I think he was trying to explain the implications of this fact, but doing so in an incredibly garbled manner, and getting his conclusions wrong.
There are performance implications to using mmap (not always good, not always bad), but both sides of the discussion here immediately dug their heels in on their conclusion without anyone trying to do any analysis to see what the actual implications were, and why.
Yeah. I like using the expression "knows just enough to be dangerous" (usually applied in humility to myself), and this situation is such a perfect example. Someone who seems to know just enough about the advanced workings under mmap() to completely misunderstand the implications.
Seems like ego-driven optimization that breaks compatibility?
On the same hand this may be an ego driven revert. from reading the bug it seems like some people might be salty that jart gets a lot of publicity for a few changes where other people which bigger contributions to the project don't get.
A number of people saw this and said that making a breaking change to the repo that a lot of people are using and have forked for other models was a bad idea, thus this new PR.
that's it
In this use of mmap, there is nothing to swap out as the source of truth is always on disk. During general swap usage, memory has to travel in both directions.
The PR it linked to said nothing of the sort: https://github.com/ggerganov/llama.cpp/pull/613
How is that productive? The author already claimed in their changes that they aren't an ML expert and asked for advice.
It could be written like
multi-headed attention transformers frobnicate all the weights in their QKV matmuls. <supposition ... I would look at IO rates during inference ...>
You have an opportunity to teach rather than admonish.
[1] https://github.com/ggerganov/llama.cpp/discussions/638#discu...
Edit: For everyone downvoting, please tell me what is wrong with my comment. I don't have a bone in this fight.
compare the actual PR: https://github.com/ggerganov/llama.cpp/pull/613
You'll note that it includes the original commits from Slaren, explicitly mentions the collaboration with Slaren and explicitly requests to preserve these commits on merge.