TrainSDC: Characterizing and Mitigating Silent Data Corruption in Large Language Model Training

2026-08-31

AI Summary

研究针对大型语言模型训练中的静默数据损坏问题，通过分析其在Transformer计算中的传播机制，提出TrainSDC框架以特定策略减轻影响，实验显示有效且额外开销小。

Abstract

LLM training is increasingly vulnerable to silent data corruption (SDC), yet existing protection methods largely treat Transformer computations uniformly because their vulnerability remains poorly understood. We present the first systematic characterization of SDC vulnerability across major computation interfaces in both the forward and backward passes of Transformer training. Our analysis reveals two distinct error propagation mechanisms: forward-pass vulnerability is highly location dependent, with faults on the Q/K path producing persistent training deviations, whereas backward-pass vulnerability is largely governed by gradient exponent distributions rather than computation locations. Motivated by these observations, we propose TrainSDC, a characterization-guided protection framework consisting of Q/K-path recomputation, residual-gain monitoring, and exponent-aware gradient scaling. Experiments on Llama 3.2-1B and Qwen3-0.6B show that TrainSDC maintains training behavior close to fault-free execution under both sparse and dense fault injection while introducing only 1.65%-6.76% runtime overhead.

Problem

• Silent Data Corruption
• Large Language Model Training
• Vulnerability

Innovation

• Silent Data Corruption
• Transformer Training
• Error Propagation Mechanisms
• Characterization-Guided Protection