Distributed Training With Adapter Synchronization

Parameter-efficient fine-tuning — LoRA, QLoRA, adapter methods for LLMs on consumer GPUs.

Unique: Leverages PyTorch DDP's gradient synchronization to coordinate adapter training across devices while keeping base model weights frozen and non-communicating. Reduces communication bandwidth by 99%+ compared to full model distributed training because only adapter parameters (0.1-2% of model) are synchronized across devices.

vs others: Enables efficient multi-GPU training with minimal communication overhead compared to full model DDP, achieving near-linear scaling efficiency (90%+) because adapter parameters are orders of magnitude smaller than full model weights.