Data sharding and parallelization strategies
Data sharding refers to the technique of breaking up a large dataset into smaller, more manageable pieces, known as “shards,” which are then distributed across multiple machines or storage systems. Each shard can be processed independently, making it easier to handle large datasets, especially those that don’t fit into the memory of a single machine. This approach is widely used in machine learning to distribute the processing of large datasets, thereby allowing for the training of larger models or faster computation.
Data sharding enables more efficient use of computational resources as each shard can be processed independently, and the results can be aggregated later.
However, careful consideration must be given to ensuring that the sharding strategy maintains the integrity and representativeness of the data distribution across all shards to avoid biases or inconsistencies in the trained model.
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