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docs: Add float16 precision warning for optimizer eps and small values #21295

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Oct 21, 2025
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docs: Add float16 precision warning for optimizer eps and small values #21295

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docs: add warnings about Float16 limitations and introduce BFloat16 f…
bhimrazy Oct 16, 2025
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Merge branch 'master' into docs/fp16-precision-warning
bhimrazy Oct 20, 2025
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Borda Oct 21, 2025
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Merge branch 'master' into docs/fp16-precision-warning
bhimrazy Oct 21, 2025
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8 changes: 8 additions & 0 deletions docs/source-pytorch/common/precision_basic.rst
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Expand Up @@ -39,6 +39,14 @@ However, this setting can sometimes lead to unstable training.
Trainer(precision="16-true")
.. warning::

Float16 cannot represent values smaller than ~6e-5. Values like Adam's default ``eps=1e-8`` become zero, which can cause
NaN during training. Increase ``eps`` to 1e-4 or higher, and avoid extremely small values in your model weights and data.

.. note::

BFloat16 (``"bf16-mixed"`` or ``"bf16-true"``) has better numerical stability with a wider dynamic range.

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