The evolution of AI training paradigms: from centralized control to a technological revolution of decentralized collaboration
In the entire value chain of AI, model training is the most resource-consuming and technically challenging stage, directly determining the model's capability ceiling and actual application effectiveness. Compared to the lightweight calls during the inference phase, the training process requires continuous large-scale computing power input, complex data processing workflows, and high-intensity optimization algorithm support, making it the true "heavy industry" of AI system construction. From an architectural paradigm perspective, training methods can be divided into four categories: centralized training, distributed training, federated learning, and the focus of this article, Decentralization training.
Centralized training is the most common traditional method, completed entirely by a single organization within a local high-performance cluster, where all training processes, from hardware, underlying software, cluster scheduling systems, to all components of the training framework, are coordinated and operated by a unified control system. This deeply collaborative architecture enables memory sharing and gradient synchronization.