Zeppelin: Balancing Variable-length Workloads in Data Parallel Large Model Training
Chang Chen, Tiancheng Chen, Jiangfei Duan, Qianchao Zhu, Zerui Wang, Qinghao Hu, Peng Sun, Xiuhong Li, Chao Yang, Torsten Hoefler
April, 2026
Abstract
Zeppelin balances variable-length workloads in data-parallel large model training. It combines hierarchical sequence partitioning, an attention engine with different parallel strategies, communication routing, and sequence-layout remapping to reduce communication overhead and balance computation.
Publication
In Proceedings of the 21st European Conference on Computer Systems (EuroSys 2026)

Ph.D. Student · Research Intern