"""Example demo'ing async gym vector envs, in which sub-envs have their own process. Setting up env vectorization works through setting the `config.num_envs_per_env_runner` value to > 1. However, by default the n sub-environments are stepped through sequentially, rather than in parallel. This script shows the effect of setting the `config.gym_env_vectorize_mode` from its default value of "sync" (all sub envs are located in the same EnvRunner process) to "async" (all sub envs in each EnvRunner get their own process). This example: - shows, which config settings to change in order to switch from sub-envs being stepped in sequence to each sub-envs owning its own process (and compute resource) and thus the vector being stepped in parallel. - shows, how this setup can increase EnvRunner performance significantly, especially for heavier, slower environments. - uses an artificially slow CartPole-v1 environment for demonstration purposes. How to run this script ---------------------- `python [script file name].py ` Use the `--vectorize-mode=both` option to run both modes (sync and async) through Tune at the same time and get a better comparison of the throughputs achieved. For debugging, use the following additional command line options `--no-tune --num-env-runners=0` which should allow you to set breakpoints anywhere in the RLlib code and have the execution stop there for inspection and debugging. For logging to your WandB account, use: `--wandb-key=[your WandB API key] --wandb-project=[some project name] --wandb-run-name=[optional: WandB run name (within the defined project)]` Results to expect ----------------- You should see results similar to the following in your console output when using the +--------------------------+------------+------------------------+------+ | Trial name | status | gym_env_vectorize_mode | iter | | | | | | |--------------------------+------------+------------------------+------+ | PPO_slow-env_6ddf4_00000 | TERMINATED | sync | 4 | | PPO_slow-env_6ddf4_00001 | TERMINATED | async | 4 | +--------------------------+------------+------------------------+------+ +------------------+----------------------+------------------------+ | total time (s) | episode_return_mean | num_env_steps_sample | | | | d_lifetime | |------------------+----------------------+------------------------+ | 60.8794 | 73.53 | 16040 | | 19.1203 | 73.86 | 16037 | +------------------+----------------------+------------------------+ You can see that the async mode, given that the env is sufficiently slow, achieves much better results when using vectorization. You should see no difference, however, when only using `--num-envs-per-env-runner=1`. """ import time import gymnasium as gym from ray import tune from ray.rllib.algorithms.ppo import PPOConfig from ray.rllib.examples.utils import ( add_rllib_example_script_args, run_rllib_example_script_experiment, ) parser = add_rllib_example_script_args(default_reward=60.0) parser.set_defaults( env="CartPole-v1", num_envs_per_env_runner=6, ) parser.add_argument( "--vectorize-mode", type=str, default="async", help="The value `gym.envs.registration.VectorizeMode` to use for env " "vectorization. sync steps through all sub-envs in sequence. 'async' (default) " "parallelizes sub-envs through multiprocessing and can speed up EnvRunners " "significantly. Use the special value `both` to run both 'async' and 'sync' through a " "Tune grid-search.", ) class SlowEnv(gym.ObservationWrapper): def observation(self, observation): time.sleep(0.005) return observation if __name__ == "__main__": args = parser.parse_args() if args.no_tune and args.vectorize_mode == "both": raise ValueError( "Can't run this script with both --no-tune and --vectorize-mode=both!" ) # Wrap the env with the slowness wrapper. def _env_creator(cfg): return SlowEnv(gym.make(args.env, **cfg)) tune.register_env("slow-env", _env_creator) base_config = ( PPOConfig() .environment("slow-env") .env_runners( gym_env_vectorize_mode=( tune.grid_search(["sync", "async"]) if args.vectorize_mode == "both" else args.vectorize_mode ), ) ) results = run_rllib_example_script_experiment(base_config, args) # Compare the throughputs and assert that ASYNC is much faster than SYNC. if args.vectorize_mode == "both": throughput_sync = ( results[0].metrics["num_env_steps_sampled_lifetime"] / results[0].metrics["time_total_s"] ) throughput_async = ( results[1].metrics["num_env_steps_sampled_lifetime"] / results[1].metrics["time_total_s"] ) assert throughput_async > throughput_sync