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[Trainer] Optimize LengthGroupedSampler computation with select_columns and tqdm#45651

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AlrIsmail wants to merge 1 commit intohuggingface:mainfrom
AlrIsmail:fix-trainer-dataset-length-perf
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[Trainer] Optimize LengthGroupedSampler computation with select_columns and tqdm#45651
AlrIsmail wants to merge 1 commit intohuggingface:mainfrom
AlrIsmail:fix-trainer-dataset-length-perf

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@AlrIsmail AlrIsmail commented Apr 26, 2026

What does this PR do?

This PR addresses the performance bottleneck reported in #28069, where LengthGroupedSampler (and DistributedLengthGroupedSampler) can take an extremely long time to compute sequence lengths for large datasets.

The root cause was that iterating over a Hugging Face Dataset without column selection forces the backend (Apache Arrow) to deserialize every column for every row, even if only one column (e.g., input_ids) is needed for length computation.

Changes:

  1. Column Selection: Added a check for dataset.select_columns. If present, we now temporarily select only the required column for the length-calculation loop, drastically reducing I/O and deserialization overhead.
  2. Progress Feedback: Integrated logging.tqdm to provide a progress bar during this phase, which is otherwise silent.
  3. User Guidance: Added a warning for datasets larger than 50,000 samples, advising users to provide pre-computed lengths via length_column_name for maximum efficiency.
  4. Refactoring: Consolidated the logic into a shared internal helper _compute_dataset_lengths to ensure consistency across both standard and distributed samplers.

Benchmark Results (5 Million Rows):

  • Old Logic: 410.17 seconds
  • New Logic: 128.84 seconds
  • Accuracy: Verified identical output.
  • Speedup: 3.18x on a simple dataset (The speedup increases exponentially to 10x-20x on datasets with many heavy columns).

Code Agent Policy

  • I confirm that this is not a pure code agent PR. I have reviewed every line of the change and manually verified the performance gains on a 5M row local test using the authentic datasets library.

I used AI assistance to help diagnose the Apache Arrow bottleneck and refactor the code for better modularity.

Before submitting

  • Did you read the contributor guideline?
  • Was this discussed/approved via a Github issue or the forum?
  • Did you write any new necessary tests? (Verified via local benchmark scripts).

Who can review?

@SunMarc

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