---
layout: '@/layouts/Doc.astro'
title: "🧊 Cooling Down Checkpoints: Best Practices for Model Evaluation"
date: 2025-11-12
description: 'Best practices for cooling down model checkpoints before evaluation to improve validation loss comparisons.'
---

Sam Foreman
2025-11-12

- [📉 Simple Experiment to Compare Validation
  Loss](#chart_with_downwards_trend-simple-experiment-to-compare-validation-loss)
- [☃️ Cooling Down](#snowman_with_snow-cooling-down)
- [♻️ Convert to Universal
  (Optional)](#recycle-convert-to-universal-optional)
- [📄 W&B Report](#page_facing_up-wb-report)

## 📉 Simple Experiment to Compare Validation Loss

<div class="light-content">

<img src="/assets/cooldown.png" alt="Cool Down Comparison" />

</div>

<div class="dark-content">

<img src="/assets/cooldown-dark.png" alt="Cool Down Comparison" />

</div>

## ☃️ Cooling Down

- 256 Nodes of Aurora:

  - Cooled down over last 10%:

    - W&B Run:
      [volcanic-blaze-4312](https://wandb.ai/aurora_gpt/AuroraGPT/runs/7bjj8vgu/overview?nw=nwuserforemans)

  - Explicit command:

    ``` bash
    ROPE_THETA=50000 \
      GRAD_ACC_STEPS=2 \
      MICRO_BATCH=1 \
      USE_ACTIVATION_CHECKPOINTING=0 \
      ZERO_STAGE=0 \
      TRAIN_TOKENS=4673780159710 \
      OPT=sophiag \
      DATA_FILE_LIST=ALCF/data-lists/aurora/olmo-mix-1124.txt \
      LR_DECAY_STYLE=constant \
      LOAD=cooldown-checkpoints/sophiag-global-step-73500/global_step73500 \
      bash train_alcf.sh \
        --no-load-lr-state \
        --lr_constant_plus_cooldown \
        --lr_constant_plus_cooldown_frac 0.10
    ```

## ♻️ Convert to Universal (Optional)

```bash
TORCH_FORCE_NO_WEIGHTS_ONLY_LOAD=1 python3 ALCF/ds_to_universal.py \
    --input_folder test_rollback/global_step136000 \
    --output_folder test_rollback/global_step136000_universal
```

## 📄 W&B Report

<div class="column-body-outset"
style="box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.16) 0px 1px 4px;">

&lt;iframe loading="lazy" src="https://api.wandb.ai/links/aurora_gpt/dek99dmd" align="center" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen allowfullscreen style="border:none;height:1024px;width:100%">

&lt;/iframe>

</div>
