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Share ort session between instances - #343

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glebashnik wants to merge 5 commits into
triton-inference-server:mainfrom
glebashnik:share-ort-session-between-instances
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Share ort session between instances#343
glebashnik wants to merge 5 commits into
triton-inference-server:mainfrom
glebashnik:share-ort-session-between-instances

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@glebashnik

@glebashnik glebashnik commented May 25, 2026

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This is a rebased and cleaned-up follow-up to #248.

It adds optional sharing of a single ONNX Runtime session across Triton model instances.

This significantly reduces memory growth with multiple instances. GPU throughput can be lower with shared
sessions, so this is intended as an opt-in memory optimization.

The feature is controlled by a model config parameter:

parameters {
  key: "share_session_between_instances"
  value: { string_value: "1" }
}

Once enabled for a model, it applies to all instance groups of that model. However, sharing is within each
instance group, not globally across all instance groups.

The default behavior is unchanged: each model instance creates its own ORT session.

Changes since #248:

  • Locking improvement for shared session initialization using RAII.
  • Improved instance group name parsing without regex. This handles multi-digit instance group indexes and model
    names with regex special characters.
  • Documented the new parameter.
  • Added an integration test that verifies session reuse and runs inference.

I also ran local CPU/GPU benchmarks with Triton Server 2.68.0 and a ModernBERT embedder to measure memory use
and throughput. Tested with enable_mem_pattern, do_copy_in_default_stream, and use_ep_level_unified_stream; these did not meaningfully affect performance for shared sessions.

samgoel01 and others added 5 commits May 7, 2026 21:26
For every instance in a model instance group a new ORT session is
created. This code adds support to share a session per instance
group.
This support can be enabled by defining
'share_session_between_instances' to true
in triton model config "parameters". Example:
parameters [
.....
  {
    key: "share_session_between_instances"
    value: {string_value: "true"}
  }
]

This is a global parameter and cannot be defined per instance
group. The user should determine if the parameter makes sense for
their setup.

When log-info option of tritonserver is set to "1",
the logs will indicate that a session is mapped for the
instance group during the first initialized instance and reused for other
instances.
Example:
 TRITONBACKEND_ModelInstanceInitialize: <model>_0_1 (CPU device 0)
 TRITONBACKEND_ModelInstanceInitialize: <model>_0_0 (CPU device 0)
 Could not find a session corresponding to instance group: <model>_0
 Created session for instance: <model>_0_1
 Mapped session for instance group: <model>_0
 Reusing session for instance: <model>_0_0

Change-Id: I6dc509b9c2451e3dd14d45f6f150b37f50b5db89
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2 participants