arXiv Machine Learning By Tom Kimpson, Mauricio Baker, Emlyn Graham

Detecting AI Training in Datacentre Power

Read the original on arXiv Machine Learning →

The paper proposes a method to detect large AI model training runs on a data‑centre power grid using Viterbi tracking of iteration cadence. On simulated data, the tracker identifies at least 96 % of training runs with a 1 % false‑alarm rate when the operator does not hide activity, and remains effective even against several adversarial hiding strategies. The approach requires only a modest passive power meter sampling at 2 Hz or faster, making hidden training both detectable and costly for the operator.

Machine-generated by The Flow from the publisher's headline and feed description — not written or checked by a human. The full article lives at arXiv Machine Learning.

arXiv AI
Sep 2

Workload Identification with Physical Side Channels for AI Governance

The paper demonstrates that an external observer can identify the type of workload running on an NVIDIA H200 GPU by analyzing its power draw, distinguishing training, inference, and non‑AI tasks with high accuracy. Using 930 recorded traces, the authors achieve 97% accuracy and a macro‑averaged F1 score of 0.955 on unseen model families. They also test four evasion strategies to disguise training as inference, showing that a hardened detector can catch most attacks, though one strategy (LoRA) remains partially detectable.

By Simone Gargiulo, Gabriel Kulp
arXiv AI
Sep 12

Characterizing Job Power Elasticity for Power-Flexible AI Training

The paper introduces the Power Flexibility Index (PFI) to measure how large language model (LLM) training performance changes when GPU power is reduced. Using 131 training runs on H200 and H100 GPUs, the study finds that LLM jobs have significant but variable power elasticity and identifies telemetry signals that can predict PFI during runtime. The authors demonstrate that allocating power based on PFI maximizes overall token throughput, recovering about 1.5k tokens/s per job under a 30% power reduction, which represents 63% of the gap between equal-weight and perfect-information allocations.

By Philip Colangelo, Charles Dawson, Shayan Sengupta, Ayse Coskun, Varun Sivaram