Glossary

Below is a list of terms and concepts in NVIDIA FLARE and their definitions.

Aggregator

The Aggregator defines the algorithm used on the server to aggregate the data passed back to the server in the clients’ Shareable object.

Application (app)

An Application is a named directory structure that defines the client and server configuration and any custom code required to implement the Controller/Worker workflow. Since 2.1.0, jobs have been introduced to manage the deployment of apps in an experiment.

Controller

The Controller is a python object on the FL server side that controls or coordinates Workers to perform tasks. The Controller defines the overall collaborative computing workflow. In its control logic, the Controller assigns tasks to Workers and processes task results from the workers.

Events

Events allow for dynamic notifications to be sent to all objects that are a subclass of FLComponent. Every FLComponent is an event handler. The event mechanism is like a pub-sub mechanism that enables indirect communication between components for data sharing.

Executor

The Executor is the component on the FL Client side that executes the task received from the Controller on the FL Server. For example, in DL training, the Executor would implement the training loop. There can be multiple executors on the client, designed to execute different tasks (training, validation/evaluation, data preparation, etc.).

Filter

Filters are used to define transformations of the data in the Shareable object when transferred between server and client and vice versa. Filters can be applied when the data is sent or received by either the client or server.

FLAdminAPI

FLAdminAPI was the legacy Python wrapper for issuing admin commands to the FL server. It has been removed from the current runtime and replaced by the FLARE API.

FLARE API

FLARE API is a redesigned version of FLAdminAPI intended to provide a better user experience for issuing admin commands to the FL server.

FLARE Console (previously referred to as Admin Console or Admin Client)

The FLARE Console is used to orchestrate the FL study, including starting and stopping the server and clients and checking their status, deploying applications, and managing FL experiments.

FLComponent

Most component types are subclasses of FLComponent. You can create your own subclass of FLComponent for various purposes like listening to certain events and handling data.

FLContext

FLContext is one of the key features of NVIDIA FLARE and is available to every method of all FLComponent types (Controller, Aggregator, Executor, Filter, Widget, …). An FLContext object contains contextual information of the FL environment: overall system settings (peer name, job id / run number, workspace location, etc.). FLContext also contains an important object called Engine, through which you can access important services provided by the system (e.g. fire events, get all available client names, send aux messages, etc.).

Job

Jobs contain all of the apps and the information of which app(s) to deploy to which clients or server, the resource requirements for the experiment, and everything about the experiment.

Learnable

Learnable is the result of the Federated Learning application maintained by the server. In DL workflows, the Learnable is the aspect of the DL model to be learned. For example, the model weights are commonly the Learnable feature, not the model geometry. Depending on the purpose of your study, the Learnable may be any component of interest. Learnable is an abstract object that is aggregated from the client’s Shareable object and is not DL-specific. It can be any model, or object. The Learnable is managed in the Controller workflow.

Learner

Learner is a class that focuses just on the training specific tasks, that can be used for building a component to use with LearnerExecutor. This way, the communication constructs, error code handling, etc. that are specific to NVFLARE are handled in LearnerExecutor while the training and validation logic can be focused in Learner.

LearnerExecutor

LearnerExecutor is a special type of Executor that abstracts the execution flow and delegates the actual training work to the Learner.

ModelLocator

nvflare.app_common.np.np_model_locator.NPModelLocator is a component to find the models to be included for cross site evaluation located on server.

NVIDIA FLARE

NVIDIA FLARE stands for NVIDIA Federated Learning Application Runtime Environment, a general-purpose framework designed for collaborative computing.

Peer Context

The Peer Context is the contextual information of the message sender that is sent in addition to the regular payload of the message when the FL parties communicate with each other.

Persistor

A component for saving the state of something. LearnablePersistor is a method implemented for the FL server to save the state of the Learnable object, for example writing a global model to disk.

POC mode

See Setting Up the Application Environment in POC Mode.

Project yaml

The project.yaml is the file used in the provisioning process that has the Project’s specifications including the FL Server, FL Clients, and Admin Users as well as the Builders for assembling the Startup Kits.

Provisioning

Provisioning is the process of setting up a secure project with startup kits for the different participants including the FL Server, FL Clients, and Admin Users.

Roles in NVIDIA FLARE

The user roles in NVIDIA FLARE include Project Admin, Org Admin, Lead researcher, and Member researcher and can be used to set certain privileges of system operations for different users. See the Security Overview page for details.

Scatter and Gather Workflow

The Scatter and Gather Workflow is an included reference implementation of the default workflow of previous versions of NVIDIA FLARE with an FL Server aggregating results from FL Clients.

Shareable

Shareable is a communication between two peers (server and clients). In the task-based interaction, the Shareable from server to clients carries the data of the task for the client to execute; and the Shareable from the client to server carries the result of the task execution. When this is applied to DL model training, the task data typically contains model weights for the client to train on; and the task result contains updated model weights from the client. The concept of Shareable is very general - it can be whatever that makes sense for the task.

ShareableGenerator

ShareableGenerator is a component that converts between Shareable objects and model objects. The ShareableGenerator implements two methods, learnable_to_shareable() converts a Learnable object to a form of data to be shared to FL clients, and shareable_to_learnable() uses the Shareable data (or aggregated Shareable data) from the FL clients to update the Learnable object.

Startup kit

Startup kits are products of the provisioning process and contain the configuration and certificates necessary to establish secure connections between the FL server, FL clients, and Admin clients. These files are used to establish identity and authorization policies between server and clients. Startup kits are distributed to the FL server, clients, and Admin clients depending on role.

Study

A study provides multi-tenant isolation within a single NVFlare deployment. Each study defines which sites participate and what role each admin user has. Jobs, job listings, and study-aware client-targeted admin operations are scoped to the active study session. The "default" study is the fallback session context and preserves the certificate-based role behavior. Studies are configured in the studies: section of project.yml and require api_version: 4. See Multi-Study Support for details.

Task

A Task is a piece of work (Python code) that is assigned by the Controller to client workers. Depending on how the Task is assigned (broadcast, send, or relay), the task will be performed by one or more clients. The logic to be performed in a Task is defined in an Executor.

TB Analytics Receiver

The Tensorboard Analytics Receiver is part of the ML Experimental tracking. NVFLARE implemented the server-side ML Experimental tracking, with Tensorboard as the ML tracking tool. The client side collects the logs, and the FL server has the Tensorboard Summary Writer to send the logs to Tensorboard. The TB Analytics Receiver is the component that receives the logging from different clients and then writes to Tensorboard.

Worker

A Worker is capable of performing tasks (training, validation/evaluation, data preparation, etc.). Workers run on FL Clients.