Do Co-Located AI Training Jobs Synchronize?

A new study from researchers at arXiv identifies load-dependent throttling as a coupling mechanism that can cause co-located AI training jobs to synchronize their power draw, turning aggregate fluctuation from square-root to linear growth. The paper, submitted on 22 Jul 2026, formalizes the fleet as a generalized Kuramoto system and finds that the coupling is repulsive to leading order, becoming attractive only when the control loop's phase lag exceeds half a cycle. The authors propose a falsifiable two-job co-capped measurement to detect the effect.

Electrical Engineering and Systems Science Systems and Control Submitted on 22 Jul 2026 Title:Do Co-Located AI Training Jobs Synchronize? Load-Dependent Throttling as a Coupling Mechanism for Phase-Locking Behind a Shared Power Cap View PDF /pdf/2607.19638 HTML experimental https://arxiv.org/html/2607.19638v1 Abstract:Large-scale AI training turns computing facilities into multi-megawatt loads whose power draw is periodic: tens of thousands of accelerators step in lockstep between compute-bound phases near peak power and communication-bound phases where they idle. Prior work treats each facility as an exogenous periodic forcing on the grid. We pose the operator's question instead: when many independent training jobs share one oversubscribed power envelope, do their cycles stay independent, so aggregate fluctuation grows as the square root of the number of jobs, or can the power-management stack phase-lock them into linear growth? This is emergent synchronization in a population of nonlinear oscillators - the Kuramoto setting - but classical coupling is absent, since accelerator clocks are decoupled from line frequency. We identify the coupling channel in load-dependent throttling: caps, voltage droop, and shared cooling slow computation exactly when aggregate demand is high. Formalizing the fleet as a generalized Kuramoto system, we obtain three operator-facing statements. Dimension: the coupling is repulsive to leading order and turns attractive only when the control loop's phase lag exceeds half a cycle; protection is mode-selective, so rate diversity is required. Detect: frequency-correlated frustration makes the onset first-order and hysteretic. Mitigate: phase-scattering scheduling raises every mode threshold at once. The prediction is falsifiable by a two-job co-capped measurement, which we specify. Submission history From: Brieuc Le Roux Tardif view email /show-email/aecdf651/2607.19638 v1 Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:17:16 UTC 556 KB Current browse context: eess.SY References & Citations Loading... Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer What is the Explorer? https://info.arxiv.org/labs/showcase.html arxiv-bibliographic-explorer Connected Papers What is Connected Papers? https://www.connectedpapers.com/about Litmaps What is Litmaps? https://www.litmaps.co/ scite Smart Citations What are Smart Citations? https://www.scite.ai/ Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv What is alphaXiv? https://alphaxiv.org/ CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers What is CatalyzeX? https://www.catalyzex.com DagsHub What is DagsHub? https://dagshub.com/ Gotit.pub What is GotitPub? http://gotit.pub/faq Hugging Face What is Huggingface? https://huggingface.co/huggingface ScienceCast What is ScienceCast? https://sciencecast.org/welcome Demos Recommenders and Search Tools Influence Flower What are Influence Flowers? https://influencemap.cmlab.dev/ CORE Recommender What is CORE? https://core.ac.uk/services/recommender arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs https://info.arxiv.org/labs/index.html .