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PaddleOCR-VL AMD GPU Usage Tutorial

Info

Unless otherwise specified, the term "PaddleOCR-VL" in this tutorial refers to the PaddleOCR-VL model series (e.g., PaddleOCR-VL-1.5). References specific to the PaddleOCR-VL v1 version will be explicitly noted.

This tutorial is a guide for using PaddleOCR-VL on AMD GPU, covering the complete workflow from environment preparation to service deployment.

PaddleOCR-VL has been verified for accuracy and speed on the AMD MI300X. However, due to hardware diversity, compatibility with other AMD GPUs has not yet been confirmed. We welcome the community to test on different hardware setups and share your results.

Workflow Guide for This Hardware

Use this guide for the workflows below.

Goal Support on this hardware Read this section
Local direct inference Supported Read Section 1. Environment Preparation and Section 2. Quick Start.
Client + VLM inference service Supported Complete local direct inference first, then read Section 3. Improving Inference Performance with VLM Inference Services.
Full API service Supported with Docker Compose deployment Read Section 4.1 first, then continue with the Section 4.2 client invocation section and the Section 4.3 pipeline configuration section.
Model fine-tuning Supported Read Section 5. Model Fine-Tuning.

If you only need to confirm which inference methods are available on this hardware, refer to the PaddleOCR-VL Inference Method and Hardware Support Matrix in the main guide.

1. Environment Preparation

Environment Setup Methods Supported on This Hardware

Environment setup method Status Notes
Official Docker image Supported with steps in this guide Continue with Section 1.1.
Manually install PaddlePaddle and PaddleOCR Supported with steps in this guide Continue with Section 1.2.

This step mainly introduces how to set up the runtime environment for PaddleOCR-VL. There are two methods available; choose either one:

  • Method 1: Use the official Docker image.

  • Method 2: Manually install PaddlePaddle and PaddleOCR.

We strongly recommend using the Docker image to minimize potential environment-related issues.

1.1 Method 1: Using Docker Image

We recommend using the official Docker image (requires Docker version >= 19.03):

docker run -it \
  --user root \
  --device /dev:/dev \
  --shm-size 64g \
  --network host \
  ccr-2vdh3abv-pub.cnc.bj.baidubce.com/paddlepaddle/paddleocr-vl:latest-amd-gpu \
  /bin/bash
# Call PaddleOCR CLI or Python API in the container

If you wish to start the service in an environment without internet access, replace ccr-2vdh3abv-pub.cnc.bj.baidubce.com/paddlepaddle/paddleocr-vl:latest-amd-gpu (image size approximately 15 GB) in the above command with the offline version image ccr-2vdh3abv-pub.cnc.bj.baidubce.com/paddlepaddle/paddleocr-vl:latest-amd-gpu-offline (image size approximately 17 GB).

Tip

Images with the latest-xxx tag correspond to the latest version. If the corresponding latest image already exists locally and you want the newest features or fixes, we recommend running docker pull again before using it. If you want to use an image corresponding to a specific PaddleOCR version, you can replace latest in the tag with the desired version number: paddleocr<major>.<minor>. For example: ccr-2vdh3abv-pub.cnc.bj.baidubce.com/paddlepaddle/paddleocr-vl:paddleocr3.4-amd-gpu-offline

1.2 Method 2: Manually Install PaddlePaddle and PaddleOCR

If you cannot use Docker, you can also manually install PaddlePaddle and PaddleOCR. This guide documents Python 3.9–3.13 as the verified range.

We strongly recommend installing PaddleOCR-VL in a virtual environment to avoid dependency conflicts. For example, use the Python venv standard library to create a virtual environment:

# Create a virtual environment
python -m venv .venv_paddleocr
# Activate the environment
source .venv_paddleocr/bin/activate

Execute the following commands to complete the installation:

python -m pip install paddlepaddle==3.2.1 -i https://www.paddlepaddle.org.cn/packages/stable/cpu/
python -m pip install -U "paddleocr[doc-parser]"

Please note to install PaddlePaddle version 3.2.1 or above.

2. Quick Start

Please refer to PaddleOCR-VL Usage Tutorial - 2. Quick Start.

3. Improving Inference Performance with VLM Inference Services

The inference performance under default configurations is not fully optimized and may not meet actual production requirements. This section introduces how to improve PaddleOCR-VL inference performance through a VLM inference service. In this hardware-specific guide, the examples use vLLM as the backend for the VLM inference service.

3.1 Starting the VLM Inference Service

Important

The service started according to this section is responsible only for the VLM inference stage in the PaddleOCR-VL workflow. It does not provide a complete end-to-end document parsing API. We strongly recommend that you do not call this service directly via HTTP requests or OpenAI clients to process document images. If you need to deploy a service with the full PaddleOCR-VL capabilities, refer to the service deployment section later in this document.

Launch Methods Supported on This Hardware

Launch method Status Notes
Official Docker image Supported with steps in this guide This section provides the vLLM service launch steps.
Install dependencies with the PaddleOCR CLI and launch the service Not currently supported This hardware does not currently support this path.
Launch the service directly with the acceleration framework Not currently supported This hardware does not currently support this path.

PaddleOCR provides a Docker image for quickly starting the vLLM inference service. Use the following command to start the service (requires Docker version >= 19.03):

docker run -it \
  --name paddleocr_vllm \
  --user root \
  --device /dev:/dev \
  --shm-size 64g \
  --network host \
  ccr-2vdh3abv-pub.cnc.bj.baidubce.com/paddlepaddle/paddleocr-genai-vllm-server:latest-amd-gpu \
  paddleocr genai_server --model_name PaddleOCR-VL-1.5-0.9B --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8118 --backend vllm

If you wish to start the service in an environment without internet access, replace ccr-2vdh3abv-pub.cnc.bj.baidubce.com/paddlepaddle/paddleocr-genai-vllm-server:latest-amd-gpu (image size approximately 31 GB) in the above command with the offline version image ccr-2vdh3abv-pub.cnc.bj.baidubce.com/paddlepaddle/paddleocr-genai-vllm-server:latest-amd-gpu-offline (image size approximately 33 GB).

When launching the vLLM inference service, we provide a set of default parameter settings. If you need to adjust parameters such as GPU memory usage, you can configure additional parameters yourself. Please refer to 3.3.1 Server-side Parameter Adjustment to create a configuration file, then mount the file into the container and specify the configuration file using backend_config in the command to start the service, for example:

docker run -it \
  --name paddleocr_vllm \
  --user root \
  --device /dev:/dev \
  --shm-size 64g \
  --network host \
  ccr-2vdh3abv-pub.cnc.bj.baidubce.com/paddlepaddle/paddleocr-genai-vllm-server:latest-amd-gpu \
  paddleocr genai_server --model_name PaddleOCR-VL-1.5-0.9B --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8118 --backend vllm --backend_config /tmp/vllm_config.yml

Tip

Images with the latest-xxx tag correspond to the latest version. If the corresponding latest image already exists locally and you want the newest features or fixes, we recommend running docker pull again before using it. If you want to use an image corresponding to a specific PaddleOCR version, you can replace latest in the tag with the desired version number: paddleocr<major>.<minor>. For example: ccr-2vdh3abv-pub.cnc.bj.baidubce.com/paddlepaddle/paddleocr-genai-vllm-server:paddleocr3.4-amd-gpu-offline

3.2 Client Usage Method

For client-side invocation methods, please refer to PaddleOCR-VL Usage Tutorial - 3.2 Client Usage Methods.

3.3 Performance Tuning

Please refer to PaddleOCR-VL Usage Tutorial - 3.3 Performance Tuning.

4. Service Deployment

Deployment Methods Supported on This Hardware

Deployment method Status Notes
Docker Compose deployment Supported with steps in this guide Continue with Section 4.1.
Manual deployment Not currently supported This hardware does not currently support this path.

Important

The PaddleOCR-VL service introduced in this section differs from the VLM inference service in the previous section: the latter is responsible for only one part of the complete process (i.e., VLM inference) and is called as an underlying service by the former.

4.1 Deploy Using Docker Compose

This step mainly introduces how to use Docker Compose to deploy PaddleOCR-VL as a service and call it. The specific process is as follows:

  1. Download the Compose file and the environment variable configuration file separately from here and here to your local machine.

  2. Execute the following command in the directory where the compose.yaml and .env files are located to start the server, which listens on port 8080 by default:

    # Must be executed in the directory where compose.yaml and .env files are located
docker compose up

    Tip

    The image tags used by compose.yaml are usually controlled by API_IMAGE_TAG_SUFFIX and VLM_IMAGE_TAG_SUFFIX in .env, and default to tags such as latest-amd-gpu-offline. To make sure you pull the newest latest images, run docker compose pull in the current directory before docker compose up. To use an image corresponding to a specific PaddleOCR version, replace latest in these variables with paddleocr<major>.<minor>, for example paddleocr3.3-amd-gpu-offline.

    After startup, you will see output similar to the following:

    paddleocr-vl-api             | INFO:     Started server process [1]
paddleocr-vl-api             | INFO:     Waiting for application startup.
paddleocr-vl-api             | INFO:     Application startup complete.
paddleocr-vl-api             | INFO:     Uvicorn running on http://0.0.0.0:8080 (Press CTRL+C to quit)

This method accelerates VLM inference using the vLLM framework and is more suitable for production environment deployment.

Additionally, after starting the server in this manner, no internet connection is required except for image pulling. For deployment in an offline environment, you can first pull the images involved in the Compose file on a connected machine, export them, and transfer them to the offline machine for import to start the service in an offline environment.

Docker Compose starts two containers sequentially by reading configurations from the .env and compose.yaml files, running the underlying VLM inference service and the PaddleOCR-VL service (pipeline service) respectively.

The meanings of each environment variable contained in the .env file are as follows:

- `API_IMAGE_TAG_SUFFIX`: The tag suffix of the image used to launch the pipeline service.
- `VLM_BACKEND`: The VLM inference backend.
- `VLM_IMAGE_TAG_SUFFIX`: The tag suffix of the image used to launch the VLM inference service.

You can modify compose.yaml to meet custom requirements, for example:

1. Change the port of the PaddleOCR-VL service Edit paddleocr-vl-api.ports in the compose.yaml file to change the port. For example, if you need to change the service port to 8111, make the following modifications: 
  paddleocr-vl-api:
    ...
    ports:
-     - 8080:8080
+     - 8111:8080
    ...
2. Specify the GPU used by the PaddleOCR-VL service Edit environment in the compose.yaml file to change the GPU used. For example, if you need to use card 1 for deployment, make the following modifications: 
  paddleocr-vl-api:
    ...
    environment:
+     - HIP_VISIBLE_DEVICES: 1
    ...
  paddleocr-vlm-server:
    ...
    environment:
+     - HIP_VISIBLE_DEVICES: 1
    ...
3. Adjust VLM server-side configuration If you want to adjust the VLM server configuration, refer to 3.3.1 Server-side Parameter Adjustment to generate a configuration file. After generating the configuration file, add the following paddleocr-vlm-server.volumes and paddleocr-vlm-server.command fields to your compose.yaml. Replace /path/to/your_config.yaml with your actual configuration file path. 
  paddleocr-vlm-server:
    ...
    volumes: /path/to/your_config.yaml:/home/paddleocr/vlm_server_config.yaml
    command: paddleocr genai_server --model_name PaddleOCR-VL-1.5-0.9B --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8118 --backend vllm --backend_config /home/paddleocr/vlm_server_config.yaml
    ...
4. Adjust pipeline-related configurations (such as model path, batch size, deployment device, etc.) Refer to the 4.4 Pipeline Configuration Adjustment Instructions section.

4.2 Client Invocation Method

Please refer to PaddleOCR-VL Usage Tutorial - 4.3 Client-Side Invocation.

4.3 Pipeline Configuration Adjustment Instructions

Please refer to PaddleOCR-VL Usage Tutorial - 4.4 Pipeline Configuration Adjustment Instructions.

5. Model Fine-Tuning

Please refer to PaddleOCR-VL Usage Tutorial - 5. Model Fine-Tuning.

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