# Pipeline Schedule Reading

This starter is annotated reading material and the source of truth for the lab preview. Running anything is optional; the reading goal is to explain the mechanism without hiding behind a framework call.

## Reading focus

Read a pipeline schedule by tracking microbatches through stages.

## Annotated sketch

```text
## Pipeline schedule sketch

| time | stage 0 | stage 1 | stage 2 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 0 | mb0 fwd | idle | idle |
| 1 | mb1 fwd | mb0 fwd | idle |
| 2 | mb2 fwd | mb1 fwd | mb0 fwd |
```

## What to explain

- stage owns consecutive layers.
- microbatch keeps stages busy.
- bubble is idle time before/after steady state.

## Common trap

- Pipeline parallelism does not make a single sample skip stages.
- Throughput and latency are different questions.