diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 6ffbab6f7..197ba8a61 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -241,6 +241,11 @@ The JAX and PyTorch versions of the Criteo, FastMRI, Librispeech, OGBG, and WMT
 Since we use PyTorch's [`DistributedDataParallel`](https://pytorch.org/docs/stable/generated/torch.nn.parallel.DistributedDataParallel.html#torch.nn.parallel.DistributedDataParallel) implementation, there is one Python process for each device. Depending on the hardware and the settings of the cluster, running a TensorFlow input pipeline in each Python process can lead to errors, since too many threads are created in each process. See [this PR thread](https://github.com/mlcommons/algorithmic-efficiency/pull/85) for more details.
 While this issue might not affect all setups, we currently implement a different strategy: we only run the TensorFlow input pipeline in one Python process (with `rank == 0`), and [broadcast](https://pytorch.org/docs/stable/distributed.html#torch.distributed.broadcast) the batches to all other devices. This introduces an additional communication overhead for each batch. See the [implementation for the WMT workload](https://github.com/mlcommons/algorithmic-efficiency/blob/main/algorithmic_efficiency/workloads/wmt/wmt_pytorch/workload.py#L215-L288) as an example.
 
+## Pytorch Conformer CUDA OOM
+
+The conformer pytorch workload may run out of memory in current state. Please set the `submission_runner.py` flag `reduce_pytorch_max_split_size` to `True` as a temporary workaround if you encounter this issue. This will set 'max_split_size_mb:256'. Note that this will adversely impact the performance of the submission on this workload. See [tracking issue](https://github.com/mlcommons/algorithmic-efficiency/issues/497). 
+
+
 # FAQS
 
 ## Setup and Platform
diff --git a/submission_runner.py b/submission_runner.py
index 656599a42..d92732145 100644
--- a/submission_runner.py
+++ b/submission_runner.py
@@ -149,6 +149,9 @@
     None,
     'Value of rng seed. If None, a random seed will'
     'be generated from hardware.')
+flags.DEFINE_boolean('set_pytorch_max_split_size',
+                     False,
+                     'If true, set pytorch max_split_size_mb to 256')
 FLAGS = flags.FLAGS
 USE_PYTORCH_DDP, RANK, DEVICE, N_GPUS = pytorch_setup()
 
@@ -602,6 +605,9 @@ def main(_):
   if FLAGS.workload == 'librispeech_conformer':
     os.environ['XLA_PYTHON_CLIENT_MEM_FRACTION'] = '0.85'
 
+  if FLAGS.set_pytorch_max_split_size:
+    os.environ['PYTORCH_CUDA_ALLOC_CONF'] = 'max_split_size_mb:256'
+
   # Extend path according to framework.
   workload_metadata['workload_path'] = os.path.join(
       BASE_WORKLOADS_DIR,