Build

Same as MegEngine except passing the additional flag "-DMGE_BUILD_IMPERATIVE_RT=ON" to cmake configure command.

Test

1. Make sure make develop is executed

2. Setup PYTHONPATH

   export PYTHONPATH="$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)/imperative/python"
   

3. Run pytest (pip install as needed)

   cd $(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)/imperative/python/test
   pytest
   

Concepts

Op and Tensor-like

An op is a subclass of OpBase representing some operation, for example

• Elemwise
• Reduce

Op can be parametrized. For example, Elemwise has a single parameter mode, which is required by its constructor.

A tensor-like is a subclass of TensorBase that defines how ops should apply on it, for example

• RawTensor launch kernel associated with op
• Tracer record information for autodiff

Op instances are callable with signature (*args: TensorBase) -> Tuple[TensorBase]. It will invoke the correct implementation for that specific op and tensor-like, e.g. launch kernel if args is RawTensor, record information for autodiff if args is Tracer.

The Const Op

The Const op is a special op that is used to convert literal to tensor-likes. Although it does not really use any input, at least one should be provided, otherwise it can't know which specific tensor-like to return.

Tensor Wrapper

Tensor-likes have a dataflow semantic, thus immutable. TensorWrapper provide a mutable layer on top of tensor-likes by replacing the wrapped tensor-like on demand.

How to Wrap a MegBrain Op

1. Define the op

   Most ops have been automatically generated in ops.builtin using .oprdecl files (take a look at basic_arith.oprdecl). If your op is already there, skip to next step.

   For other ops, this work can still be done automatically with the help of an Python op serializer that matches MegBrain's own.

   Before proceeding, if you are unfamiliar with MegBrain's serializer, here is a brief introduction. Each MegBrain op has a registered name, which is found at MGB_SEREG_OPR(this_is_the_name, ...) in some .sereg.h file. The default serializer simply write the memory of struct returned by opr->param().

   You can create a serializer by subclassing ops._internal.helper.OpDef as follows

   class WhateverDef(OpDef): # must end with "Def"
       name = 'Whatever' # name in MegBrain serialization registry
       param_names = ('param',) # Does not have to be 'param', but it is a good practice to mirror
                                # C++ name, which is usually param(). It can also contain more
                                # than one element, for example if the C++ serializer writes
                                # `opr->param1()` followed by `opr->param2()`, you should use
                                # ('param1', 'param2') instead.
   
       class Param:
           def serialize(self):
               c_struct_memory = bytes(...) # memory of a C++ `Param` struct
               return b'\x00'*4 + c_struct_memory # remember to add 4 leading bytes
   
       def __init__(self):
           self.param = self.Param(...) # must assign to attribute(s) specified in param_names
   

   A concrete example can be found at ops._internal.misc_ops.DimshuffleDef.

   Lastly, make sure it is imported in ops._internal.all_ops and a corresponding op will show up in ops.builtin

2. Define a convenience function

   Use functional as a reference.

   Tips:

   • an op instance has to be constructed before applying it

     op = WhateverOp(param=...)

   • apply an op by calling the op instance

     outputs = op(*inputs)

   • op always return a tuple

     result = outputs

   • input can be any tensor-like