# Building graphs¶

Frontends (or users who require the flexibility of constructing Nervana Graph Ops directly) utilize a set of graph construction functions to construct Nervana Graphs. We walk through the common patterns and arguments of these Ops here. We also discuss the underlying class structure of Op that is not typically a concern to users or frontends but gives a hierarchical structure that can be helpful.

## Nervana Graph Structure¶

### Data Dependencies¶

An Op‘s primary role is to function as a node in a directed acyclic graph dependency computation graph. The Op class’s attribute args is a list containing all upstream dependencies this Op operates upon. These operate as the directed edges of the graph.

For example,

>>> x = ng.constant(0)
>>> y = ng.constant(1)
>>> type(mysum)

>>> issubclass(mysum, ngraph.op_graph.op_graph.Op)
True

>>> mysum.args
(<AssignableTensorOp(<Const(0)>):4500972432>,
<AssignableTensorOp(<Const(1)>):4500974224>)


mysum then refers to an instance of the class Add which is a subclass of Op. mysum.args is a list containing the Ops pointed to by the python variables x and y.

### Initializers¶

In addition to args, there are two other types of edges in Nervana Graphs. Each op has an attribute initializers which contains a (possibly empty) set of ops needed to execute before any computations occur. To use our running example:

>>> mysum.initializers
set()

>>> x.initializers
{<InitTensorOp(InitTensorOp_1):4500973392>}


We see here that mysum doesn’t have any initializers because its value is only known at runtime. x on the other hand is a constant and can and must be initialized before any computations occur. Initializer subgraphs (the ops in initializers and all upstream ops) themselves contain SetItem, Fill, Flatten, ConstantOp and other ops to manipulate a tensor to get it ready for computation.

### Non-data Control Dependencies¶

Finally, consider the following code:

>>> x = ng.placeholder((), initial_value=0)
>>> a = ng.assign(x, 5)
>>> z = x + 1


Here we create a scalar placeholder x, then fill that placeholder with the value 5. Then we add one to x. It is not clear initially if z when evaluated should equal 1 or 6. In Python at the last line of the previous code block, x still points to the initial placeholder with value 0. However, in Nervana Graph we believe most users intend the assign operation to occur before the final incrementing by one. Therefore the ordering semantics of ng.assign happen in accordance with the graph creation order.

In order to enforce these ordering semantics, Nervana Graph accounts for control dependencies between Ops when AssignOps are involved. To illustrate:

>>> z.other_deps
{<AssignOp(AssignOp_1):4501621200>}

>>> type(z.other_deps)
ngraph.util.ordered.OrderedSet

>>> z.other_deps.pop() is a
True


All Ops have an ordered set in other_deps to contain the ops that must occur first in execution order before this op can be executed even when those ops are not explicitly captured as data dependencies of that Op. The AddOp pointed to by the python variable z contains a other_deps control dependency on the AssignOp to ensure that it occurs first before z is computed.

Nervana graph also allows for contexts where the dependencies can be ignored, particularly when a variable has a self-assignment. For example, consider the following toy example:

import ngraph as ng
import numpy as np
from ngraph.transformers.nptransform import NumPyTransformer

# set w
w = ng.variable((), initial_value=0)

# update op
update_op = ng.assign(w, w + 1)

# transformer
transformer = NumPyTransformer()
w_comp = transformer.computation(w)

print(w_comp())
print(w_comp())
print(w_comp())


The above code will print 1, 2, 3. Even though the defined computation only retrieves the variable w, the ng.assign dependencies get triggered such that the variable still updates with every call even though we simply want to retrieve the results.

We can guard the update_op with a context ng.Op.saved_user_deps to make sure that this dependency exists outside of the main stream.

with ng.Op.saved_user_deps():
update_op = ng.assign(w, w + 1)


This modification will then allow the w_comp() to properly print 0, 0, 0 for each call. Ops that are defined inside the context are not included in the dependencies of the computation unless explicitly named. To recreate the 1, 2, 3 behavior now that the update_op is guarded, we would have to explicitly name the update_op in the computation:

w_comp = transformer.computation([w, update_op])


We see this context being used in the optimizer where velocities and parameters have a self-assignment with ng.assign.

Note: The user_deps facility is likely to be replaced.

## General properties of ops¶

All operational graph ops are instances of the class ngraph.op_graph.op_graph.Op, which extends ngraph.op_graph.names.NameableValue and ngraph.op_graph.nodes.DebugInfo. The former provides Ops with automatically generated unique names and the latter provides debug info as to the line number and filename where this node was constructed.

In addition to the three graph properties explained above (args, initializers, and other_deps), all ops have the additional attributes:

axes
The axes of the result of the computation. This only needs to be specified by the frontend or user during Op creation if the default result is not correct or not inferrable for a particular Op type. The axes are also available as a gettable property.
name
A string that can help identify the node during debugging, or when search for a node in a set of nodes. Some front ends may also make use of the name. The name is a settable property.
A dictionary of key,value string pairs that can be used to select/filter ops when manipulating them. For example, stochastic=dropout may be used to indicate groups of trainable variables in conjunction with drop-out.

Some useful properties of ops are:

filename
The file that created the op.
lineno
The line number in the file where the op was created.
file_info
The file and line number formatted for debuggers that support clicking on a file location to edit that location.

## Op Hierarchy¶

Users and frontends do not typically need to worry about the implementation details of the various Op classes. This is why they are hidden behind graph construction functions.

All Nervana Graph nodes are instances of subclasses of the class Op which is captured in the full class hierarchy in the following figure.

## Ops influencing evaluation¶

During computation (covered in more detail in Transformers), the input and output values must be stored somewhere. To create a placeholder expression in the operational graph, we must import the operational backend symbols and then create the placeholder:

import ngraph as ng
from ngraph.frontends.neon as ax

x = ng.placeholder((ax.C, ax.W, ax.H, ax.N))


This placeholder will create an AssignableTensorOp to trigger the necessary storage to be allocated on the host device and trigger values to be transferred between the device and host. When the op is used in a graph computation, the op serves as a Python handle for the tensor stored on the device.

It is important to remember that x is a Python variable that holds an op. Therefore, the following code:

x = x + x


does not directly double the value of the tensor in the placeholder. Instead, the __add__ method is called with both arguments pointing to the same placeholder object. This returns a new Op that is now stored as the python variable x. On the other hand, to directly modify the value of the placeholder, use:

ng.SetItem(x, x + x)


Constructing the graph consists mostly of manipulating expressions, so SetItem should rarely be used directly, except for updating variables at the end of a minibatch. Consider:

x1 = x + x
y = x1 * x1 - x


The intermediate value x + x is only computed once, since the same op is used for both arguments of the multiplication in y. Furthermore, in this computation, all the computations will automatically be performed in place. If the computation is later modified such that the intermediate value x + x is needed, the op-graph will automatically adjust the computation’s implementation to make the intermediate result x + x available. This same flexibility exists with NumPy or PyCUDA, but those implementations always allocate tensors for the intermediate values, relying on Python’s garbage collector clean them up; the peak memory usage will be higher and there will be more overhead.

## Derivatives¶

Because Ops describe computations, we have enough information to compute derivatives, using the deriv function:

import ngraph as ng
from ngraph.frontends.neon import ax

x = ng.placeholder((ax.C, ax.W, ax.H, ax.N))
y0 = ng.placeholder((ax.Y, ax.N))
w = ng.variable((ax.C, ax.W, ax.H, ax.Y)))
b = ng.variable((ax.Y,))
y = ng.tanh(dot(w, x) + b)
c = ng.squared_L2(y - y0)
d = ng.deriv(c, w)


The python variable d will hold an Op whose value is the derivative dc/dw. In this example, we knew which ops contain the variables to be trained (e.g. w). For a more general optimizer, we could search through all the subexpressions looking for the dependant variables. This is handled by the variables method, so c.variables() would return the list of Ops [w, b].

An important distinction to make here is that the deriv function does not perform symbolic or numeric differentiation. In fact it does not compute anything at all. Its sole job is to construct another computational graph using the existing upstream graph of c and return a handle to that new computational graph (d). No computation is therefore taking place at this point until a user evaluates a computation of d using a transformer.

Note

The following functionality is likely to be supplanted more composable abstractions involving op graph containers.

In some cases, it is convenient for an op graph construction function to associate additional information with an Op. For example, the softmax function returns a DivideOp but when that output value is then used in a cross-entropy entropy calculation, the derivative computation would be numerically unstable if performed directly. To avoid this The softmax function can indicate that the DivideOp is part of a softmax computation and indicate the sub-graphs that are useful in cross-entropy and derivatives by adding a schema to the DivideOp:

>>> x = ng.placeholder((ng.make_axis(20, 'C')))
>>> s = ng.softmax(x)
>>> s.schemas
[<ngraph.op_graph.op_graph.Softmax at 0x10c5e2210>]


More details about the mechanics of automatic differiantion and how deriv works are covered in Autodiff.