Chainer compiler: experimental toolchain to compile and run Chainer models
This is an experimental toolchain expected to be used with Chainer. This project aims to achieve a bunch of correlated goals such as
- Make Python Chainer model deployable without Python runtime
- Efficiently execute Chainer models with optimization techniques
- Integrate Chainer with other systems or domain-specific chips
- Be a playground to try algorithms for neural network frameworks
without sacrificing flexibility and coverage of Chainer.
To achieve these goals, this toolchain
- Translates Python AST to extended ONNX. As this is a compiler rather than an execution tracer, it can export Python code with control-flows (e.g., LSTM with attention written by Python's loop)
- Modifies the graph for optimization, auto-differentiation, etc. It then generates deployable code.
- Runs the exported code with ChainerX's C++ API. Currently, the only backend it supports is a simple virtual machine implemented by ChainerX.
This project is still in the early stage and is not expected to be used by end-users. Interfaces can change quickly and some features may be abandoned. That said, it will be appreciated if you try this a bit and give us any feedbacks. Also, importantly, we are hiring! If you are interested in working on deep learning frameworks, please consider applying to Preferred Networks.
Documentation
- Set up guide
- Overview of components
- Example usage
- Train your model with chainer-compiler
- We realize we need more documents. Just file a bug to ask your questions so we can add documents.