var_desc.html



<!DOCTYPE html>
<!--[if IE 8]><html class="no-js lt-ie9" lang="en" > <![endif]-->
<!--[if gt IE 8]><!--> <html class="no-js" lang="en" > <!--<![endif]-->
<head>
  <meta charset="utf-8">
  
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
  
  <title>Background &mdash; PaddlePaddle  documentation</title>
  

    <link rel="stylesheet" href="../_static/css/theme.css" type="text/css" />
  

        <link rel="index" title="Index"
              href="../genindex.html"/>
        <link rel="search" title="Search" href="../search.html"/>
    <link rel="top" title="PaddlePaddle  documentation" href="../index.html"/> 

  <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/perfect-scrollbar/0.6.14/css/perfect-scrollbar.min.css" type="text/css" />
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="../_static/css/override.css" type="text/css" />
  <script>
  var _hmt = _hmt || [];
  (function() {
    var hm = document.createElement("script");
    hm.src = "//hm.baidu.com/hm.js?b9a314ab40d04d805655aab1deee08ba";
    var s = document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0]; 
    s.parentNode.insertBefore(hm, s);
  })();
  </script>

  
  <script src="../_static/js/modernizr.min.js"></script>

</head>

<body class="wy-body-for-nav" role="document">

  
  <header class="site-header">
    <div class="site-logo">
      <a href="/"><img src="../_static/images/PP_w.png"></a>
    </div>
    <div class="site-nav-links">
      <div class="site-menu">
        <a class="fork-on-github" href="https://github.com/PaddlePaddle/Paddle" target="_blank"><i class="fa fa-github"></i>Fork me on Github</a>
        <div class="language-switcher dropdown">
          <a type="button" data-toggle="dropdown">
            <span>English</span>
            <i class="fa fa-angle-up"></i>
            <i class="fa fa-angle-down"></i>
          </a>
          <ul class="dropdown-menu">
            <li><a href="/doc_cn">中文</a></li>
            <li><a href="/doc">English</a></li>
          </ul>
        </div>
        <ul class="site-page-links">
          <li><a href="/">Home</a></li>
        </ul>
      </div>
      <div class="doc-module">
        
        <ul>
<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="../getstarted/index_en.html">GET STARTED</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/index_en.html">HOW TO</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="../api/index_en.html">API</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="../mobile/index_en.html">MOBILE</a></li>
</ul>

        
<div role="search">
  <form id="rtd-search-form" class="wy-form" action="../search.html" method="get">
    <input type="text" name="q" placeholder="Search docs" />
    <input type="hidden" name="check_keywords" value="yes" />
    <input type="hidden" name="area" value="default" />
  </form>
</div>        
      </div>
    </div>
  </header>
  
  <div class="main-content-wrap">

    
    <nav class="doc-menu-vertical" role="navigation">
        
          
          <ul>
<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="../getstarted/index_en.html">GET STARTED</a><ul>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="../getstarted/build_and_install/index_en.html">Install and Build</a><ul>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../getstarted/build_and_install/pip_install_en.html">Install Using pip</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../getstarted/build_and_install/docker_install_en.html">Run in Docker Containers</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/dev/build_en.html">Build using Docker</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../getstarted/build_and_install/build_from_source_en.html">Build from Sources</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/index_en.html">HOW TO</a><ul>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/usage/cmd_parameter/index_en.html">Set Command-line Parameters</a><ul>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/usage/cmd_parameter/use_case_en.html">Use Case</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/usage/cmd_parameter/arguments_en.html">Argument Outline</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/usage/cmd_parameter/detail_introduction_en.html">Detail Description</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/usage/cluster/cluster_train_en.html">PaddlePaddle Distributed Training</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/dev/new_layer_en.html">Write New Layers</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/dev/contribute_to_paddle_en.html">Contribute Code</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/dev/write_docs_en.html">Contribute Documentation</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/deep_model/rnn/index_en.html">RNN Models</a><ul>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/deep_model/rnn/rnn_config_en.html">RNN Configuration</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/optimization/gpu_profiling_en.html">Tune GPU Performance</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="../api/index_en.html">API</a><ul>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="../api/v2/model_configs.html">Model Configuration</a><ul>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../api/v2/config/activation.html">Activation</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../api/v2/config/layer.html">Layers</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../api/v2/config/evaluators.html">Evaluators</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../api/v2/config/optimizer.html">Optimizer</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../api/v2/config/pooling.html">Pooling</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../api/v2/config/networks.html">Networks</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../api/v2/config/attr.html">Parameter Attribute</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="../api/v2/data.html">Data Reader Interface and DataSets</a><ul>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../api/v2/data/data_reader.html">Data Reader Interface</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../api/v2/data/image.html">Image Interface</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../api/v2/data/dataset.html">Dataset</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="../api/v2/run_logic.html">Training and Inference</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="../api/v2/fluid.html">Fluid</a><ul>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../api/v2/fluid/layers.html">Layers</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../api/v2/fluid/data_feeder.html">DataFeeder</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../api/v2/fluid/executor.html">Executor</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../api/v2/fluid/initializer.html">Initializer</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../api/v2/fluid/evaluator.html">Evaluator</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../api/v2/fluid/nets.html">Nets</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../api/v2/fluid/optimizer.html">Optimizer</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../api/v2/fluid/param_attr.html">ParamAttr</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../api/v2/fluid/profiler.html">Profiler</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../api/v2/fluid/regularizer.html">Regularizer</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="../mobile/index_en.html">MOBILE</a><ul>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="../mobile/cross_compiling_for_android_en.html">Build PaddlePaddle for Android</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="../mobile/cross_compiling_for_ios_en.html">PaddlePaddle Compiling Guide for iOS</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="../mobile/cross_compiling_for_raspberry_en.html">Build PaddlePaddle for Raspberry Pi</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>

        
    </nav>
    
    <section class="doc-content-wrap">

      
<div role="navigation" aria-label="breadcrumbs navigation">
  <ul class="wy-breadcrumbs">
      
    <li>Background</li>
  </ul>
</div>
      
      <div class="wy-nav-content" id="doc-content">
        <div class="rst-content">
          <div role="main" class="document" itemscope="itemscope" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article">
           <div itemprop="articleBody">
            
  <div class="section" id="background">
<span id="background"></span><h1>Background<a class="headerlink" href="#background" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h1>
<p>PaddlePaddle divides the description of neural network computation graph into two stages: compile time and runtime.</p>
<p>PaddlePaddle use proto message to describe compile time graph because</p>
<ol class="simple">
<li>Computation graph should be able to be saved to a file.</li>
<li>In distributed training, the graph will be serialized and send to multiple workers.</li>
</ol>
<p>The computation graph is constructed by Data Node and Operation Node. The concept to represent them is in the table below.</p>
<p>| |compile time|runtime|
|&#8212;|&#8212;|&#8212;|
|Data|VarDesc(proto)|Variable(cpp)|
|Operation|OpDesc(proto)|Operator(cpp)|</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="definition-of-vardesc">
<span id="definition-of-vardesc"></span><h1>Definition of VarDesc<a class="headerlink" href="#definition-of-vardesc" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h1>
<p>A VarDesc should have a name, and value. The are two kinds of variable type in compile time, they are <code class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">LoDTensor</span></code> and <code class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">SelectedRows</span></code>.</p>
<div class="highlight-proto"><div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><span class="kd">message</span> <span class="nc">VarDesc</span> <span class="p">{</span>
  <span class="k">required</span> <span class="kt">string</span> <span class="na">name</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">;</span>
  <span class="kd">enum</span> <span class="n">VarType</span> <span class="p">{</span>
    <span class="na">LOD_TENSOR</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mi">0</span><span class="p">;</span>
    <span class="na">SELECTED_ROWS</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">;</span>
  <span class="p">}</span>
  <span class="k">required</span> <span class="n">VarType</span> <span class="na">type</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mi">2</span><span class="p">;</span>
  <span class="k">optional</span> <span class="n">LoDTensorDesc</span> <span class="na">lod_desc</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mi">3</span><span class="p">;</span>
  <span class="k">optional</span> <span class="n">TensorDesc</span> <span class="na">selected_rows_desc</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mi">4</span><span class="p">;</span>
  <span class="k">optional</span> <span class="kt">bool</span> <span class="na">persistable</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mi">5</span> <span class="p">[</span> <span class="k">default</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="kc">false</span> <span class="p">];</span>
<span class="p">}</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="definition-of-tensordesc">
<span id="definition-of-tensordesc"></span><h1>Definition of TensorDesc<a class="headerlink" href="#definition-of-tensordesc" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h1>
<div class="highlight-proto"><div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><span class="kd">enum</span> <span class="n">DataType</span> <span class="p">{</span>
  <span class="na">BOOL</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mi">0</span><span class="p">;</span>
  <span class="na">INT16</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">;</span>
  <span class="na">INT32</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mi">2</span><span class="p">;</span>
  <span class="na">INT64</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mi">3</span><span class="p">;</span>
  <span class="na">FP16</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mi">4</span><span class="p">;</span>
  <span class="na">FP32</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mi">5</span><span class="p">;</span>
  <span class="na">FP64</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mi">6</span><span class="p">;</span>
<span class="p">}</span>

<span class="kd">message</span> <span class="nc">TensorDesc</span> <span class="p">{</span>
  <span class="k">required</span> <span class="n">DataType</span> <span class="na">data_type</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">;</span>
  <span class="k">repeated</span> <span class="kt">int64</span> <span class="na">dims</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mi">2</span><span class="p">;</span> <span class="c1">// [UNK, 640, 480] is saved as [-1, 640, 480]</span>
<span class="p">}</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>A TensorDesc describes <code class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">SelectedRows</span></code> and <code class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">LoDTensor</span></code>. For details of <code class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">SelectedRows</span></code>, please reference <a class="reference external" href="./selected_rows.md"><code class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">SelectedRows</span></code></a>.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="definition-of-lodtensordesc">
<span id="definition-of-lodtensordesc"></span><h1>Definition of LodTensorDesc<a class="headerlink" href="#definition-of-lodtensordesc" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h1>
<div class="highlight-proto"><div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><span class="kd">message</span> <span class="nc">LoDTensorDesc</span> <span class="p">{</span>
  <span class="k">required</span> <span class="n">TensorDesc</span> <span class="na">tensor</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">;</span>
  <span class="k">optional</span> <span class="n">int</span> <span class="na">lod_level</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mi">2</span><span class="p">;</span>
<span class="p">}</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>A LoDTensorDesc contains a tensor and a lod_level.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="definition-of-variable-in-python">
<span id="definition-of-variable-in-python"></span><h1>Definition of Variable in Python<a class="headerlink" href="#definition-of-variable-in-python" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h1>
<p>For Variable in Python, please reference <a class="reference external" href="./python_api.md"><code class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">Python</span> <span class="pre">API</span></code></a>.</p>
</div>


           </div>
          </div>
          <footer>
  

  <hr/>

  <div role="contentinfo">
    <p>
        &copy; Copyright 2016, PaddlePaddle developers.

    </p>
  </div>
  Built with <a href="http://sphinx-doc.org/">Sphinx</a> using a <a href="https://github.com/snide/sphinx_rtd_theme">theme</a> provided by <a href="https://readthedocs.org">Read the Docs</a>. 

</footer>

        </div>
      </div>

    </section>

  </div>
  

    <script type="text/javascript">
        var DOCUMENTATION_OPTIONS = {
            URL_ROOT:'../',
            VERSION:'',
            COLLAPSE_INDEX:false,
            FILE_SUFFIX:'.html',
            HAS_SOURCE:  true,
            SOURCELINK_SUFFIX: ".txt",
        };
    </script>
      <script type="text/javascript" src="../_static/jquery.js"></script>
      <script type="text/javascript" src="../_static/underscore.js"></script>
      <script type="text/javascript" src="../_static/doctools.js"></script>
      <script type="text/javascript" src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/mathjax/2.7.0/MathJax.js?config=TeX-AMS-MML_HTMLorMML"></script>
       
  
    <script type="text/javascript" src="../_static/js/theme.js"></script>
  
  
  <script src="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.3.7/js/bootstrap.min.js" integrity="sha384-Tc5IQib027qvyjSMfHjOMaLkfuWVxZxUPnCJA7l2mCWNIpG9mGCD8wGNIcPD7Txa" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
  <script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/perfect-scrollbar/0.6.14/js/perfect-scrollbar.jquery.min.js"></script>
  <script src="../_static/js/paddle_doc_init.js"></script> 

</body>
</html>