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  文档</title>
  

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

        <link rel="index" title="索引"
              href="../genindex.html"/>
        <link rel="search" title="搜索" href="../search.html"/>
    <link rel="top" title="PaddlePaddle  文档" 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_cn.html">新手入门</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="../build_and_install/index_cn.html">安装与编译</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/index_cn.html">进阶使用</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="../dev/index_cn.html">开发标准</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="../faq/index_cn.html">FAQ</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_cn.html">新手入门</a><ul>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="../getstarted/quickstart_cn.html">快速开始</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="../getstarted/concepts/use_concepts_cn.html">基本使用概念</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="../build_and_install/index_cn.html">安装与编译</a><ul>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="../build_and_install/pip_install_cn.html">使用pip安装</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="../build_and_install/docker_install_cn.html">使用Docker安装运行</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="../build_and_install/build_from_source_cn.html">从源码编译</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/index_cn.html">进阶使用</a><ul>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/cmd_parameter/index_cn.html">命令行参数设置</a><ul>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/cmd_parameter/use_case_cn.html">使用案例</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/cmd_parameter/arguments_cn.html">参数概述</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/cmd_parameter/detail_introduction_cn.html">细节描述</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/cluster/index_cn.html">分布式训练</a><ul>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/cluster/preparations_cn.html">环境准备</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/cluster/cmd_argument_cn.html">启动参数说明</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/cluster/multi_cluster/index_cn.html">在不同集群中运行</a><ul>
<li class="toctree-l4"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/cluster/multi_cluster/fabric_cn.html">使用fabric启动集群训练</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l4"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/cluster/multi_cluster/openmpi_cn.html">在OpenMPI集群中提交训练作业</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l4"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/cluster/multi_cluster/k8s_cn.html">Kubernetes单机训练</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l4"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/cluster/multi_cluster/k8s_distributed_cn.html">Kubernetes分布式训练</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l4"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/cluster/multi_cluster/k8s_aws_cn.html">Distributed PaddlePaddle Training on AWS with Kubernetes</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/capi/index_cn.html">C-API预测库</a><ul>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/capi/compile_paddle_lib_cn.html">安装与编译C-API预测库</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/capi/organization_of_the_inputs_cn.html">输入/输出数据组织</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/capi/workflow_of_capi_cn.html">C-API使用流程</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/rnn/index_cn.html">RNN模型</a><ul>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/rnn/rnn_config_cn.html">RNN配置</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/rnn/recurrent_group_cn.html">Recurrent Group教程</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/rnn/hierarchical_layer_cn.html">支持双层序列作为输入的Layer</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/rnn/hrnn_rnn_api_compare_cn.html">单双层RNN API对比介绍</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="../howto/optimization/gpu_profiling_cn.html">GPU性能调优</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="../dev/index_cn.html">开发标准</a><ul>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="../dev/contribute_to_paddle_cn.html">如何贡献代码</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="../dev/write_docs_cn.html">如何贡献文档</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="../faq/index_cn.html">FAQ</a><ul>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="../faq/build_and_install/index_cn.html">编译安装与单元测试</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="../faq/model/index_cn.html">模型配置</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="../faq/parameter/index_cn.html">参数设置</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="../faq/local/index_cn.html">本地训练与预测</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="../faq/cluster/index_cn.html">集群训练与预测</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="永久链接至标题">¶</a></h1>
<p>PaddlePaddle divides the description of neural network computation into two stages: compile time and runtime. At compile time, the neural network computation is described as a <code class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">ProgramDesc</span></code> whereas at runtime an <code class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">Executor</span></code> interprets the <code class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">ProgramDesc</span></code> to compute the operations.</p>
<p>PaddlePaddle uses proto message to describe compile time program because :</p>
<ol class="simple">
<li>The computation program description must be serializable and saved in a file.</li>
<li>During distributed training, the serialized program will be sent to multiple workers. It should also be possible to break the program into different components, each of which can be executed on a different worker.</li>
</ol>
<p>The computation <code class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">Program</span></code> consists of nested <code class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">Blocks</span></code>. Each <code class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">Block</span></code> will consist of data(i.e. <code class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">Variable</span></code>)  and  <code class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">Operations</span></code>. 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-vartype">
<span id="definition-of-vartype"></span><h1>Definition of VarType<a class="headerlink" href="#definition-of-vartype" title="永久链接至标题">¶</a></h1>
<p>A VarDesc should have a name, type and whether or not it is persistable. The are different kinds of variable types supported in PaddlePaddle, apart from the POD_Types like: <code class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">LOD_TENSOR</span></code>, <code class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">SELECTED_ROWS</span></code>, <code class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">FEED_MINIBATCH</span></code>, <code class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">FETCH_LIST</span></code>, <code class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">STEP_SCOPES</span></code>, <code class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">LOD_RANK_TABLE</span></code>, <code class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">LOD_TENSOR_ARRAY</span></code>, <code class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">PLACE_LIST</span></code>, <code class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">READER</span></code> and <code class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">CHANNEL</span></code>. These are declared inside <code class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">VarType</span></code>. A <code class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">VarDesc</span></code> then looks as the following:</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="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="kt">bool</span> <span class="na">persistable</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mi">3</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="永久链接至标题">¶</a></h1>
<div class="highlight-proto"><div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><span class="kd">message</span> <span class="nc">TensorDesc</span> <span class="p">{</span>
  <span class="c1">// Should only be PODType. Is enforced in C++</span>
  <span class="k">required</span> <span class="n">Type</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>The <code class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">Type</span></code> here comes from the enum defined inside of <code class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">VarType</span></code> :</p>
<div class="highlight-proto"><div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><span class="kd">enum</span> <span class="n">Type</span> <span class="p">{</span>
  <span class="c1">// Pod Types</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="c1">// Other types that may need additional descriptions</span>
  <span class="na">LOD_TENSOR</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mi">7</span><span class="p">;</span>
  <span class="na">SELECTED_ROWS</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mi">8</span><span class="p">;</span>
  <span class="na">FEED_MINIBATCH</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mi">9</span><span class="p">;</span>
  <span class="na">FETCH_LIST</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mi">10</span><span class="p">;</span>
  <span class="na">STEP_SCOPES</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mi">11</span><span class="p">;</span>
  <span class="na">LOD_RANK_TABLE</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mi">12</span><span class="p">;</span>
  <span class="na">LOD_TENSOR_ARRAY</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mi">13</span><span class="p">;</span>
  <span class="na">PLACE_LIST</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mi">14</span><span class="p">;</span>
  <span class="na">READER</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mi">15</span><span class="p">;</span>
  <span class="na">CHANNEL</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mi">16</span><span class="p">;</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="永久链接至标题">¶</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="kt">int32</span> <span class="na">lod_level</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mi">2</span> <span class="p">[</span> <span class="k">default</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mi">0</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="永久链接至标题">¶</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="../_static/translations.js"></script>
      <script type="text/javascript" src="https://cdn.bootcss.com/mathjax/2.7.0/MathJax.js"></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>