The document introduces the TVM open source deep learning compiler stack developed by OctoML and the University of Washington, highlighting its role in optimizing machine learning frameworks for various hardware backends. It discusses the challenges of deep learning compilation, including cost and performance optimization, and explains TVM's automated end-to-end optimization process using machine learning. The document emphasizes TVM's collaborative open-source community and its broad application across leading tech companies for efficient deployment of deep learning models.

1. © 2020 OctoML and University of Washington
Introduction to the TVM Open
Source Deep Learning Compiler
Stack
Luis Ceze
w/ Tianqi Chen, Thierry Moreau, Jared Roesch, Ziheng Jiang,
Lianmin Zheng, Eddie Yan, Meghan Cowan, Chien-Yu Lin,
Haichen Shen, Leyuan Wang, Yuwei Hu, Carlos Guestrin,
Arvind Krishnamurthy, Zach Tatlock, and many in the Apache
TVM community!

2. © 2020 OctoML and University of Washington
A perfect storm
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Growing set of requirements: Cost, latency, power, security & privacy
Cambrian explosion of models,
workloads, and use cases CNN GAN RNN MLP DQNN
Rapidly evolving ML software
ecosystem
Silicon scaling limitations
(Dennard and Moore)
Cambrian explosion of HW backends.
Heterogeneous HW

3. © 2020 OctoML and University of Washington
Current Dominant Deep Learning
Systems Landscape
3
Frameworks and
Inference engines
DL Compilers
Kernel
Libraries
Hardware
Orchestrators
Azure ML GCP Datalab
cuDNN NNPack MKL-DNN
Open source, automated
end-to-end optimization
framework for deep learning
Hand optimized

4. © 2020 OctoML and University of Washington
Stack
4
End-to-end,
framework to metal open
stack.
Research and deployment.
High-Level Differentiable IR
Tensor Expression IR
LLVM, CUDA, Metal VTA
Edge
FPGA
Cloud
FPGA
ASIC
Open source synthesizable deep
learning accelerator design

5. © 2020 OctoML and University of Washington
Automated by Machine Learning
5
High-Level Differentiable IR
Tensor Expression IR
LLVM, CUDA, Metal VTA
Edge
FPGA
Cloud
FPGA
ASIC
TVM: Automated End-to-end Optimizations for Deep Learning. Chen et al. OSDI 18
ML-based
Optimization
AutoTVM
AutoVTA
Hardware Fleet

6. © 2020 OctoML and University of Washington
End-user perspective:
Compile & deploy
6
import tvm
from tvm import relay
graph, params =
Frontend.from_keras
(keras_resnet50)
graph, lib, params =
Relay.build(graph, target)
Compile Deploy

7. © 2020 OctoML and University of Washington
Open Source Community
and Impact
7
Open source: ~420+ contributors from UW, Berkeley, Cornell, UCLA, Amazon, Huawei, NTT, Facebook, Microsoft,
Qualcomm, Alibaba, Intel, …
Incubated as Apache TVM. Independent governance, allowing competitors to
collaborate.
Used in production at leading companies
Deep Learning
Compiler Service
DSP/Tensor engine
for mobile
Mobile and Server
Optimizations
Cloud-side model
optimization

8. © 2020 OctoML and University of Washington 8

9. © 2020 OctoML and University of Washington
Existing Deep Learning Frameworks
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Frameworks
Hardware
Primitive Tensor operators such as
Conv2D
High-level data flow graph
Offload to heavily optimized DNN operator
library
eg. cuDNN

10. © 2020 OctoML and University of Washington
Engineering costs limits progress
10
cuDNN Engineering intensive
New operator introduced by operator fusion optimization potential
benefit: 1.5x speedup
Frameworks

11. © 2020 OctoML and University of Washington
Our approach: Learning-based Learning System
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Frameworks
Hardware
Directly generate optimized program
for new operator workloads and hardware
High-level data flow graph and optimizations
Machine Learning based Program Optimizer

12. © 2020 OctoML and University of Washington
Tensor Compilation/Optimization as a
search problem
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Tensor Expression (Specification)
C = tvm.compute((m, n),
lambda y, x: tvm.sum(A[k, y] * B[k, x], axis=k))
Search Space of Possible Program Optimizations
Low-level Program Variants

13. © 2020 OctoML and University of Washington
Search Space Example (1/3)
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Search Space of Possible Program Optimizations
Vanilla Code
Tensor Expression (Specification)
C = tvm.compute((m, n),
lambda y, x: tvm.sum(A[k, y] * B[k, x], axis=k))

14. © 2020 OctoML and University of Washington
Search Space Example (2/3)
14
Search Space of Possible Program Optimizations
Loop Tiling for Locality
Tensor Expression (Specification)
C = tvm.compute((m, n),
lambda y, x: tvm.sum(A[k, y] * B[k, x], axis=k))

15. © 2020 OctoML and University of Washington
Search Space Example (3/3)
15
Search Space of Possible Program Optimizations
Map to Accelerators
Tensor Expression (Specification)
C = tvm.compute((m, n),
lambda y, x: tvm.sum(A[k, y] * B[k, x], axis=k))

16. © 2020 OctoML and University of Washington
Optimization space is really large…
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Loop Transformations
Thread
Bindings
Cache
Locality
Thread Cooperation Tensorization
Latency
Hiding
Typically explored via human intuition.
How can we automate this? Auto-tuning is too slow.
Billions of possible
optimization
choices
Tensor Expression (Specification)
C = tvm.compute((m, n),
lambda y, x: tvm.sum(A[k, y] * B[k, x], axis=k))

17. © 2020 OctoML and University of Washington
Problem Formalization
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Search Space
Expression
Objective
Code Generator
Optimization
Configuration
Cost:
Execute Time
Program
AutoOpt

18. © 2020 OctoML and University of Washington
Black-box Optimization
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Challenge: Lots of experimental trials, each trial costs ~1 second
Code Generator
Try each configuration until we find a good one
Search Space
Expression AutoTVM

19. © 2020 OctoML and University of Washington
Cost-model Driven Approach
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Search Space
Expression AutoOpt
Challenge: Need reliable cost model per hardware
Use cost model to pick configuration
Code Generator
Cost Model

20. © 2020 OctoML and University of Washington
Statistical Cost Model
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Search Space
Expression AutoOpt Code Generator
Our approach: Use machine learning to learn a statistical cost model
Statistical
Cost Model
Learning
Training data
Benefit: Automatically adapt to hardware type Important: How to design the cost model

21. © 2020 OctoML and University of Washington
Search
Space
Expression
2
2 AutoTVM
Shared
Cost Model
Code
Generator
New Tasks
Historical data from related operators
(tasks)
Need task invariant
representation
Transfer learning
AutoTVM Overview
21
Conv2D
Matmul
O(microseconds) inference vs. O(seconds) execution
Search
Space
Expression AutoTVM
Code
Generator
Statistical
Cost Model
Learning
Training data
High-level
configurations
Low-level
Abstract Syntax Tree
(AST)
Benefit: Low-level AST is a common representation (General, task
invariant)
Your favourite model
Statistical features
of AST
+ +
Learning to Optimize Tensor Programs. Chen et al. NeurIPS 18

22. © 2020 OctoML and University of Washington
Does it work?
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Better than hand-tuned code in a few minutes
1.50x faster than hand-tuned in steady state
AutoTVM + transferred model
3x to 10x faster tuning w/ transfer
learning

23. © 2020 OctoML and University of Washington
Device Fleet: Distributed Test Bed for AutoTVM
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Resource
Allocation
Resource
Token
Resource Manager (Tracker)
Nvidia GPU Server
RPC RT CUDA
Android Phone
RPC RT OpenCL
Zynq FPGA Board
RPC RT Bitstream
AutoTVM
Experiment 1
AutoTVM
Experiment 2
Persistent Remote Session
Scale up optimization
Resource sharing
…

24. © 2020 OctoML and University of Washington
State-of-the-art performance
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Nvidia Titan X ARM GPU (MALI)
ARM CPU
(Cortex-A53)
Key point: TVM offers good performance with low manual effort

25. © 2020 OctoML and University of Washington 25
End-to-end,
framework to metal open
stack.
Research and deployment
High-Level Differentiable IR
Tensor Expression IR
LLVM, CUDA, Metal VTA
Edge
FPGA
Cloud
FPGA
ASIC
Open source synthesizable deep
learning accelerator design
Stack

26. © 2020 OctoML and University of Washington
DL Accelerator Design Challenges
26
CNN
GAN
RNN
MLP
DQNN
• Keeping up with algorithmic changes
• Finding the right generality/efficiency trade-off
• Enable a “day-0” software stack on top
• (VTA: two-level ISA, templatized design)
• (VTA: templatized design + HW parameter search)
• (VTA: tight coupling with TVM)

27. © 2020 OctoML and University of Washington
VTA:
Open & Flexible Deep Learning Accelerator
27
Current TVM Stack
VTA Runtime & JIT Compiler
VTA MicroArchitecture VTA Simulator
VTA Hardware/Software Interface (ISA)
• Move hardware complexity to
software via a two-level ISA
• Runtime JIT-compile
accelerator micro code
• Native support in TVM
• Support heterogenous devices
(split graph)
• Support for secure execution
(soon)

28. © 2020 OctoML and University of Washington
VTA Open Source Deep Learning accelerator
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• Decoupled access-execute with explicit software control
• Two-level ISA: JIT breaks multi-cycle “CISC” instructions into micro-ops
• Enables model retargeting without HW changes
• Focused on FPGA deployments so far. Exploring custom silicon
possibilities
Note: HW-SW Blueprint for Flexible Deep Learning Acceleration. Moreau et al. IEEE Micro 2019.
Template

29. © 2020 OctoML and University of Washington
µTVM - Bare-metal model deployment for edge
devices
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Optimize, compile and package model for standalone bare metal
deployment
See recent demo on TVM for Azure Sphere deployment.
µTVM
ML model
Optimized
model
Optimized
operators
Standalone
runtime
Edge device board
(ARM, MIPS, RISC-
V,...)
Flash code

30. © 2020 OctoML and University of Washington
Coming Soon - Ultra low bit-width quantization
Automatic quantization: 5-20x
performance gains with reasonable
accuracy loss.
TVM supports flexible code
generation for a variety of data
types
Squeezenet on RaspberryPi 3

31. © 2020 OctoML and University of Washington
What about training?
31
• Direct support for training in Apache TVM
coming soon!
• Automatic generation of gradient programs
• Support for customized data types and training
on FPGAs
High-Level Differentiable IR
Tensor Expression IR
LLVM, CUDA, Metal VTA
Edge
FPGA
Cloud
FPGA
ASIC
Standalone training deployment
Standalone inference deployment
Gradient Program for Training
Automatic Differentiation

32. © 2020 OctoML and University of Washington
Other Ongoing TVM efforts
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• Autoscheduling (Zheng et al. OSDI’20 @ UCBerkeley)
• Automatic synthesis of operator implementations (Cowan et al. CGO’20 @ UWash)
• Sparse support (NLP, graph convolutional neural networks, etc…)
• Secure enclaves
• …
• Join the community!

33. © 2020 OctoML and University of Washington
https://tvm.ai
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2nd TVM conference on Dec 5, 2019. 200+ ppl last year!
• Video tutorials
• iPython notebooks tutorials
3rd TVM conference on Dec 3/4, 2020. https://tvmconf.org

34. © 2020 OctoML and University of Washington 34
https://octoml.ai

35. © 2020 OctoML and University of Washington
What I would like you to remember…
35
TVM is an emerging open source standard for ML compilation and optimization
TVM offers
• Improved time to market for ML
• Performance
• Unified support for CPU, GPU, Accelerators
• On the framework of your choice
OctoML is here to help you succeed in you ML deployment needs
End-to-end,
framework to
metal open stack.
Research and
deployment
High-Level Differentiable IR
Tensor Expression IR
LLVM, CUDA, Metal VTA
Edge
FPGA
Cloud
FPGA
ASIC