A Brief about How MQBench Supports Hardware and Software

MQBench is able to do quantization over many different backends and quantization algorithms, which relys on the independence of hardware(backends) and software(algorithms). To support a new backend, h/w and s/w should be added.

We provide a typical work-flow:

  1. Add FakeQuantizeAffine to simulate the hardware behavior.

  2. Add corresponding Observer to provide FakeQuantizeAffine with needed infomation.

  3. Add ModelQuantizer to insert quantize nodes into the model.

  4. Add ONNX-Backend translator to deploy the output graph.

FakeQuantize, Observer and Quantization Scheme

When the model is at calib mode, Observer collects needed statistics and FakeQuantize does not quantize the input; when at quant mode, FakeQuantize performs the quantized forward with the qparams calulated bt Observer.

To add a FakeQuantizeAffine, refer to mqbench/fake_quantize/.

  1. Fucntion: Add a fake quantization function to describe the quantized forward. If the function is not differential, also describe the backward.

  2. Autograd and Symbolic: Wrap the quantization forward/backward function with torch.autograd.Function. To enable onnx export, a symbolic function is also needed.

  3. Inherit the QuantizeBase: Define the class which holds the qparams and performs the quantized forward. This class inherit mqbench.fake_quantize.quantize_base.QuantizeBase.

  4. Add a Observer if needed: Inherit ObserverBase, collect statistics in forward and get qparams in calculate_qparams.

  5. Use it in prepare_by_platform

    1. Import your class at the mqbench.prepare_by_platform.

    2. Add your backend type into the Enumeration mqbench.prepare_by_platform.BackendType.

    3. Define its default scheme at mqbench.prepare_by_platform.ParamsTable.

    4. Add mappings to and mqbench.prepare_by_platform.FakeQuantizeDict.

For now, we have provided some linear quantization affines/observers so it might reduce lots of work.

Custom Quantizer

To prepare the model by platform, quantization nodes should be inserted by and only by ModelQuantizer, which hides all details about the needed graph. After preparation, the model could be used to QAT or PTQ.

The ModelQuantizer will do:

  1. Op fusion, like Conv2d+BN2d+ReLU -> ConvBnReLU2d.

  2. QAT swap. Fuse the modules into QAT modules and insert quantize node for weights.

  3. Insert quantize nodes after activation. Need to find whose output will be quantized in the backend.

Op Fusion

The fusion is a torch API and you need to edit the torch default fuser method mappings and patterns because the torch fuser does not accept any other args.

If you add some new fusion patterns:

  1. Add the fusion patterns and related fusion method into mqbench.fuser_method_mapping. This will turn some op patterns into intrinsic fused modules. If you create new intrinsic modules, add them into mqbench.nn.intrinsic. If you apply new fusion method, add them into mqbench.utils.fusion.

  2. Add the mapping from intrinsic modules into qat modules. Define the modules at mqbench.nn.intrinsic.qat if needed.

  3. Add all the metioned things to mqbench.fuser_method_mapping.fuse_custom_config_dict.

  4. NOTE: If the pattern only apply to certain backend, you need to update the default dicts at ModelQuantizer, rather than fuse_custom_config_dict!

QAT Swap

Swap the intrinsic modules into qat ones. Add the mappings into mqbench.fuser_method_mapping if it is a universal mapping. If not, into ModelQuantizer’s additional_qat_module_mappings.

We deploy bias-quant intrinsic and qat modules, so just refer to the mqbench.nn to see how to add one by yourself.

Insert Quantize nodes

Usually the TensorRT’s ModelQuantizer is a good example, which quantizes all quantizable input tensors of module. If you need to quantize other nodes, just add them to the set with your own logic.

Deploy Functions

The deploy stage is to turn our torch-based model into ONNX and graphs based on backend. Typically, we will merge bn into conv/deconv/linear, convert the quantized model into onnx and finally remove all fake quantize op and deploy them. The functions are defined at mqbench.convert_deploy and regisered by @register_deploy_function(BackendType).

Deploy stage might be the hardest part of the flow, for it takes care of all h/w details. The normal flow will be like:

  1. No extra work needed for merging bn and conver onnx.

  2. For removing fake_quantize and collecting qparams, you can check the mqbench.deploy. There are examples for linear/logarithmic quantization and self-defined onnx runtime.

  3. Also, there are platforms support standard onnx quantization. If your platform supports this, please export FakeQuantizeAffine into onnxruntime QDQOperators. 1 2

  4. If extra tools are needed to complete the translation, just integrate your tools into mqbench.deploy. And there is also an example of Vitis-AI.

1

https://onnxruntime.ai/docs/performance/quantization.html

2

https://github.com/microsoft/onnxruntime/blob/master/onnxruntime/python/tools/quantization/registry.py