Description
Context
In PyTorch, optimizer.zero_grad() clears the old gradients from last step, loss_fn.backward() does the back propagation, and optimizer.step() performs weight update using the gradients.
Problem
If optimizer.zero_grad() is not used before loss_fn.backward(), the gradients will be accumulated from all loss_fn.backward() calls and it will lead to the gradient explosion, which fails the training.
Solution
Developers should use optimizer.zero_grad(), loss_fn.backward(), optimizer.step() together in order and should not forget to use optimizer.zero_grad() before loss_fn.backward().
Type
API-Specific
Existing Stage
Model Training
Effect
Error-prone
Example
# PyTorch
# 1. Load and normalize CIFAR10
import torch
import torchvision
import torchvision.transforms as transforms
transform = transforms.Compose(
[transforms.ToTensor(),
transforms.Normalize((0.5, 0.5, 0.5), (0.5, 0.5, 0.5))])
batch_size = 4
trainset = torchvision.datasets.CIFAR10(root='./data', train=True,
download=True, transform=transform)
trainloader = torch.utils.data.DataLoader(trainset, batch_size=batch_size,
shuffle=True, num_workers=0)
testset = torchvision.datasets.CIFAR10(root='./data', train=False,
download=True, transform=transform)
testloader = torch.utils.data.DataLoader(testset, batch_size=batch_size,
shuffle=False, num_workers=0)
classes = ('plane', 'car', 'bird', 'cat',
'deer', 'dog', 'frog', 'horse', 'ship', 'truck')
# 2. Define a Convolutional Neural Network
import torch.nn as nn
import torch.nn.functional as F
class Net(nn.Module):
def __init__(self):
super().__init__()
self.conv1 = nn.Conv2d(3, 6, 5)
self.pool = nn.MaxPool2d(2, 2)
self.conv2 = nn.Conv2d(6, 16, 5)
self.fc1 = nn.Linear(16 * 5 * 5, 120)
self.fc2 = nn.Linear(120, 84)
self.fc3 = nn.Linear(84, 10)
def forward(self, x):
x = self.pool(F.relu(self.conv1(x)))
x = self.pool(F.relu(self.conv2(x)))
x = torch.flatten(x, 1) # flatten all dimensions except batch
x = F.relu(self.fc1(x))
x = F.relu(self.fc2(x))
x = self.fc3(x)
return x
net = Net()
# 3. Define a Loss function and optimizer
import torch.optim as optim
criterion = nn.CrossEntropyLoss()
optimizer = optim.SGD(net.parameters(), lr=0.001, momentum=0.9)
# 4. Train the network
for epoch in range(2): # loop over the dataset multiple times
running_loss = 0.0
for i, data in enumerate(trainloader, 0):
# get the inputs; data is a list of [inputs, labels]
inputs, labels = data
+ # zero the parameter gradients
+ optimizer.zero_grad()
# forward + backward + optimize
outputs = net(inputs)
loss = criterion(outputs, labels)
loss.backward()
optimizer.step()
# print statistics
running_loss += loss.item()
if i % 2000 == 1999: # print every 2000 mini-batches
print(f'[{epoch + 1}, {i + 1:5d}] loss: {running_loss / 2000:.3f}')
running_loss = 0.0
print('Finished Training')
PATH = './cifar_net.pth'
torch.save(net.state_dict(), PATH)
# 5. Test the network on the test data
correct = 0
total = 0
# since we're not training, we don't need to calculate the gradients for our outputs
with torch.no_grad():
for data in testloader:
images, labels = data
# calculate outputs by running images through the network
outputs = net(images)
# the class with the highest energy is what we choose as prediction
_, predicted = torch.max(outputs.data, 1)
total += labels.size(0)
correct += (predicted == labels).sum().item()
print(f'Accuracy of the network on the 10000 test images: {100 * correct // total} %')