STT-tensorflow/tensorflow/lite/delegates/xnnpack

XNNPACK backend for TensorFlow Lite

XNNPACK is a highly optimized library of floating-point neural network inference operators for ARM, x86, and WebAssembly architectures in Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, macOS, and Emscripten environments. This document describes how to use the XNNPACK library as an inference engine for TensorFlow Lite.

Using XNNPACK engine with TensorFlow Lite interpreter

XNNPACK integrates with TensorFlow Lite interpreter through the delegation mechanism. TensorFlow Lite supports several methods to enable XNNPACK for floating-point inference.

Enable XNNPACK via Java API on Android (recommended on Android)

Pre-built nightly TensorFlow Lite binaries for Android include XNNPACK, albeit it is disabled by default. Use the setUseXNNPACK method in Interpreter.Options class to enable it:

Interpreter.Options interpreterOptions = new Interpreter.Options();
interpreterOptions.setUseXNNPACK(true);
Interpreter interpreter = new Interpreter(model, interpreterOptions);

Enable XNNPACK via Swift/Objective-C API on iOS (recommended on iOS)

Pre-built nightly TensorFlow Lite CocoaPods include XNNPACK, but do not enable it by default. Swift developers can use InterpreterOptions object to enable XNNPACK:

var options = InterpreterOptions()
options.isXNNPackEnabled = true
var interpreter = try Interpreter(modelPath: "model/path", options: options)

Objective-C developers can enable XNNPACK via a new property in the TFLInterpreterOptions class:

TFLInterpreterOptions *options = [[TFLInterpreterOptions alloc] init];
options.useXNNPACK = YES;
NSError *error;
TFLInterpreter *interpreter =
    [[TFLInterpreter alloc] initWithModelPath:@"model/path"
                                      options:options
                                        error:&error];

Enable XNNPACK via Bazel build flags (recommended on desktop)

When building TensorFlow Lite with Bazel, add --define tflite_with_xnnpack=true, and the TensorFlow Lite interpreter will use XNNPACK engine by default.

The exact command depends on the target platform, e.g. for Android AAR you'd use

bazel build -c opt --fat_apk_cpu=x86,x86_64,arm64-v8a,armeabi-v7a \
  --host_crosstool_top=@bazel_tools//tools/cpp:toolchain \
  --define tflite_with_xnnpack=true \
  //tensorflow/lite/java:tensorflow-lite

Enable XNNPACK via additional dependency

Another way to enable XNNPACK is to build and link the //tensorflow/lite:tflite_with_xnnpack target into your application alongside the TensorFlow Lite framework.

This method works on platforms which support POSIX-style weak symbols (Android, iOS, Linux, Mac, but NOT Windows).

Enable XNNPACK via low-level delegate API (not recommended)

While it is possible to use low-level delegate API to enable XNNPACK, this method is NOT RECOMMENDED unless you need to use TensorFlow Lite both with and without XNNPACK (e.g. for benchmarking).

With low-level delegate API users create an XNNPACK delegate with the TfLiteXNNPackDelegateCreate function, and then call Interpreter::ModifyGraphWithDelegate to delegate supported parts of the model to the XNNPACK delegate. The users must destroy the delegate with TfLiteXNNPackDelegateDelete after releasing the TensorFlow Lite interpreter. The snippet below illustrates the typical usage:

// Build the interpreter
std::unique_ptr<tflite::Interpreter> interpreter;
...

// IMPORTANT: initialize options with TfLiteXNNPackDelegateOptionsDefault() for
// API-compatibility with future extensions of the TfLiteXNNPackDelegateOptions
// structure.
TfLiteXNNPackDelegateOptions xnnpack_options =
    TfLiteXNNPackDelegateOptionsDefault();
xnnpack_options.num_threads = num_threads;

TfLiteDelegate* xnnpack_delegate =
    TfLiteXNNPackDelegateCreate(&xnnpack_options);
if (interpreter->ModifyGraphWithDelegate(xnnpack_delegate) != kTfLiteOk) {
  // Report error and fall back to another delegate, or the default backend
}

...

// Run inference using XNNPACK
interpreter->Invoke()

...

// IMPORTANT: release the interpreter before destroying the delegate
interpreter.reset();
TfLiteXNNPackDelegateDelete(xnnpack_delegate);

Limitations and supported operators

XNNPACK delegate is a work-in-progress, and currently supports a limited set of operators. Unsupported operators will fall back to the default implementations, so models using a combination of supported and unsupported operators can still benefit from XNNPACK delegate.

Below is the list of current operators and limitations:

ABS

• Inputs and outputs must be in 32-bit floating-point format.

ADD

• Inputs and outputs must be in 32-bit floating-point format.
• Only addition with two inputs is supported.
• Fused NONE, RELU, RELU_N1_TO_1, and RELU6 activations are supported, but fused TANH and SIGN_BIT activations are not.

AVERAGE_POOL_2D

• Inputs and outputs must be in 32-bit floating-point format.
• 1x1 pooling with non-unit stride is not supported.
• Fused NONE, RELU, RELU_N1_TO_1, and RELU6 activations are supported, but fused TANH and SIGN_BIT activations are not.

CEIL

• Inputs and outputs must be in 32-bit floating-point format.

CONV_2D

• Inputs and outputs must be in 32-bit floating-point format.
• Bias is mandatory.
• Both filter and bias must be static (use kTfLiteMmapRo allocation type).
• Fused NONE, RELU, RELU_N1_TO_1, and RELU6 activations are supported, but fused TANH and SIGN_BIT activations are not.

DEPTHWISE_CONV_2D

• Inputs and outputs must be in 32-bit floating-point format.
• Bias is mandatory.
• Both filter and bias must be static (use kTfLiteMmapRo allocation type).
• Fused NONE, RELU, RELU_N1_TO_1, and RELU6 activations are supported, but fused TANH and SIGN_BIT activations are not.

DIV

• Inputs and outputs must be in 32-bit floating-point format.
• Fused NONE, RELU, RELU_N1_TO_1, and RELU6 activations are supported, but fused TANH and SIGN_BIT activations are not.

FULLY_CONNECTED

• Inputs and outputs must be in 32-bit floating-point format.
• Bias is mandatory.
• Both filter and bias must be static (use kTfLiteMmapRo allocation type).
• Fused NONE, RELU, RELU_N1_TO_1, and RELU6 activations are supported, but fused TANH and SIGN_BIT activations are not.

FLOOR

• Inputs and outputs must be in 32-bit floating-point format.

HARD_SWISH

• Inputs and outputs must be in 32-bit floating-point format.

LEAKY_RELU

• Inputs and outputs must be in 32-bit floating-point format.

LOGISTIC

• Inputs and outputs must be in 32-bit floating-point format.

MAX_POOL_2D

• Inputs and outputs must be in 32-bit floating-point format.
• 1x1 pooling with non-unit stride is not supported.
• Fused NONE, RELU, RELU_N1_TO_1, and RELU6 activations are supported, but fused TANH and SIGN_BIT activations are not.

MAXIMUM

• Inputs and outputs must be in 32-bit floating-point format.

MEAN

• The first input and the output must be a 4D tensors in 32-bit floating-point format.
• The second input (the input with the axes specification) must be static (use kTfLiteMmapRo allocation type).
• Only [1, 2] or [2, 1] axes specification (i.e. reduction across spatial dimensions) is supported.
• Only keep_dims = True parameter value is supported.

MINIMUM

• Inputs and outputs must be in 32-bit floating-point format.

MUL

• Inputs and outputs must be in 32-bit floating-point format.
• Fused NONE, RELU, RELU_N1_TO_1, and RELU6 activations are supported, but fused TANH and SIGN_BIT activations are not.

NEG

• Inputs and outputs must be in 32-bit floating-point format.

PAD

• The first input and the output must be in 32-bit floating-point format.
• The second input (the input with the padding specification) must be static (use kTfLiteMmapRo allocation type).
• The numbers of padding elements must be non-negative.

PRELU

• Inputs and outputs must be in 32-bit floating-point format.
• Slope must be static (use kTfLiteMmapRo allocation type).
• Slope must be either a 1D tensor, or have all its non-channel dimensions equal 1.

RELU

• Inputs and outputs must be in 32-bit floating-point format.

RELU6

• Inputs and outputs must be in 32-bit floating-point format.

RELU_N1_TO_1

• Inputs and outputs must be in 32-bit floating-point format.

RESHAPE

• The first input and the output must be in 32-bit floating-point format.
• The second input (the input with the new shape specification) must be either static (use kTfLiteMmapRo allocation type), or absent (with the new shape specified via ReshapeOptions table).

RESIZE_BILINEAR

• The first input and the output must be 4D tensors in 32-bit floating-point format.
• The second input (the input with the new shape specification) must be static (use kTfLiteMmapRo allocation type).

ROUND

• Inputs and outputs must be in 32-bit floating-point format.

SOFTMAX

• Inputs and outputs must be in 32-bit floating-point format.
• Only beta = 1.0 is supported.

SQRT

• Inputs and outputs must be in 32-bit floating-point format.

SQUARE

• Inputs and outputs must be in 32-bit floating-point format.

SQUARED_DIFFERENCE

• Inputs and outputs must be in 32-bit floating-point format.

SUB

• Inputs and outputs must be in 32-bit floating-point format.
• Fused NONE, RELU, RELU_N1_TO_1, and RELU6 activations are supported, but fused TANH and SIGN_BIT activations are not.

Sparse Inference (experimental)

XNNPACK backend supports sparse inference for CNN models described in the Fast Sparse ConvNets paper. This functionality must be enabled at build-time via --define xnn_enable_sparse=true Bazel flag. Sparse inference is restricted to subgraphs with the following operators:

• Sparse subgraph must start with a 3x3 stride-2 CONV_2D operator with padding 1 on each side, no dilation, and 3 input channels.
• Sparse subgraph must end with a MEAN operator that does reduction across spatial axes.
• Sparse subgraph may contain the following operators:
  • CONV_2D with 1x1 kernel and no padding. It is important to have high sparsity (at least 70%) in the filter of this operator to get speedup over dense inference.
  • DEPTHWISE_CONV_2D with 3x3 kernel, stride 1, no dilation, and padding 1 on each side.
  • DEPTHWISE_CONV_2D with 3x3 kernel, stride 2, no dilation, and padding 1 on each side.
  • DEPTHWISE_CONV_2D with 5x5 kernel, stride 1, no dilation, and padding 2 on each side.
  • DEPTHWISE_CONV_2D with 5x5 kernel, stride 2, no dilation, and padding 2 on each side.
  • ADD and MUL operators where both inputs are 4D tensors. If one of the inputs to ADD or MUL is a constant tensor, it must be representable as either a scalar, or a 1D vector.
  • Unary elementwise operators ABS, CEIL, FLOOR, HARD_SWISH, LEAKY_RELU, LOGISTIC, NEG, RELU, RELU6, RELU_N1_TO_1, ROUND, and SQUARE.

Pre-trained Fast Sparse ConvNets models provide examples that satisfy these constrains.

In addition to acceleration, sparse models get the compression benefit by storing only non-zero values in the TensorFlow Lite file format.

Other limitations

• Dynamically allocated (with kTfLiteDynamic allocation type) inputs and outputs are not supported.
• Resizing model inputs (via Interpreter::ResizeInputTensor) is supported, but cause a complete reinitialization of the delegate instance, which has considerable overhead.