Neuron Compiler¶
The Neuron Compiler is an Ahead-of-Time (AoT) compiler that accepts Machine Learning models in various formats (TensorFlow, MXNet, PyTorch, XLA HLO) and optimizes them to run on AWS Inferentia chips.
AoT compilation requires that dynamic tensor shapes (dimension sizes) of all tensors in the compute-graph are known at compilation time, in order for the compiler to make informed decisions. Model compilation with shapes that cannot be determined at compile time will fail.
It is common for developers to train models in FP32 to avoid the challenges of low-precision training (e.g. loss-scaling, etc). However, during inference, developers typically look for the most performant and cost-effective methods. In order to address these two requirements, Neuron supports FP32 auto-casting, details for which can be found in Mixed precision and performance-accuracy tuning.
The Neuron compiler is used within an integrated framework, such as TensorFlow, PyTorch or MXNet. From that framework, ML models are sent to the compiler and the results then sent back. This compile step will often be done on a compilation server. The resulting compiler artifact is called a NEFF file (Neuron Executable File Format). NEFF files are loaded into an Inferentia device, using the Neuron Runtime. The NEFF is actually encapsulated inside a saved version of that model, which the framework can use.