These were legacy concepts that are now superceded by direct Torch to
linalg-on-tensors lowering. These were based on some very early thinking
related to the layering of frontends vs codegen, which is now obsolete
because:
- We expected a lot more centralization at the frontend (TCF) level. It
turns out that frontend needs really vary a lot, and there is no grand
unifying TCF dialect plausible. The additional layer isn't worth it.
- Linalg-on-tensors obsoletes the primary need for TCP. There are still
a few things not representable with linalg-on-tensors, but the support
is growing and the whole "not included in linalg-on-tensors" direction
needs to be rethought. Our TCP dialect didn't cover any of the
actually important things in this space (such as sort, FFT, top-k,
etc.).
See historical [slides](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iljcpTQ5NPaMfGpoPDFml1XkYxjK_6A4/view) / [recording](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jSPa8TwPKUt0WuLquGc8OgSUVYJHMvWZ/view)
for more details on the origin story here.
Their presence was confusing users too
[bug](https://github.com/llvm/mlir-npcomp/issues/248).
Also,
- Trim down npcomp-run-mlir testing. It was testing TCF to TCP
lowering for the most part. The essential stuff is retained and
rephrased with linalg-on-tensors. (we should probably rename it
"refback-run" or something, as it is just a way to invoke RefBackend)
- test/Python/Backend/RefJIT/simple_invoke_numpy.py is XFAIL'ed. Our
"anti-framework" direction seems to be the likely future path.
This is a really major and invasive restructuring of the way we get
torch operators (`torch::jit::Operator` / `c10::OperatorHandle`) into
MLIR. Please forgive the challenging review, but due to the sheer
invasiveness, it wasn't really practical do do it in sane smaller
pieces.
This fully replaces everything that was already working on the
TorchScript path (actually, more -- we added tanh support to
TorchToLinalg in order to delete the older code paths). Additionally,
I've kept the lights on for the acap path too, including what little e2e
stuff was working before (for expediency I made a few tiny compromises
along the way that will be easy to undo when we give that path proper
attention).
Overview of the new design:
- The torch operator `somens::someunqualname.someoverloadname` is
imported as `torch.somens.someunqualname.someoverloadname` (skip the
last dotted part if the overload name is empty), OR, if we don't have
such an op registered, it is imported as
`torch.operator "somens.someunqualname.someoverloadname" (...) : ...`.
- The addition of the "overload name" is a critical element here, as
the `(ns,unqual,overload)` triple is unique, which solves a lot of
problems we were having.
- This involves having separate MLIR ops for the `trailing_` and
`.out` variants and all the different overloads. This seemed
necessary, because the set of overloads is so wild and varied and
unstructured. The previous design was leaning into some underlying
structure that just isn't there -- the default situation is
the "random overload that we want to manage on the MLIR side",
rather than that being an exception. E.g. `aten::ne` (not-equal)
has 21 overloads, only 4 of which are c10 dispatcher ops see
[gist](https://gist.github.com/silvasean/190ba918c550c956260e21254e1b8aa1),
and the "out" variant is really called `.Tensor_out` instead of
`.out` as it frequently is for other ops.
- Rationale for all being in `torch` namespace: the set of operators
are so varied and unstructured that "dialect per namespace"
doesn't result in anything resembling the typical MLIR dialect
boundary expectations. We could maybe draw the boundary at
dispatcher ops vs non-dispatcher ops, but that doesn't seem to
really result in very much useful structure at this point in time.
- Note: within the torch operator registry, we effectively have a
mini-basicpy subdialect (already type-resolved), which is reasonably
structured.
- The existing Torch op interfaces are also removed -- now that we
track the overload name, we can losslessly find the original
operator.
- Instead of `ATenRecognizeKernelsPass`, we now have a
`ReduceOpVariantsPass` that keys off certain traits (and perhaps
eventually interfaces) to reduce variants of ops to a smaller set,
ideally operating on immutable tensors and using surrounding ops to
model the mutability/aliasing aspects.
- Note: `torch.ns.unqual.overload` ops allow both immutable and
mutable tensors (unlike the previous hard distinction in the common
case). This is a premonition for a future change that will introduce a
bona fide `!torch.tensor` type that will clean up a bunch of stuff.
- `TorchToLinalg` / `TorchToStd` supercede the existing
"ATen->TCF->TCP->Linalg" path.
- The new `torch_ods_gen.py` supercedes `torch_signature_ods_gen.py`.
It should look somewhat familiar, but the benefit of hindsight has
allowed a lot of simplifications.
The overall trend seems to be to make the `torch` dialect a nice layer
independent of anything else. It feels like as a natural result of
various future changes we will be removing the reliance on basicpy+numpy
dialects and have a nice self-contained type system too that properly
models the TorchScript type system (including proper subtyping,
mutable/immutable tensors, optional dtype, etc.).
Recommended review order:
- Start at some of the new import IR, e.g. in
`frontends/pytorch/test/node_import/prim.py`,
`frontends/pytorch/test/acap_export/test_export_add3.py`, and other
tests.
- `frontends/pytorch/python/torch_mlir_utils/codegen/torch_ods_gen.py`
and associated generated files:
- `include/npcomp/Dialect/Torch/IR/GeneratedAtenOps.td`
- `include/npcomp/Dialect/Torch/IR/GeneratedPrimOps.td`
- Inspect `ReduceOpVariants.cpp` / `reduce-op-variants.mlir` and the new
traits in `include/npcomp/Dialect/Torch/IR/TorchTraits.h`
- Various code changes in the import path in
`frontends/pytorch/csrc/builder`. Probably most interesting is the new
code in `torch_to_mlir_utils.cpp` that has the logic to create the
`torch.operator` ops or `torch.ns.unqual.overload` ops.
This is the [new ResNet IR](https://gist.github.com/silvasean/5407aafb710d07612b7b5b92eabecebe),
just to be able to look at a substantial sample of IR in the new style.
- TensorFromElementsOp -> tensor::FromElementsOp
- `cmpi "eq", ...` -> `cmpi eq, ...`. Same for `cmpf`
- syntax change for private func ops
- some changes to the python bindings
* Most updates are mechanical except:
* python/npcomp/__init__.py and python/NpcompModule.cpp: New init/registration bits to replace some automatic things being done in the old bindings. Also an annoying linkage hack that I'll need to triage next.
* NpcompModule.cpp: New python helpers for custom types and other hard to reach items (for the new bindings).
* PybindUtils.h: Extended type casting so that the local extension can directly exchange Mlir* C types.
* python/npcomp/dialects/*: Build support and ODS bindings for local dialects.
* mlir_utils.py: Defines an ImportContext to replace the old/bad "Helper" class that tracked locations, and insertion points. This has a number of methods on it that would be good candidates to think about better ways to do them upstream.
* Also hoisted a few stand-alone samples to dedicated unit tests as they covered important things.
* More cleanup can be done, but keeping this patch as mechanical as possible to stay in NFC land (this is big enough).
Sean Silva
Stella Laurenzo
Bairen Yi