The NetworkDefinition interface (C++, Python) defines the model. The most common path to transfer a model to TensorRT is to export it from a framework in ONNX format and use TensorRT’s ONNX parser to populate the network definition. However, you can also construct the definition step by step using TensorRT’s Layer (C++, Python) and Tensor (C++, Python) interfaces.

Whichever way you choose, you must also define which tensors are the inputs and outputs of the network. Tensors that are not marked as outputs are considered to be transient values that the builder can optimize away. Input and output tensors must be named so that TensorRT knows how to bind the input and output buffers to the model at runtime.

The BuilderConfig interface (C++, Python) is used to specify how TensorRT should optimize the model. Among the configuration options available, you can control TensorRT’s ability to reduce the precision of calculations, control the tradeoff between memory and runtime execution speed, and constrain the choice of CUDA^® kernels. Since the builder can take minutes or more to run, you can also control how the builder searches for kernels and cached search results for use in subsequent runs.

After you have a network definition and a builder configuration, you can call the builder to create the engine. The builder eliminates dead computations, folds constants, and reorders and combines operations to run more efficiently on the GPU. It can optionally reduce the precision of floating-point computations, either by simply running them in 16-bit floating point, or by quantizing floating point values so that calculations can be performed using 8-bit integers. It also times multiple implementations of each layer with varying data formats, then computes an optimal schedule to execute the model, minimizing the combined cost of kernel executions and format transforms.

The Engine interface (C++, Python) represents an optimized model. You can query an engine for information about the input and output tensors of the network - the expected dimensions, data type, data format, and so on.

The ExecutionContext interface (C++, Python), created from the engine, is the main interface for invoking inference. The execution context contains all of the states associated with a particular invocation - thus, you can have multiple contexts associated with a single engine and run them in parallel.

You must set up the input and output buffers in the appropriate locations when invoking inference. Depending on the nature of the data, this may be in either CPU or GPU memory. If not obvious, based on your model, you can query the engine to determine which memory space to provide the buffer.

After the buffers are set up, inference can be enqueued (enqueueV3). The required kernels are enqueued on a CUDA stream, and control is returned to the application as soon as possible. Some networks require multiple control transfers between CPU and GPU, so control may not return immediately. To wait for completion of asynchronous execution, synchronize on the stream using cudaStreamSynchronize.

For strongly typed networks, TensorRT’s optimizer will statically infer intermediate tensor types based on the network input types and the operator specifications, which match type inference semantics in frameworks. The optimizer will then adhere strictly to those types. For more information, refer to Strongly Typed Networks.

Refer to Reduced Precision in Weakly-Typed Networks for more details.

Even with relatively little workspace, however, timing requires creating buffers for input, output, and weights. TensorRT is robust against the operating system (OS) returning out-of-memory for such allocations. On some platforms, the OS may successfully provide memory, and then the out-of-memory killer process observes that the system is low on memory and kills TensorRT. If this happens, free up as much system memory as possible before retrying.

During the build phase, at least two copies of the weights will typically be in host memory: those from the original network and those included as part of the engine as it is built. In addition, when TensorRT combines weights (for example, convolution with batch normalization), additional temporary weight tensors will be created.

An engine allocates device memory to store the model weights upon deserialization. Since the serialized engine has almost all the weights, its size approximates the amount of device memory the weights require.

You may optionally create an execution context without enqueue memory using ICudaEngine::createExecutionContextWithoutDeviceMemory() and provide that memory for the duration of network execution. This allows you to share it between multiple contexts not running concurrently or for other uses while inference is not running. The amount of enqueue memory required is returned by ICudaEngine::getDeviceMemorySizeV2().

[08/12/2021-17:39:11] [I] [TRT] Total Host Persistent Memory: 106528
[08/12/2021-17:39:11] [I] [TRT] Total Device Persistent Memory: 29785600
[08/12/2021-17:39:11] [I] [TRT] Max Scratch Memory: 9970688

By default, TensorRT allocates device memory directly from CUDA. However, you can attach an implementation of TensorRT’s IGpuAllocator (C++, Python) interface to the builder or runtime and manage device memory yourself. This is useful if your application wants to control all GPU memory and sub-allocate to TensorRT instead of having TensorRT allocated directly from CUDA.

NVIDIA cuDNN and NVIDIA cuBLAS can occupy large amounts of device memory. TensorRT allows you to control whether these libraries are used for inference by using the TacticSources (C++, Python) attribute in the builder configuration. Some plugin implementations require these libraries, so when they are excluded, the network may not be compiled successfully. If the appropriate tactic sources are set, the cudnnContext and cublasContext handles are passed to the plugins using IPluginV2Ext:::attachToContext().

The CUDA infrastructure and TensorRT’s device code also consume device memory. The amount of memory varies by platform, device, and TensorRT version. You can use cudaGetMemInfo to determine the total amount of device memory.

[MemUsageChange] Init CUDA: CPU +535, GPU +0, now: CPU 547, GPU 1293 (MiB)

Cache allocation is per-execution context, enabled using the context’s setPersistentCacheLimit method. The total persistent cache among all contexts (and other components using this feature) should not exceed cudaDeviceProp::persistingL2CacheMaxSize. For more information, refer to the NVIDIA CUDA Best Practices Guide.

The runtime will translate TensorRT 10 API calls for the TensorRT 8.6 runtime, checking to ensure that the call is supported and performing any necessary parameter remapping.

In addition, the parser may require plugins to fully implement all ONNX operators used in the network. In particular, if the network is used to build a version-compatible engine, some plugins may need to be included with the engine (either serialized with the engine or provided externally and loaded explicitly).

Refer to Plugin Shared Libraries for instructions on using the resulting library list to serialize the plugins or package them externally.

    auto builder = SampleUniquePtr<nvinfer1::IBuilder>(nvinfer1::createInferBuilder(sample::gLogger.getTRTLogger()));
    auto network = SampleUniquePtr<nvinfer1::INetworkDefinition>(0);

auto data = network->addInput(INPUT_BLOB_NAME, datatype, Dims4{1, 1, INPUT_H, INPUT_W});

auto conv1 = network->addConvolution(
*data->getOutput(0), 20, DimsHW{5, 5}, weightMap["conv1filter"], weightMap["conv1bias"]);
conv1->setStride(DimsHW{1, 1});

auto pool1 = network->addPooling(*conv1->getOutput(0), PoolingType::kMAX, DimsHW{2, 2});
pool1->setStride(DimsHW{2, 2});

int32_t const batch = input->getDimensions().d[0];
int32_t const mmInputs = input.getDimensions().d[1] * input.getDimensions().d[2] * input.getDimensions().d[3]; 
auto inputReshape = network->addShuffle(*input);
inputReshape->setReshapeDimensions(Dims{2, {batch, mmInputs}});

IConstantLayer* filterConst = network->addConstant(Dims{2, {nbOutputs, mmInputs}}, mWeightMap["ip1filter"]);
auto mm = network->addMatrixMultiply(*inputReshape->getOutput(0), MatrixOperation::kNONE, *filterConst->getOutput(0), MatrixOperation::kTRANSPOSE);

auto biasConst = network->addConstant(Dims{2, {1, nbOutputs}}, mWeightMap["ip1bias"]);
auto biasAdd = network->addElementWise(*mm->getOutput(0), *biasConst->getOutput(0), ElementWiseOperation::kSUM);

auto relu1 = network->addActivation(*ip1->getOutput(0), ActivationType::kRELU);

auto prob = network->addSoftMax(*relu1->getOutput(0));

prob->getOutput(0)->setName(OUTPUT_BLOB_NAME);

network->markOutput(*prob->getOutput(0));

The network representing the MNIST model has now been fully constructed. For instructions on how to build an engine and run an inference with this network, refer to the Building an Engine and Performing Inference.

class ModelData(object):
    INPUT_NAME = "data"
    INPUT_SHAPE = (1, 1, 28, 28)
    OUTPUT_NAME = "prob"
    OUTPUT_SIZE = 10
    DTYPE = trt.float32

weights = mnist_model.get_weights()

TRT_LOGGER = trt.Logger(trt.Logger.ERROR)
builder = trt.Builder(TRT_LOGGER)
network = builder.create_network(0)

input_tensor = network.add_input(name=ModelData.INPUT_NAME, dtype=ModelData.DTYPE, shape=ModelData.INPUT_SHAPE)

    	conv1_w = weights["conv1.weight"].cpu().numpy()
	conv1_b = weights["conv1.bias"].cpu().numpy()
	conv1 = network.add_convolution_nd(
    	input=input_tensor, num_output_maps=20, kernel_shape=(5, 5), kernel=conv1_w, bias=conv1_b
	)
	conv1.stride_nd = (1, 1)

   	pool1 = network.add_pooling_nd(input=conv1.get_output(0), type=trt.PoolingType.MAX, window_size=(2, 2))
	pool1.stride_nd = trt.Dims2(2, 2)

    	conv2_w = weights["conv2.weight"].cpu().numpy()
	conv2_b = weights["conv2.bias"].cpu().numpy()
	conv2 = network.add_convolution_nd(pool1.get_output(0), 50, (5, 5), conv2_w, conv2_b)
	conv2.stride_nd = (1, 1)

	pool2 = network.add_pooling_nd(conv2.get_output(0), trt.PoolingType.MAX, (2, 2))
	pool2.stride_nd = trt.Dims2(2, 2)

batch = input.shape[0]
mm_inputs = np.prod(input.shape[1:])
input_reshape = net.add_shuffle(input)
input_reshape.reshape_dims = trt.Dims2(batch, mm_inputs)

filter_const = net.add_constant(trt.Dims2(nbOutputs, k), weights["fc1.weight"].numpy())
mm = net.add_matrix_multiply(input_reshape.get_output(0), trt.MatrixOperation.NONE, filter_const.get_output(0), trt.MatrixOperation.TRANSPOSE);

bias_const = net.add_constant(trt.Dims2(1, nbOutputs), weights["fc1.bias"].numpy())
bias_add = net.add_elementwise(mm.get_output(0), bias_const.get_output(0), trt.ElementWiseOperation.SUM)

    relu1 = network.add_activation(input=fc1.get_output(0), type=trt.ActivationType.RELU)

    fc2_w = weights['fc2.weight'].numpy()
    fc2_b = weights['fc2.bias'].numpy()
    fc2 = add_matmul_as_fc(network, relu1.get_output(0), ModelData.OUTPUT_SIZE, fc2_w, fc2_b)

    fc2.get_output(0).name = ModelData.OUTPUT_NAME
    network.mark_output(tensor=fc2.get_output(0))

The network representing the MNIST model has now been fully constructed. Refer to sections Building an Engine and Performing Inference for how to build an engine and run inference with this network.

There are three precision flags: FP16, INT8, and TF32, and they may be enabled independently. TensorRT will still choose a higher-precision kernel if it results in a lower runtime or if no low-precision implementation exists.

When TensorRT chooses a precision for a layer, it automatically converts weights as necessary to run the layer.

While using FP16 and TF32 precisions is relatively straightforward, working with INT8 adds additional complexity. For more details, refer to the Working with Quantized Types chapter.

Note that even if the precision flags are enabled, the engine's input/output bindings default to FP32. Refer to the I/O Formats section for information on how to set the data types and formats of the input/output bindings.

This provides a preferred type (here, DataType::kFP16) for the inputs and outputs.

The computation will use the same floating-point type as the inputs. Most TensorRT implementations have the same floating-point types for input and output; however, Convolution, Deconvolution, and FullyConnected can support quantized INT8 input and unquantized FP16 or FP32 output, as sometimes working with higher-precision outputs from quantized inputs is necessary to preserve accuracy.

Setting the precision constraint hints to TensorRT that it should select a layer implementation whose inputs and outputs match the preferred types, inserting reformat operations if the outputs of the previous layer and the inputs to the next layer do not match the requested types. Note that TensorRT will only be able to select an implementation with these types if they are also enabled using the flags in the builder configuration.

If the constraints are preferred, TensorRT obeys them unless there is no implementation with the preferred precision constraints, in which case it issues a warning and uses the fastest available implementation.

sampleINT8API illustrates the use of reduced precision with these APIs.

Precision constraints are optional - you can query whether a constraint has been set using layer->precisionIsSet() in C++ or layer.precision_is_set in Python. If a precision constraint is not set, the result returned from layer->getPrecision() in C++ or reading the precision attribute in Python is not meaningful. Output type constraints are similarly optional.

If no constraints are set using ILayer::setPrecision or ILayer::setOutputType API, then BuilderFlag::kPREFER_PRECISION_CONSTRAINTS or BuilderFlag::kOBEY_PRECISION_CONSTRAINTS are ignored. A layer can choose from precision or output types based on allowed builder precisions.

Note that the ITensor::setType() API does not set the precision constraint of a tensor unless it is one of the input/output tensors of the network. Also, there is a distinction between layer->setOutputType()and layer->getOutput(i)->setType(). The former is an optional type constraining the implementation TensorRT will choose for a layer. The latter specifies the type of a network’s input/output and is ignored if the tensor is not a network input/output. If they are different, TensorRT will insert a cast to ensure that both specifications are respected. Thus, if you are calling setOutputType() for a layer that produces a network output, you should generally configure the corresponding network output to have the same type.

TF32 Tensor Cores can speed up networks using FP32, typically with no loss of accuracy. It is more robust than FP16 for models that require an HDR (high dynamic range) for weights or activations.

Note that not all layers support bfloat16. Refer to the TensorRT Operator documentation for details.

Post-training quantization (PTQ) derives scale factors after training the network. TensorRT provides a workflow for PTQ called calibration. It measures the distribution of activations within each activation tensor as the network executes on representative input data and then uses that distribution to estimate scale values for each tensor.

Quantization-aware training (QAT) computes the scale factors during training using fake-quantization, simulating the quantization and dequantization processes. This allows the training process to compensate for the effects of the quantization and dequantization operations.

TensorRT’s Quantization Toolkit is a PyTorch library that helps produce QAT models that can be optimized by TensorRT. The toolkit’s PTQ recipe can also perform PTQ in PyTorch and export to ONNX.

TensorRT uses explicit quantization mode when a network has QuantizeLayer and DequantizeLayer layers. TensorRT uses implicit quantization mode when there are no QuantizeLayer or DequantizeLayer layers in the network, and INT8 is enabled in the builder configuration. Only INT8 is supported in implicit quantization mode.

In implicitly quantized networks, each activation tensor candidate for quantization has an associated scale deduced by a calibration process or assigned by the API function setDynamicRange. TensorRT will use this scale if it decides to quantify the tensor.

When processing implicitly quantized networks, TensorRT treats the model as a floating-point model when applying the graph optimizations and uses INT8 opportunistically to optimize layer execution time. If a layer runs faster in INT8 and has assigned quantization scales on its data inputs and outputs, then a kernel with INT8 precision is assigned to that layer. Otherwise, a high-precision floating-point (FP32, FP16, or BF16) kernel is assigned. Where a high-precision floating point is required for accuracy at the expense of performance, this can be specified using the APIs Layer::setOutputType and Layer::setPrecision.

ONNX uses an explicitly quantized representation: when a model in PyTorch or TensorFlow is exported to ONNX, each fake-quantization operation in the framework’s graph is exported as Q, followed by DQ. Since TensorRT preserves the semantics of these layers, users can expect accuracy that is very close to that seen in the framework. While optimizations preserve the arithmetic semantics of quantization and dequantization operators, they may change the order of floating-point operations in the model, so results will not be bitwise identical.

TensorRT’s PTQ capability generates a calibration cache with implicit quantization. By contrast, performing either QAT or PTQ in a deep learning framework and then exporting to ONNX will result in an explicitly quantized model.

By contrast, performing either QAT or PTQ in a deep learning framework and then exporting to ONNX will result in an explicitly quantized model.

The quantization scale must contain all positive high-precision float coefficients (FP32, FP16, or BF16). The rounding method is round-to-nearest ties-to-even and clamps to the valid range, which is [-128, 127] for INT8, [-448, 448] for FP8, and [-8, 7] for INT4.

With explicit quantization, activations can only be quantized using per-tensor quantization. Weights can be quantized in any of the quantization modes.

In implicit quantization, weights are quantized by TensorRT during engine optimization, and only per-channel quantization is used. TensorRT quantizes weights for convolution, deconvolution, fully connected layers, and MatMul, where the second input is constant, and both input matrices are 2D.

For each k in K:
    For each c in C:
        For each r in R:
            For each s in S:
                output[k,c,r,s] := clamp(round(input[k,c,r,s] / scale[k]))

The scale is a vector of coefficients and must have the same size as the quantization axis.

output[k,c,r,s] := input[k,c,r,s] * scale[k]

For each r in R:
    For each s in S:
        output[r,s] = clamp(round(input[r,s] / scale[r//B, s]))

output[r,s] = input[r,s] * scale[r//B, s]

The heuristic attempts to ensure that INT8 quantization is smooth by summating multiple quantized values. Layers considered "smoothing layers" are convolution, deconvolution, a fully connected layer, or matrix multiplication before reaching the network output. For example, if a network consists of a series of (convolution + activation + shuffle) subgraphs and the network output has type FP32, the last convolution will output FP32 precision, even if INT8 is allowed and faster.

INT4 quantized weights are stored by packing two elements per byte. The first element is stored in the 4 least significant bits, and the second is stored in the 4 most significant bits.

ONNX introduced support for QuantizeLinear/DequantizeLinear in opset 10, and a quantization-axis attribute was added in opset 13 (required for per-channel quantization). PyTorch 1.8 introduced support for exporting PyTorch models to ONNX using opset 13.

ONNX opset 19 added four FP8 formats, of which TensorRT supports E4M3FN (also referred to as tensor (float8e4m3fn) in the ONNX operator schema). The latest Pytorch version (Pytorch 2.0) does not support FP8 formats, nor does it support export to ONNX using opset 19. To bridge the gap, TransformerEngine exports its FP quantization functions as custom ONNX Q/DQ operators that belong to the “trt” domain (TRT_FP8 QuantizeLinear and TRT_FP8 DequantizeLinear). TensorRT can parse both the custom operators and standard opset 19 Q/DQ operators; however, it is noted that opset 19 is not fully supported by TensorRT. Other tools like ONNX Runtime cannot parse the custom operators. ONNX opset 21 added support for INT4 data type and block quantization.

TensorRT, therefore transposes pyTorch weights. The weights are quantized by TensorRT before they are transposed, so GEMM layers originating from ONNX QAT models that were exported from PyTorch use dimension 0 for per-channel quantization (axis K = 0), while models originating from TensorFlow use dimension 1 (axis K = 1).

Q/DQ layers control the compute and data precision of a network. An IQuantizeLayer instance converts a high-precision floating-point tensor to a quantized tensor by employing quantization, and an IDequantizeLayer instance converts a quantized tensor to a high-precision floating-point tensor using dequantization. TensorRT expects a Q/DQ layer pair on each input of quantizable layers. Quantizable layers are deep-learning layers that can be converted to quantized layers by fusing with IQuantizeLayer and IDequantizeLayer instances. When TensorRT performs these fusions, it replaces the quantizable layers with quantized layers that operate on quantized data using compute operations suitable for quantized types.

For the diagrams used in this chapter, green designates low precision (quantized), and blue designates high precision. Arrows represent network activation tensors, and squares represent network layers.

Figure 3. A quantizable AveragePool layer (in blue) is fused with DQ and Q layers. All three layers are replaced by a quantized AveragePool layer (in green).

During network optimization, TensorRT moves Q/DQ layers in Q/DQ propagation. The goal in propagation is to maximize the proportion of the graph that can be processed at low precision. Thus, TensorRT propagates Q nodes backward (quantization happens as early as possible) and DQ nodes forward (so dequantization happens as late as possible). Q-layers can swap places with layers that commute with Quantization, and DQ-layers can swap places with layers that commute with Dequantization.

A layer $Op$ commutes with quantization if $Q(Op(x\left)\right)==Op(Q(x\left)\right)$

Similarly, a layer $Op$ commutes with dequantization if $Op(DQ(x\left)\right)==DQ(Op(x\left)\right)$

The following diagram illustrates DQ forward propagation and Q backward propagation. These are legal rewrites of the model because Max Pooling has an INT8 implementation and commutes with DQ and Q.

Figure 4. An illustration depicting a DQ forward-propagation and Q backward-propagation.

There is a distinction between how quantizable layers and commuting layers are processed. Both layers can be computed in INT8/FP8, but quantizable layers also fuse with a DQ input and a Q output layer. For example, an AveragePooling layer (quantizable) does not commute with either Q or DQ, so it is quantized using Q/DQ fusion, as illustrated in the first diagram. This is in contrast to how Max Pooling (commuting) is quantized.

Figure 5. Weight-only Quantization (WoQ)

WoQ is available only for INT4 block quantization with GEMM layers. The GEMM data input is specified in high-precision (FP32, FP16, BF16), and the weights are quantized using Q/DQ as usual. TensorRT creates an engine with INT4 weights and a high-precision GEMM operation. The engine reads the low-precision weights and dequantizes them before performing the GEMM operation in high-precision.

Note that older devices may not have low-precision kernel implementations for all layers, and you may encounter a could not find any implementation error while building your engine. To resolve this, remove the Q/DQ nodes, which quantize the failing layers.

Quantize all inputs of weighted operations (Convolution, Transposed Convolution, and GEMM). Quantizing the weights and activations reduces bandwidth requirements and enables INT8 computation to accelerate bandwidth-limited and compute-limited layers.

Figure 6. Two examples of how TensorRT fuses convolutional layers. Only the inputs are quantized on the left and the right; both inputs and output are quantized.

By default, do not quantize the outputs of weighted operations. It is sometimes useful to preserve the higher-precision dequantized output. For example, if the linear operation is followed by an activation function (SiLU, in the following diagram), it requires higher precision input to produce acceptable accuracy.

Figure 7. Example of a linear operation followed by an activation function.

Do not simulate batch normalization and ReLU fusions in the training framework because TensorRT optimizations guarantee the preservation of these operations' arithmetic semantics.

Figure 8. Batch normalization is fused with convolution and ReLU while keeping the same execution order defined in the pre-fusion network. There is no need to simulate BN-folding in the training network.

Quantize the residual input in skip connections. TensorRT can fuse element-wise addition following weighted layers, which is useful for models with skip connections like ResNet and EfficientNet. The precision of the first input to the element-wise addition layer determines the fusion output's precision.

For example, in the following diagram, the precision of xf1 is a floating point, so the output of the fused convolution is limited to the floating point, and the trailing Q-layer cannot be fused with the convolution.

Figure 9. The precision of x_f¹ is a floating point, so the output of the fused convolution is limited to the floating point, and the trailing Q-layer cannot be fused with the convolution.

In contrast, when x_f¹ is quantized to INT8, as depicted in the following diagram, the output of the fused convolution is also INT8, and the trailing Q-layer is fused with the convolution.

Figure 10. When x_f¹ is quantized to INT8, the output of the fused convolution is also INT8, and the trailing Q-layer is fused with the convolution.

For extra performance, try quantizing layers that do not commute with Q/DQ. Currently, non-weighted layers with INT8 inputs also require INT8 outputs, so quantize both inputs and outputs.

Figure 11. An example of quantizing a quantizable operation. An element-wise addition is fused with the input DQs and the output Q.

Performance can decrease if TensorRT cannot fuse the operations with the surrounding Q/DQ layers, so be conservative when adding Q/DQ nodes and experiment with accuracy and TensorRT performance in mind.

The following figure shows suboptimal fusions (the highlighted light green background rectangles) that can result from extra Q/DQ operations. Contrast the following figure with Figure 10, which shows a more performant configuration. The convolution is fused separately from the element-wise addition because each is surrounded by Q/DQ pairs. The fusion of the element-wise addition is shown in Figure 11.

Figure 12. An example of suboptimal quantization fusions: contrast the suboptimal fusion in A and the optimal fusion in B. The extra pair of Q/DQ operations (highlighted with a glowing green border) forces the separation of the convolution from the element-wise addition.

Use per-tensor quantization for activations and per-channel quantization for weights.This configuration has been demonstrated empirically to lead to the best quantization accuracy.

You can further optimize engine latency by enabling FP16. TensorRT attempts to use FP16 instead of FP32 whenever possible (this is not currently supported for all layer types).

The same applies to a TensorRT network with Q/DQ layers. When a plugin consumes quantized inputs (INT8/FP8) and generates quantized outputs, the input DQ and output Q nodes must be included in the plugin and removed from the network.

Input > Q -> DQ > Conv > Q -> DQ_i > MyInt8Plugin > Q_o -> DQ > Conv > Output

The > arrows indicate activation tensors with FP32 precision, and the -> arrows indicate INT8 precision.

Input > Q -> [DQ → Conv → Q] -> DQ_i > MyInt8Plugin > Q_o -> [DQ → Conv] > Output

Input > Q -> DQ > Conv > Q -> MyInt8Plugin -> DQ > Conv > Output

Input > Q -> [DQ → Conv → Q] > MyInt8Plugin -> [DQ → Conv] > Output

When "manually fusing" DQ_i, you take the input quantization scale and give it to your plugin so it will know how to dequantize (if needed) the input. The same applies to using the scale from Q_o to quantize your plugin’s output.

TensorFlow 1 does not support per-channel quantization (PCQ), which is recommended for weights to preserve the model's accuracy.

You can use the TensorRT Model Optimizer to do INT8 calibration, perform QAT and PTQ for the various precisions that TensorRT supports, and export to ONNX.

For large-magnitude values, the ULP can become quite large. This means that the difference between two consecutive floating-point numbers becomes significant. When numerical computations involve large-magnitude values, high ULP can lead to substantial rounding errors. These errors accumulate and can cause numerical instability, ultimately degrading the accuracy of the computations.

In some models, the magnitude of the data increases as it passes through the network layers, especially in the absence of normalization layers. For instance, cascaded convolutional layers without normalization can amplify magnitudes, challenging reduced precision formats to maintain accuracy.

For example, the IReduceLayer is prone to overflows due to the accumulation of all values along a certain axis (except for min-reduce and max-reduce).

For example, Sigmoid or Softmax amplify small numerical differences due to their exponential component.

For additional information, refer to Types and Precision.

Floating point formats such as FP8E4M3, have non-uniform distributions with more values concentrated near 0, which better aligns with the typical distribution of neural network weights and activations.

Each profile has separate binding indices in an engine built from multiple profiles. The names of I/O tensors for the Kth profile have [profile K] appended to them, with K written in decimal. For example, if the INetworkDefinition had the name "foo", and bindingIndex refers to that tensor in the optimization profile with index 3, engine.getBindingName(bindingIndex) returns "foo [profile 3]".

Likewise, if using ICudaEngine::getBindingIndex(name) to get the index for a profile K beyond the first profile (K=0), append "[profile K]" to the name used in the INetworkDefinition. For example, if the tensor was called "foo" in the INetworkDefinition, then engine.getBindingIndex("foo [profile 3]") returns the binding index of Tensor "foo" in optimization profile 3.

Always omit the suffix for K=0.

Consider a network with four inputs, one output, and three optimization profiles in the IBuilderConfig. The engine has 15 bindings, five for each optimization profile, conceptually organized as a table:

Figure 15. Optimization Profile

Each row is a profile. Numbers in the table denote binding indices. The first profile has binding indices 0..4, the second has 5..9, and the third has 10..14.

The interfaces have an "auto-correct" for the case that the binding belongs to the first profile, but another profile was specified. In that case, TensorRT warns about the mistake and then chooses the correct binding index from the same column.

For the sake of backward semi-compatibility, the interfaces have an "auto-correct" in the scenario where the binding belongs to the first profile, but another profile was specified. TensorRT warns about the mistake in this case and then chooses the correct binding index from the same column.

IActivationLayer: E → E

IElementWiseLayer: S × S → S, E × E → E

IElementWiseLayer: t × t → t

IShuffleLayer (two inputs): t × S → t

IConstantLayer: → t

IShapeLayer: t1 → t2

IAssertionLayer: S → 
IConcatenationLayer: t × t × ...→ t
IIfConditionalInputLayer: t → t
IIfConditionalOutputLayer: t → t
IConstantLayer: → t
IActivationLayer: t → t
IElementWiseLayer: t × t → t
IFillLayer: S → t
IFillLayer: S × E × E → E 
IGatherLayer: t × t → t
IIdentityLayer: t → t
IReduceLayer: t → t
IResizeLayer (one input): E → E
IResizeLayer (two inputs): E × S → E
ISelectLayer: t × t × t → t
IShapeLayer: t1 → t2
IShuffleLayer (one input): t → t
IShuffleLayer (two inputs): t × S → t
ISliceLayer (one input): t → t
ISliceLayer (two inputs): t × S → t
ISliceLayer (three inputs): t × S × S → t
ISliceLayer (four inputs): t × S × S × S → t
IUnaryLayer: t → t
all other layers: E × ... → E × ...

Because an output can be the input of more than one subsequent layer, the inferred "types" are not exclusive. For example, an IConstantLayer might feed into one use that requires an execution tensor and another use that requires a shape tensor. The output of IConstantLayer is classified as both and can be used in both phase 1 and phase 2 of the two-phase execution.

The requirement that the size of a shape tensor be known at build time limits how ISliceLayer can be used to manipulate a shape tensor. Specifically, if the third parameter specifies the result's size and is not a build-time constant, the length of the resulting tensor is unknown at build time, breaking the restriction that shape tensors have constant shapes. The slice will still work but will incur synchronization overhead at runtime because the tensor is considered an execution tensor that has to be copied back to the CPU to do further shape calculations.

The rank of any tensor has to be known at build time. For example, if the output of ISliceLayer is a 1D tensor of unknown length that is used as the reshape dimensions for IShuffleLayer, the output of the shuffle would have an unknown rank at build time, and hence such a composition is prohibited.

TensorRT’s inferences can be inspected using methods ITensor::isShapeTensor(), which returns true for a shape tensor, and ITensor::isExecutionTensor(), which returns true for an execution tensor. Build the entire network first before calling these methods because their answer can change depending on what uses of the tensor have been added.

For example, if a partially built network sums two tensors, T1 and T2, to create tensor T3, and none are yet needed as shape tensors, isShapeTensor() returns false for all three tensors. Setting the second input of IShuffleLayer to T3 would cause all three tensors to become shape tensors because IShuffleLayer requires that its second optional input be a shape tensor, and if the output of IElementWiseLayer is a shape tensor, its inputs are too.

IPluginV3OneCore (C++, Python), IPluginV3OneBuild (C++, Python), and IPluginV3OneRuntime (C++, Python) are the base classes that an IPluginV3 plugin must implement to display the core, build, and runtime capabilities, respectively. If I/O aliasing is required, IPluginV3OneBuildV2 (C++, Python) can be used as the build capability, which contains a superset of the functionalities in IPluginV3OneBuild.

During serialization, the TensorRT engine internally stores the plugin name, plugin version, and namespace (if it exists) for all plugins, along with any plugin fields in the PluginFieldCollection returned by IPluginV3OneRuntime::getFieldsToSerialize(). During deserialization, TensorRT looks up a plugin creator with the same plugin name, version, and namespace from the plugin registry and invokes IPluginCreatorV3One:::createPlugin () on it—the PluginFieldCollection that was serialized is passed back as the fc argument.

bool PoolPlugin::supportsFormatCombination(
        int32_t pos, DynamicPluginTensorDesc const* inOut, int32_t nbInputs, int32_t nbOutputs)  noexcept override
{
    assert(nbInputs == 1 && nbOutputs == 1 && pos < nbInputs + nbOutputs);
    bool condition = inOut[pos].desc.format == PluginFormat::kLINEAR;
    condition &= (inOut[pos].desc.type == DataType::kFLOAT ||
                  inOut[pos].desc.type == DataType::kHALF ||
             inOut[pos].desc.type == DataType::kBF16 ||
                   inOut[pos].desc.type == DataType::kFP8 ||
                  inOut[pos].desc.type == DataType::kINT8);
    condition &= inOut[pos].desc.type == inOut[0].desc.type;
    return condition;
}

int32_t PoolPlugin::configurePlugin(DynamicPluginTensorDesc const* in, int32_t nbInputs, DynamicPluginTensorDesc const* out, int32_t nbOutputs) noexcept override
{
    ...
    mPoolingParams.mC = in.desc.d[1];
    mPoolingParams.mH = in.desc.d[2];
    mPoolingParams.mW = in.desc.d[3];
    mPoolingParams.mP = out.desc.d[2];
    mPoolingParams.mQ = ou.desc.d[3];
    mInHostScale = in[0].desc.scale >= 0.0F ? in[0].desc.scale : -1.0F;
    mOutHostScale = out[0].desc.scale >= 0.0F ? out[0].desc.scale : -1.0F;
}

INT8 I/O scales per tensor have been obtained from PluginTensorDesc::scale.

get_creator(self: trt.IPluginRegistry, name: string, version: string, 
namespace: string = “”) -> trt.IPluginCreatorInterface

The return type is indicated as IPluginCreatorInterface. However, in practice, if you were to write a class MyPluginCreator implementing IPluginCreatorV3One (which in turn implements IPluginCreatorInterface), the get_creator method will return an automatically downcasted type of MyPluginCreator.

This extends to trt.IPluginRegistry.all_creators, which is a List[trt.IPluginCreatorInterface]. If you had registered a plugin creator of type MyPluginCreator and another type MyOtherPluginCreator, both plugin creators will be present as those respective types in the list.

Since an IPluginV3 object consists of different capabilities, IPluginV3::getCapabilityInterface may be called anytime during its lifetime. An IPluginV3 object added for the build phase must return a valid capability interface for all capability types: core, build, and runtime. The build capability may be omitted for objects added for the runtime phase.

If the IPluginV3OneBuildV2 build capability is used, the plugin can also communicate to TensorRT that certain input-output pairs are aliased (share the same data buffer). IPluginV3OneBuildV2::getAliasedInput will be queried by TensorRT to determine any such aliasing behavior. To use this feature, PreviewFeature::kALIASED_PLUGIN_IO_10_03 must be enabled.

PluginFormat counts the formats.

Plugins that do not compute all data in place and need memory space in addition to input and output tensors can specify the additional memory requirements with the IPluginV3OneBuild::getWorkspaceSize method, which the builder calls to determine and preallocate scratch space.

The layer is configured, executed, and destroyed at build time to discover optimal configurations. After the optimal configuration is selected for a plugin, the chosen tactic and concrete shape/format information (except for data-dependent dimensions) are communicated to the plugin during inference. It is executed as many times as needed for the lifetime of the inference application and finally destroyed when the engine is destroyed.

After the builder completes profiling, before the engine is serialized, IPluginV3OneRuntime::getFieldsToSerialize is called to query for any plugin fields that must be serialized into the engine. These are expected to be data that the plugin needs to function properly during the inference stage once the engine has been deserialized.

During engine deserialization, TensorRT calls this method with the TensorRTPhase argument set to TensorRTPhase::kRUNTIME and the PluginFieldCollection populated with the same PluginFields as in the one returned by IPluginV3OneRuntime::getFieldsToSerialize(). In this case, TensorRT takes ownership of plugin objects returned by createPlugin.

You may also invoke createPlugin to produce plugin objects to add to a TensorRT network. In this case, setting the phase argument to TensorRTPhase::kBUILD is recommended. The data passed with the PluginFieldCollection should be allocated and freed by the caller before destroying the program. The ownership of the plugin object returned by the createPlugin function is passed to the caller and must be destroyed.

In a departure from IPluginV2Ext::attachToContext(), cuDNN and cuBLAS handles are no longer provided by IPluginResourceContext; any plugins that depended on those should migrate to initialize their own cuDNN and cuBLAS resources. If sharing cuDNN/cuBLAS resources among plugins is preferred, you can utilize the functionality provided by IPluginResource and the plugin registry’s key-value store to accomplish this. For more information, refer to the Sharing Custom Resources Among Plugins.

IPluginV3OneRuntime::attachToContext(...) is a clone-and-attach operation. It is asked to clone the entire IPluginV3 object—not just the runtime capability. Therefore, if implemented as a separate class, the runtime capability object may need to hold a reference to the IPluginV3 object of which it is a part.

Any context-specific resource obtained through IPluginResourceContext may be used until the plugin is destroyed. Therefore, any termination logic implemented in IPluginV2Ext::detachFromContext() may be moved to the plugin destructor.

extern "C" void setLoggerFinder(ILoggerFinder* finder);
extern "C" IPluginCreator* const* getCreators(int32_t& nbCreators) const;

extern "C" above is only used to prevent name mangling, and the methods should be implemented in C++. Consult your compiler's ABI documentation for more details.

setLoggerFinder() should set a global pointer of ILoggerFinder in the library for logging in the plugin code. getPluginCreators() returns a list of plugin creators your library contains. An example of implementation of these entry points can be found in plugin/common/vfcCommon.h/cpp.

To serialize your plugin libraries with your engine plan, provide the plugin libraries paths to TensorRT using setPluginsToSerialize() in BuilderConfig.

When building version compatible engines, you may also want to package plugins in the plan. The packaged plugins will have the same lifetime as the engine and will be automatically registered/deregistered when running the engine.

import torch.onnx
import torch
import tensorrt as trt
import numpy as np

TRT_LOGGER = trt.Logger(trt.Logger.WARNING)

@torch.jit.script
def sum_even(items):
    s = torch.zeros(1, dtype=torch.float)
    for c in items:
        if c % 2 == 0:
            s += c
    return s

class ExampleModel(torch.nn.Module):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__()

    def forward(self, items):
        return sum_even(items)

def build_engine(model_file):
    builder = trt.Builder(TRT_LOGGER)
    network = builder.create_network
    config = builder.create_builder_config()
    parser = trt.OnnxParser(network, TRT_LOGGER)

    with open(model_file, 'rb') as model:
        assert parser.parse(model.read())
        return builder.build_engine(network, config)

def export_to_onnx():
    items = torch.zeros(4, dtype=torch.float)
    example = ExampleModel()
    torch.onnx.export(example, (items), "example.onnx", verbose=False, opset_version=13, enable_onnx_checker=False, do_constant_folding=True)

export_to_onnx()
build_engine("example.onnx")

 ./trtexec --onnx=data/resnet50/ResNet50.onnx --useDLACore=0 --fp16 --allowGPUFallback

The trtexec tool has additional arguments to run networks on DLA. For more information, refer to Command-Line Programs.

Managing shared buffers as well as synchronizing the tasks between GPU and DLA is transparently handled by cuDLA. Refer to the NVIDIA cuDLA documentation on how the cuDLA APIs can be used for these use cases while writing a cuDLA application.

Refer to the DLA Standalone Mode section for more information on using TensorRT to build a standalone DLA loadable usable with cuDLA.

On NVIDIA Orin, DLA stores weights for non-convolution operations (FP16 and INT8) inside loadable as FP19 values (which use 4-byte containers). The channel dimensions are padded to multiples of either 16 (FP16) or 32 (INT8) for those FP19 values. Especially in the case of large per-element Scale, Add, or Sub operations, this can inflate the size of the DLA loadable, inflating the engine containing such a loadable. Graph optimization may unintentionally trigger this behavior by changing the type of a layer, for example, when an ElementWise multiplication layer with a constant layer as weights is fused into a scale layer.

SS has several requirements and limitations.

trtexec --onnx=resnet50-v1-12.onnx --shapes=data:4x3x224x224 --fp16 --noDataTransfers --useCudaGraph --useSpinWait

The value for the --shapes flag is in the format of name1:shape1,name2:shape2,.... If you do not know the input tensor names and shapes, you can get the information by visualizing the ONNX model using tools like Netron or by running a Polygraphy model inspection.

[I] Loading model: /home/pohanh/trt/resnet50-v1-12.onnx
[I] ==== ONNX Model ====
    Name: mxnet_converted_model | ONNX Opset: 12
    ---- 1 Graph Input(s) ----
    {data [dtype=float32, shape=('N', 3, 224, 224)]}
    ---- 1 Graph Output(s) ----
    {resnetv17_dense0_fwd [dtype=float32, shape=('N', 1000)]}
    ---- 299 Initializer(s) ----
    ---- 175 Node(s) ----

It shows that the ONNX model has a graph input tensor named data whose shape is (‘N’, 3, 224, 224), where ‘N’ represents that the dimension can be dynamic. Therefore, the trtexec flag to specify the input shapes with batch size 4 would be --shapes=data:4x3x224x224.

[04/25/2024-23:57:45] [I] === Performance summary ===
[04/25/2024-23:57:45] [I] Throughput: 507.399 qps
[04/25/2024-23:57:45] [I] Latency: min = 1.96301 ms, max = 1.97534 ms, mean = 1.96921 ms, median = 1.96917 ms, percentile(90%) = 1.97122 ms, percentile(95%) = 1.97229 ms, percentile(99%) = 1.97424 ms
[04/25/2024-23:57:45] [I] Enqueue Time: min = 0.0032959 ms, max = 0.0340576 ms, mean = 0.00421173 ms, median = 0.00415039 ms, percentile(90%) = 0.00463867 ms, percentile(95%) = 0.00476074 ms, percentile(99%) = 0.0057373 ms
[04/25/2024-23:57:45] [I] H2D Latency: min = 0 ms, max = 0 ms, mean = 0 ms, median = 0 ms, percentile(90%) = 0 ms, percentile(95%) = 0 ms, percentile(99%) = 0 ms
[04/25/2024-23:57:45] [I] GPU Compute Time: min = 1.96301 ms, max = 1.97534 ms, mean = 1.96921 ms, median = 1.96917 ms, percentile(90%) = 1.97122 ms, percentile(95%) = 1.97229 ms, percentile(99%) = 1.97424 ms
[04/25/2024-23:57:45] [I] D2H Latency: min = 0 ms, max = 0 ms, mean = 0 ms, median = 0 ms, percentile(90%) = 0 ms, percentile(95%) = 0 ms, percentile(99%) = 0 ms
[04/25/2024-23:57:45] [I] Total Host Walltime: 3.00355 s
[04/25/2024-23:57:45] [I] Total GPU Compute Time: 3.00108 s
[04/25/2024-23:57:45] [I] Explanations of the performance metrics are printed in the verbose logs.

It prints many performance metrics, but the most important are Throughput and median Latency. In this case, the ResNet-50 model with batch size 4 can run with a throughput of 507 inferences per second (2028 images per second since the batch size is 4) and a median latency of 1.969 ms.

Refer to Advanced Performance Measurement Techniques for explanations about what Throughput and Latency mean to your deep learning inference applications. Refer to trtexec for detailed explanations about other trtexec flags and other performance metrics that trtexec reports.

pip3 install --no-cache-dir --extra-index-url https://pypi.nvidia.com
        nvidia-modelopt

python3 -m modelopt.onnx.quantization --onnx_path resnet50-v1-12.onnx --quantize_mode int8
        --output_path resnet50-v1-12-quantized.onnx

It loads the original ONNX model from resnet50-v1-12.onnx, runs calibration using random data, inserts Quantize/Dequantize ops into the graph, and then saves the ONNX model with Quantize/Dequantize ops to resnet50-v1-12-quantized.onnx.

trtexec --onnx=resnet50-v1-12-quantized.onnx --shapes=data:4x3x224x224 --stronglyTyped --noDataTransfers --useCudaGraph --useSpinWait

We use the --stronglyTyped flag instead of the --fp16 flag to require TensorRT to strictly follow the data types in the quantized ONNX model, including all the INT8 Quantize/Dequantize ops.

[04/26/2024-00:31:43] [I] === Performance summary ===
[04/26/2024-00:31:43] [I] Throughput: 811.74 qps
[04/26/2024-00:31:43] [I] Latency: min = 1.22559 ms, max = 1.23608 ms, mean = 1.2303 ms, median = 1.22998 ms, percentile(90%) = 1.23193 ms, percentile(95%) = 1.23291 ms, percentile(99%) = 1.23395 ms
[04/26/2024-00:31:43] [I] Enqueue Time: min = 0.00354004 ms, max = 0.00997925 ms, mean = 0.00431524 ms, median = 0.00439453 ms, percentile(90%) = 0.00463867 ms, percentile(95%) = 0.00476074 ms, percentile(99%) = 0.00512695 ms
[04/26/2024-00:31:43] [I] H2D Latency: min = 0 ms, max = 0 ms, mean = 0 ms, median = 0 ms, percentile(90%) = 0 ms, percentile(95%) = 0 ms, percentile(99%) = 0 ms
[04/26/2024-00:31:43] [I] GPU Compute Time: min = 1.22559 ms, max = 1.23608 ms, mean = 1.2303 ms, median = 1.22998 ms, percentile(90%) = 1.23193 ms, percentile(95%) = 1.23291 ms, percentile(99%) = 1.23395 ms
[04/26/2024-00:31:43] [I] D2H Latency: min = 0 ms, max = 0 ms, mean = 0 ms, median = 0 ms, percentile(90%) = 0 ms, percentile(95%) = 0 ms, percentile(99%) = 0 ms
[04/26/2024-00:31:43] [I] Total Host Walltime: 3.00219 s
[04/26/2024-00:31:43] [I] Total GPU Compute Time: 2.99824 s
[04/26/2024-00:31:43] [I] Explanations of the performance metrics are printed in the verbose logs.

The Throughput is 811 inferences per second, and the median Latency is 1.23 ms. The Throughput has improved by 60% compared to the FP16 performance results in the previous section.

trtexec --onnx=resnet50-v1-12-quantized.onnx --shapes=data:4x3x224x224 --stronglyTyped --noDataTransfers --useCudaGraph --useSpinWait --profilingVerbosity=detailed --dumpLayerInfo --dumpProfile --separateProfileRun

The --profilingVerbosity=detailed flag enables detailed layer information capturing, --dumpLayerInfo flag shows the per-layer information in the log, and --dumpProfile --separateProfileRun flags show the per-layer runtime latencies in the log.

Name: resnetv17_stage1_conv0_weight + resnetv17_stage1_conv0_weight_QuantizeLinear + resnetv17_stage1_conv0_fwd, LayerType: CaskConvolution, Inputs: [ { Name: resnetv17_pool0_fwd_QuantizeLinear_Output_1, Location: Device, Dimensions: [4,64,56,56], Format/Datatype: Thirty-two wide channel vectorized row major Int8 format }], Outputs: [ { Name: resnetv17_stage1_relu0_fwd_QuantizeLinear_Output, Location: Device, Dimensions: [4,64,56,56], Format/Datatype: Thirty-two wide channel vectorized row major Int8 format }], ParameterType: Convolution, Kernel: [1,1], PaddingMode: kEXPLICIT_ROUND_DOWN, PrePadding: [0,0], PostPadding: [0,0], Stride: [1,1], Dilation: [1,1], OutMaps: 64, Groups: 1, Weights: {"Type": "Int8", "Count": 4096}, Bias: {"Type": "Float", "Count": 64}, HasBias: 1, HasReLU: 1, HasSparseWeights: 0, HasDynamicFilter: 0, HasDynamicBias: 0, HasResidual: 0, ConvXAsActInputIdx: -1, BiasAsActInputIdx: -1, ResAsActInputIdx: -1, Activation: RELU, TacticName: sm80_xmma_fprop_implicit_gemm_interleaved_i8i8_i8i32_f32_nchw_vect_c_32kcrs_vect_c_32_nchw_vect_c_32_tilesize96x64x64_stage3_warpsize2x2x1_g1_tensor16x8x32_simple_t1r1s1, TacticValue: 0x483ad1560c6e5e27, StreamId: 0, Metadata: [ONNX Layer: resnetv17_stage1_conv0_fwd]

The log shows the layer name, the input and output tensor names, tensor shapes, tensor data types, convolution parameters, tactic names, and metadata. The Metadata field shows which ONNX ops this layer corresponds to. Since TensorRT has graph fusion optimizations, one engine layer may correspond to multiple ONNX ops in the original model.

[04/26/2024-00:42:55] [I]    Time(ms)     Avg.(ms)   Median(ms)   Time(%)   Layer
[04/26/2024-00:42:55] [I]       56.57       0.0255       0.0256       1.8   resnetv17_stage4_conv7_weight + resnetv17_stage4_conv7_weight_QuantizeLinear + resnetv17_stage4_conv7_fwd
[04/26/2024-00:42:55] [I]      103.86       0.0468       0.0471       3.3   resnetv17_stage4_conv8_weight + resnetv17_stage4_conv8_weight_QuantizeLinear + resnetv17_stage4_conv8_fwd
[04/26/2024-00:42:55] [I]       46.93       0.0211       0.0215       1.5   resnetv17_stage4_conv9_weight + resnetv17_stage4_conv9_weight_QuantizeLinear + resnetv17_stage4_conv9_fwd + resnetv17_stage4__plus2 + resnetv17_stage4_activation2
[04/26/2024-00:42:55] [I]       34.64       0.0156       0.0154       1.1   resnetv17_pool1_fwd
[04/26/2024-00:42:55] [I]       63.21       0.0285       0.0287       2.0   resnetv17_dense0_weight + resnetv17_dense0_weight_QuantizeLinear + transpose_before_resnetv17_dense0_fwd + resnetv17_dense0_fwd + resnetv17_dense0_bias + ONNXTRT_Broadcast + unsqueeze_node_after_resnetv17_dense0_bias + ONNXTRT_Broadcast_ONNXTRT_Broadcast_output + (Unnamed Layer* 851) [ElementWise]
[04/26/2024-00:42:55] [I]     3142.40       1.4149       1.4162     100.0   Total

It shows that the median latency of the resnetv17_pool1_fwd layer is 0.0154 ms and contributes to 1.1% of the end-to-end latency. With this log, you can identify which layers take the largest portion of the end-to-end latency and is the performance bottleneck.

The Total latency reported in the per-layer runtime log is the summation of the per-layer latencies. It is typically slightly longer than the reported end-to-end latency due to the overheads caused by measuring per-layer latencies. For example, the Total median latency is 1.4162 ms, but the end-to-end latency shown in the previous section is 1.23 ms.

trtexec --loadEngine=resnet50-v1-12-quantized.plan --shapes=data:4x3x224x224 --noDataTransfers --useCudaGraph --useSpinWait

The performance summary output is similar to those in the previous sections.

Refer to trtexec or run trtexec --help for a detailed explanation about other trtexec flags.

If there is only one inference happening on the device at one time, then this can be a simple way of profiling the time-various operations take. Inference is typically asynchronous, so ensure you add an explicit CUDA stream or device synchronization to wait for results to become available.

To help with these issues, CUDA provides an Event API. This API allows you to place events into CUDA streams that the GPU will time-stamp as they are encountered. Differences in timestamps can then tell you how long different operations took.

TensorRT has a Profiler (C++, Python) interface, which you can implement to have TensorRT pass profiling information to your application. When called, the network will run in a profiling mode. After finishing the inference, the profiler object of your class is called to report the timing for each layer in the network. These timings can be used to locate bottlenecks, compare different versions of a serialized engine, and debug performance issues.

The profiling information can be collected from a regular inference enqueueV3() launch or a CUDA graph launch. Refer to IExecutionContext::setProfiler() and IExecutionContext::reportToProfiler() (C++, Python) for more information.

Layers inside a loop are compiled into a single monolithic layer; therefore, separate timings for those layers are unavailable. Also, some subgraphs (especially with Transformer-like networks) are handled by a next-generation graph optimizer that has not yet been integrated with the Profiler APIs. For those networks, use CUDA Profiling Tools to profile per-layer performance.

An example showing how to use the IProfiler interface is provided in the common sample code (common.h).

Given an input network or plan file, you can use trtexec to profile a network with TensorRT. For more information, refer to the trtexec section.

The usage of Nsight Deep Learning Designer profiling typically begins with the GUI. Open the Nsight Deep Learning Designer application and click Start Activity from the Welcome screen. Select the target platform type from the list, and you may additionally define a remote connection if you wish to profile on a Linux or L4T target from a remote machine. Select Profile TensorRT Model as the activity type.

Figure 20. Start Activity Dialog

Networks using dynamic shapes (Working with Dynamic Shapes) should specify an optimization profile before profiling. This can be done by editing the ONNX network within Nsight Deep Learning Designer, profiling from the command line, or (for compatible networks) setting the Inferred Batch option in the Optimizer tab. When a batch size is provided, input shapes with a single leading wildcard will be automatically populated with the batch size. This feature works with input shapes of arbitrary rank.

To start the Nsight Deep Learning Designer profiler, click the Launch button. The tool will automatically deploy TensorRT and CUDA runtime libraries to the target as needed, then generate a profiling report:

Figure 21. Profiling Report Overview

Nsight Deep Learning Designer additionally includes a command-line profiler; refer to the tool documentation for usage instructions.

Understanding Nsight Deep Learning Designer Timeline View

Figure 22. Sample Timeline View Showing Layer Execution and GPU Activity

In the Nsight Deep Learning Designer Timeline View, each inference stream of the network is shown as a row of the timeline, alongside collected GPU metrics such as SM activity and PCIe throughput. Each layer executed on an inference stream is depicted as a range on the corresponding timeline view. Overhead sources such as tensor memory copies or reformats are highlighted in blue.

Understanding Nsight Deep Learning Designer Layer Table

Figure 23. Sample Profiling Report Layer Table

The Network Metrics table view shows all TensorRT layers executed by the network, their type, dimensions, precision, and inference time. Layer inference times are provided in the table as both raw time measurements and as percentages of the inference pass. You can filter the table by name. Hyperlinks in the table indicate where a layer name references nodes in the original ONNX source model. Click the hyperlink or use the drop-down menu in a selected layer’s Name column, to open the original ONNX model and highlight the layer in its context.

Figure 24. Pop-up Showing Originating and Related ONNX Nodes for a TensorRT Layer

Selecting a range of layers in the table aggregates their statistics into a higher-level summary. Each column of the table is represented in the summary area with the most common values observed within the selection, sorted by frequency. Hover the mouse cursor over an information icon to see the full list of values and associated frequencies. Inference time columns are shown as minimum, maximum, mean, and total, using both absolute times and inference pass percentages as units. Total times in this context can be used to quickly sum the inference time for layers within a single stream of execution. Layers in the selection do not need to be contiguous.

Figure 25. Sample Aggregated Statistics for a Selection Range

Understanding Nsight Deep Learning Designer Network Graphs

Figure 26. Sample Average Inference Latency Graph for a Simple Network

Nsight Deep Learning Designer shows the average inference latency for each type of layer in the TensorRT engine. This can highlight areas where the network is spending significant time on non-critical computations.

Figure 27. Example Graph Showing Tensor Precisions for Layers in a Network

Nsight Deep Learning Designer also shows the precisions used for each type of layer in the TensorRT engine. This can highlight potential opportunities for network quantization and visualize the effect of setting TensorRT’s tactic precision flags.

Nsight Systems can be configured to report timing information for only a portion of the program's execution or to report traditional CPU sampling profile information and GPU information.

The basic usage of Nsight Systems is to first run the command nsys profile -o <OUTPUT> <INFERENCE_COMMAND>, then open the generated <OUTPUT>.nsys-rep file in the Nsight Systems GUI to visualize the captured profiling results.

Understand Nsight Systems Timeline View

In the Nsight Systems Timeline View, the GPU activities are shown in the rows under CUDA HW, and the CPU activities are shown in the rows under Threads. By default, the rows under CUDA HW are collapsed. Therefore, you must click on it to expand the rows

In a typical inference workflow, the application calls the context->enqueueV3() or context->executeV3() APIs to enqueue the jobs and then synchronize on the stream to wait until the GPU completes the jobs. If you only look at the CPU activities, it may appear that the system is doing nothing for a while in the cudaStreamSychronize() call. The GPU may be busy executing the enqueued jobs while the CPU waits. The following figure shows an example timeline of the inference of a query.

The trtexec tool uses a slightly more complicated approach to enqueue the jobs. It enqueues the next query while the GPU still executes the jobs from the previous query. For more information, refer to the trtexec section.

The following image shows a typical view of the normal inference workloads in the Nsight Systems timeline view, showing CPU and GPU activities on different rows.

Figure 28. Normal Inference Workloads in Nsight Systems Timeline View

Use the NVTX Tracing in Nsight Systems

Tracing enables the NVIDIA Tools Extension SDK (NVTX), a C-based API for marking events and ranges in your applications. It allows Nsight Compute and Nsight Systems to collect data generated by TensorRT applications.

Decoding the kernel names back to layers in the original network can be complicated. Because of this, TensorRT uses NVTX to mark a range for each layer, allowing the CUDA profilers to correlate each layer with the kernels called to implement it. In TensorRT, NVTX helps to correlate the runtime engine layer execution with CUDA kernel calls. Nsight Systems supports collecting and visualizing these events and ranges on the timeline. Nsight Compute also supports collecting and displaying the state of all active NVTX domains and ranges in a given thread when the application is suspended.

In TensorRT, each layer may launch one or more kernels to perform its operations. The exact kernels launched depend on the optimized network and the hardware present. Depending on the builder's choices, multiple additional operations that reorder data may be interspersed with layer computations; these reformat operations may be implemented as device-to-device memory copies or custom kernels.

For example, the following screenshots are from Nsight Systems.

Figure 29. The Layer Execution and the Kernel Being Launched on the CPU Side

The kernels run on the GPU; in other words, the following image shows the correlation between the layer execution and kernel launch on the CPU side and their execution on the GPU side.

Figure 30. The Kernels Run on the GPU

trtexec --onnx=foo.onnx --profilingVerbosity=detailed --saveEngine=foo.plan
nsys profile -o foo_profile --capture-range cudaProfilerApi trtexec --profilingVerbosity=detailed --loadEngine=foo.plan --warmUp=0 --duration=0 --iterations=50

nsys profile -o foo_profile --capture-range cudaProfilerApi --cuda-graph-trace=node trtexec --profilingVerbosity=detailed --loadEngine=foo.plan --warmUp=0 --duration=0 --iterations=50 --useCudaGraph

A custom GPU allocator can be set for the builder IBuilder for network optimizations and IRuntime when deserializing engines using the IGpuAllocator APIs. One idea for the custom allocator is to keep track of the current amount of memory allocated and push an allocation event with a timestamp and other information onto a global list of allocation events. Looking through the list of allocation events allows profiling memory usage over time.

echo "######alloc swap######"
if [ ! -e /swapfile ];then
    sudo fallocate -l 4G /swapfile
    sudo chmod 600 /swapfile
    sudo mkswap /swapfile
    sudo /bin/sh -c 'echo  "/swapfile \t none \t swap \t defaults \t 0 \t 0" >> /etc/fstab'
    sudo swapon -a
fi

Before the inference starts, call the nvidia-smi -q command to get detailed information on the GPU, including the product name, power cap, clock settings, etc. Then, while the inference workload is running, run the nvidia-smi dmon -s pcu -f <FILE> -c <COUNT> command in parallel to print out GPU clock frequencies, power consumption, temperature, and utilization to a file. Call nvidia-smi dmon --help for more options about the nvidia-smi device monitoring tool.

Alternatively, you can lock the clock at a specific frequency by calling the sudo nvidia-smi -lgc <freq> command (and conversely, you can let the clock float again with the sudo nvidia-smi -rgc command). The sudo nvidia-smi -q -d SUPPORTED_CLOCKS command can find the supported clock frequencies. After the clock frequency is locked, it should stay at that frequency unless power or thermal throttling occurs, which will be explained in the next sections. When the throttling kicks in, the device behaves like the clock floats.

Running TensorRT workloads with floating clocks or with throttling taking place can lead to more non-determinism in tactic selections and unstable performance measurements across inferences because every CUDA kernel may run at slightly different clock frequencies, depending on which frequency the driver boosts or throttles the clock to at that moment. On the other hand, running TensorRT workloads with locked clocks allows more deterministic tactic selections and consistent performance measurements, but the average performance will not be as good as when the clock is floating or is locked at maximum frequency with throttling taking place.

There is no definite recommendation on whether the clock should be locked or which clock frequency to lock the GPU while running TensorRT workloads. It depends on whether the deterministic and stable performance or the best average performance is desired.

Power throttling happens by design and is a natural phenomenon when the GPU clock is not locked or is locked at a higher frequency, especially for GPUs with lower power limits, such as NVIDIA T4 and NVIDIA A2 GPUs. To avoid performance variations caused by power throttling, you can lock the GPU clock at a lower frequency to stabilize the performance numbers. However, the average performance numbers will be lower than those with floating clocks or the clock locked at a higher frequency, even though power throttling would happen in this case.

Another issue with power throttling is that it may skew the performance numbers if there are gaps between inferences in your performance benchmarking applications. For example, if the application synchronizes at each inference, there will be periods when the GPU is idle between the inferences. The gaps cause the GPU to consume less power on average, so the clock is throttled less, and the GPU can run at higher clock frequencies on average. However, the throughput numbers measured this way are inaccurate because when the GPU is fully loaded with no gaps between inferences, the actual clock frequency will be lower, and the actual throughput will not reach the throughput numbers measured using the benchmarking application.

To avoid this, the trtexec tool is designed to maximize GPU execution by leaving nearly no gaps between GPU kernel executions so that it can measure the true throughput of a TensorRT workload. Therefore, if you see performance gaps between your benchmarking application and what trtexec reports, check if the power throttling and the gaps between inferences are the cause.

Lastly, power consumption can depend on the activation values, causing different input performance measurements. For example, if all the network input values are set to zeros or NaNs, the GPU consumes less power than the inputs are normal values because of fewer bit-flips in DRAM and the L2 cache. To avoid this discrepancy, always use the input values that best represent the actual value distribution when measuring the performance. The trtexec tool uses random input values by default, but you can specify the input using the --loadInputs flag. For more information, refer to the trtexec section.

If thermal throttling happens on actively cooled GPUs like Quadro A8000, then it is possible that the fans on the GPU are broken or obstacles are blocking the airflow.

If thermal throttling happens on passively cooled GPUs like NVIDIA A10, then it is likely that the GPUs are not properly cooled. Passively cooled GPUs require external fans or air conditioning to cool down the GPUs, and the airflow must go through the GPUs for effective cooling. Common cooling problems include installing GPUs in a server that is not designed for the GPUs or installing the wrong numbers of GPUs into the server. In some cases, the air flows through the “easy path” (the path with the least friction) around the GPUs instead of going through them. Fixing this requires examination of the airflow in the server and installation of airflow guidance if necessary.

Note that higher GPU temperature also leads to more leakage current in the circuits, which increases the power consumed by the GPU at a specific clock frequency. Therefore, for GPUs more likely to be power throttled like NVIDIA T4, poor cooling can lead to lower stabilized clock frequency with power throttling and, thus, worse performance, even if the GPU clocks have not been thermally throttled yet.

On the other hand, ambient temperature, the environment's temperature around the server, does not usually affect GPU performance as long as the GPUs are properly cooled, except for GPUs with lower power limits whose performance may be slightly affected.

To achieve maximum throughput, the H2D/D2H data transfers should run parallel to the GPU executions of other inferences so that the GPU does not sit idle when the H2D/D2H copies occur. This can be done by running multiple inferences in parallel streams or launching H2D/D2H copies in a different stream than the stream used for GPU executions and using CUDA events to synchronize between the streams. The trtexec tool shows an example of the latter implementation.

When the H2D/D2H copies run parallel to GPU executions, they can interfere with the GPU executions, especially if the host memory is pageable, which is the default case. Therefore, it is recommended that you allocate pinned host memory for the input and output data using cudaHostAlloc() or cudaMallocHost() CUDA APIs.

To check whether the PCIe bandwidth becomes the performance bottleneck, you can check the Nsight Systems profiles and see if the H2D or D2H copies of an inference query have longer latencies than the GPU execution part. If PCIe bandwidth becomes the performance bottleneck, here are a few possible solutions.

First, check whether the PCIe bus configuration of the GPU is correct in terms of which generation (for example, Gen3 or Gen4) and how many lanes (for example, x8 or x16) are used. Next, try reducing the amount of data that must be transferred using the PCIe bus. For example, if the input images have high resolutions and the H2D copies become the bottleneck, you can consider transmitting JPEG-compressed images over the PCIe bus and decode the image on the GPUs before the inference workflow instead of transmitting raw pixels. Finally, you can consider using NVIDIA GPUDirect technology to load data directly from/to the network or the filesystems without going through the host memory.

In addition, if your system has AMD x86_64 CPUs, check the machine's NUMA (Non-Uniform Memory Access) configurations with the numactl --hardware command. The PCIe bandwidth between a host memory and a device memory located on two different NUMA nodes is much more limited than the bandwidth between the host/device memory located on the same NUMA node. Allocate the host memory on the NUMA node on which the GPU on which the data will be copied resides. Also, pin the CPU threads that trigger the H2D/D2H copies on that specific NUMA node.

Note that the host and the device share the same memory on mobile platforms, so the H2D/D2H data transfers are not required if the host memory is allocated using CUDA APIs and is pinned instead of pageable.

By default, the trtexec tool measures the latencies of the H2D/D2H data transfers, which tells the user if the H2D/D2H copies may bottleneck the TensorRT workload. However, if the H2D/D2H copies affect the stability of the GPU Compute Time, you can add the --noDataTransfers flag to disable H2D/D2H transfers and measure only the latencies of the GPU execution part.

In TCC mode, the GPU is configured to focus on computation work, and graphics support like OpenGL or monitor display is disabled. This is the recommended mode for GPUs that run TensorRT inference workloads. On the other hand, the WDDM mode tends to cause GPUs to have worse and unstable performance results when running inference workloads using TensorRT.

This does not apply to Linux-based OS.