[MKLDNN]Enhance Quantization APIs and Tutorial

docs/tutorials/index.md

@@ -104,6 +104,8 @@ Select API: 
     * [Module to Gluon API](/tutorials/python/module_to_gluon.html)
     * [Gluon end to end from training to inference](/tutorials/gluon/gluon_from_experiment_to_deployment.html)
     * [Automatic Mixed Precision in Gluon](/tutorials/amp/amp_tutorial.html)
+    * [How to build and install MXNet with MKL-DNN backend](/tutorials/mkldnn/MKLDNN_README.html)
+    * [How to quantize custom models with MKL-DNN backend](/tutorials/mkldnn/mkldnn_quantization.html)<span style="color:red"> (new!) </span>
 * API Guides
     * Core APIs
         * NDArray
@@ -156,7 +158,6 @@ Select API:&nbsp;
     * [Large-Scale Multi-Host Multi-GPU Image Classification](/tutorials/vision/large_scale_classification.html)
     * [Importing an ONNX model into MXNet](/tutorials/onnx/super_resolution.html)
     * [Optimizing Deep Learning Computation Graphs with TensorRT](/tutorials/tensorrt/inference_with_trt.html)
-    * [How to build and install MXNet with MKL-DNN backend](/tutorials/mkldnn/MKLDNN_README.html)
 * API Guides
     * Core APIs
         * NDArray

docs/tutorials/mkldnn/mkldnn_quantization.md

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+
+# Quantize custom models with MKL-DNN backend
+
+This document is to introduce how to quantize the customer models from FP32 to INT8 with Apache/MXNet toolkit and APIs under Intel CPU.
+
+If you are not familiar with Apache/MXNet quantizaiton flow, please reference [quantization blog](https://medium.com/apache-mxnet/model-quantization-for-production-level-neural-network-inference-f54462ebba05) first, and the perforamnce data is shown in [Apache/MXNet C++ interface](https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/tree/master/cpp-package/example/inference) and [GluonCV](https://gluon-cv.mxnet.io/build/examples_deployment/int8_inference.html). 
+
+## Installation and Prerequisites
+
+Installing MXNet with MKLDNN backend is an easy and essential process. You can follow [How to build and install MXNet with MKL-DNN backend](https://mxnet.incubator.apache.org/tutorials/mkldnn/MKLDNN_README.html) to build and install MXNet from source. Also, you can install the release or nightly version via PyPi and pip directly by running:
+
+```
+# release version
+pip install mxnet-mkl
+# nightly version
+pip install mxnet-mkl --pre
+```
+
+## Image Classification Demo
+
+A quantization script [imagenet_gen_qsym_mkldnn.py](https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/blob/master/example/quantization/imagenet_gen_qsym_mkldnn.py) has been designed to launch quantization for image-classification models. This script is  integrated with [Gluon-CV modelzoo](https://gluon-cv.mxnet.io/model_zoo/classification.html), so that all pre-trained models can be downloaded from Gluon-CV and then converted for quantization. For details, you can refer [Model Quantization with Calibration Examples](https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/blob/master/example/quantization/README.md).
+
+## Integrate Quantization Flow to Your Project
+
+Quantization flow works for both symbolic and Gluon models. If you're using Gluon, you can first refer [Saving and Loading Gluon Models](https://mxnet.incubator.apache.org/versions/master/tutorials/gluon/save_load_params.html) to hybridize your computation graph and export it as a symbol before running quantization.
+
+In general, the quantization flow includes 4 steps. The user can get the acceptable accuracy from step 1 to 3 with minimum effort. Most of thing in this stage is out-of-box and the data scientists and researchers only need to focus on how to represent data and layers in their model. After a quantized model is generated, you may want to deploy it online and the performance will be the next key point. Thus, step 4, calibration, can improve the performance a lot by reducing lots of runtime calculation.
+
+![quantization flow](quantization.png)
+
+Now, we are going to take Gluon ResNet18 as an example to show how each step work.
+
+### Initialize Model
+
+```python
+import logging
+import mxnet as mx
+from mxnet.gluon.model_zoo import vision
+from mxnet.contrib.quantization import *
+
+logging.basicConfig()
+logger = logging.getLogger('logger')
+logger.setLevel(logging.INFO)
+
+batch_shape = (1, 3, 224, 224)
+resnet18 = vision.resnet18_v1(pretrained=True)
+resnet18.hybridize()
+resnet18.forward(mx.nd.zeros(batch_shape))
+resnet18.export('resnet18_v1')
+sym, arg_params, aux_params = mx.model.load_checkpoint('resnet18_v1', 0)
+# (optional) visualize float32 model
+mx.viz.plot_network(sym)
+```
+First, we download resnet18-v1 model from gluon modelzoo and export it as a symbol. You can visualize float32 model. Below is a raw residual block.
+
+![float32 model](fp32_raw.png)
+
+#### Model Fusion
+
+```python
+sym = sym.get_backend_symbol('MKLDNN_QUANTIZE')
+# (optional) visualize fused float32 model
+mx.viz.plot_network(sym)
+```
+It's important to add this line to enable graph fusion before quantization to get better performance. Below is a fused residual block. Batchnorm, Activation and elemwise_add are fused into Convolution.
+
+![float32 fused model](fp32_fusion.png)
+
+### Quantize Model
+
+A python interface `quantiza_graph` is provided for the user. Thus, it is very flexible for the data scientist to construct the expected models based on different requirements in a real deployment.
+
+```python
+# quantize configs
+# set exclude layers
+excluded_names = []
+# set calib mode.
+calib_mode = 'none'
+# set calib_layer
+calib_layer = None
+# set quantized_dtype
+quantized_dtype = 'auto'
+logger.info('Quantizing FP32 model Resnet18-V1')
+qsym, qarg_params, aux_params, collector = quantize_graph(sym=sym, arg_params=arg_params, aux_params=aux_params,
+                                                          excluded_sym_names=excluded_names,
+                                                          calib_mode=calib_mode, calib_layer=calib_layer,
+                                                          quantized_dtype=quantized_dtype, logger=logger)
+# (optional) visualize quantized model
+mx.viz.plot_network(qsym)
+# save quantized model
+mx.model.save_checkpoint('quantized-resnet18_v1', 0, qsym, qarg_params, aux_params)
+```
+
+By applying `quantize_graph` to the symbolic model, a new quantized model can be generated, named `qsym` along with its parameters. We can see `_contrib_requantize` operators are inserted after `Convolution` to conver the INT32 output to FP32. 
+
+![none calibrated model](none_calib.png)
+
+Below table gives some descriptions.
+
+| param              | type            | description|
+|--------------------|-----------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
+| excluded_sym_names | list of strings | A list of strings representing the names of the symbols that users want to excluding from being quantized.|
+| calib_mode         | str             | If calib_mode='none', no calibration will be used and the thresholds for requantization after the corresponding layers will be calculated at runtime by calling min  and max operators. The quantized models generated in this mode are normally 10-20% slower than those with  calibrations during inference.<br>If calib_mode='naive', the min and max values of the layer outputs from a calibration dataset will be directly taken as the thresholds for quantization.<br>If calib_mode='entropy', the thresholds for quantization will be derived such that the KL divergence between the distributions of FP32 layer outputs and  quantized layer outputs is minimized based upon the calibration dataset. |
+| calib_layer        | function        | Given a layer's output name in string, return True or False for deciding whether to calibrate this layer.<br>If yes, the statistics of the layer's output will be collected; otherwise, no information of the layer's output will be collected.<br>If not provided, all the layers' outputs that need requantization will be collected.|
+| quantized_dtype    | str             | The quantized destination type for input data. Currently support 'int8', 'uint8' and 'auto'.<br>'auto' means automatically select output type according to calibration result.|
+
+### Evaluate & Tune
+
+Now, you get a pair of quantized symbol and params file for inference. For Gluon inference, only difference is to load model and params by a SymbolBlock as below example:
+
+```python
+quantized_net = mx.gluon.SymbolBlock.imports('quantized-resnet18_v1-symbol.json', 'data', 'quantized-resnet18_v1-0000.params')
+quantized_net.hybridize(static_shape=True, static_alloc=True)
+batch_size = 1
+data = mx.nd.ones((batch_size,3,224,224))
+quantized_net(data)
+```
+
+Now, you can get the accuracy from a quantized network. Furthermore, you can try to select different layers or OPs to be quantized by `excluded_sym_names` parameter and figure out an acceptable accuracy.
+
+### Calibrate Model (optional for performance)
+
+The quantized model generated in previous steps can be very slow during inference since it will calculate min and max at runtime. We recommend using offline calibration for better performance by setting `calib_mode` to `naive` or `entropy`. And then calling `set_monitor_callback` api to collect layer information with a subset of the validation datasets before int8 inference.
+
+```python
+# quantization configs
+# set exclude layers
+excluded_names = []
+# set calib mode.
+calib_mode = 'naive'
+# set calib_layer
+calib_layer = None
+# set quantized_dtype
+quantized_dtype = 'auto'
+logger.info('Quantizing FP32 model resnet18-V1')
+cqsym, cqarg_params, aux_params, collector = quantize_graph(sym=sym, arg_params=arg_params, aux_params=aux_params,
+                                                          excluded_sym_names=excluded_names,
+                                                          calib_mode=calib_mode, calib_layer=calib_layer,
+                                                          quantized_dtype=quantized_dtype, logger=logger)
+
+# download imagenet validation dataset
+mx.test_utils.download('http://data.mxnet.io/data/val_256_q90.rec', 'dataset.rec')
+# set rgb info for data
+mean_std = {'mean_r': 123.68, 'mean_g': 116.779, 'mean_b': 103.939, 'std_r': 58.393, 'std_g': 57.12, 'std_b': 57.375}
+# set batch size
+batch_size = 16
+# create DataIter
+data = mx.io.ImageRecordIter(path_imgrec='dataset.rec', batch_size=batch_size, data_shape=batch_shape[1:], rand_crop=False, rand_mirror=False, **mean_std)
+# create module
+mod = mx.mod.Module(symbol=sym, label_names=None, context=mx.cpu())
+mod.bind(for_training=False, data_shapes=data.provide_data, label_shapes=None)
+mod.set_params(arg_params, aux_params)
+
+# calibration configs
+# set num_calib_batches
+num_calib_batches = 5
+max_num_examples = num_calib_batches * batch_size
+# monitor FP32 Inference
+mod._exec_group.execs[0].set_monitor_callback(collector.collect, monitor_all=True)
+num_batches = 0
+num_examples = 0
+for batch in data:
+    mod.forward(data_batch=batch, is_train=False)
+    num_batches += 1
+    num_examples += batch_size
+    if num_examples >= max_num_examples:
+        break
+if logger is not None:
+    logger.info("Collected statistics from %d batches with batch_size=%d"
+                % (num_batches, batch_size))
+```
+
+After that, layer information will be filled into the `collector` returned by `quantize_graph` api. Then, you need to write the layer information into int8 model by calling `calib_graph` api.
+
+
+```python
+# write scaling factor into quantized symbol
+cqsym, cqarg_params, aux_params = calib_graph(qsym=cqsym, arg_params=arg_params, aux_params=aux_params,
+                                            collector=collector, calib_mode=calib_mode,
+                                            quantized_dtype=quantized_dtype, logger=logger)
+# (optional) visualize quantized model
+mx.viz.plot_network(cqsym)
+```
+
+Below is a quantized residual block with naive calibration. We can see `min_calib_range` and `max_calib_range` are wrote into `_contrib_requantize` operators.
+
+![naive calibrated model](naive_calib.png)
+
+When you get a quantized model with calibration, keep sure to call fusion api again since this can fuse some `requantize` or `dequantize` operators for further performance improvement.
+
+```python
+# perform post-quantization fusion
+cqsym = cqsym.get_backend_symbol('MKLDNN_QUANTIZE')
+# (optional) visualize post-quantized model
+mx.viz.plot_network(cqsym)
+# save quantized model
+mx.model.save_checkpoint('quantized-resnet18_v1', 0, cqsym, cqarg_params, aux_params)
+```
+
+Below is a post-quantized residual block. We can see `_contrib_requantize` operators are fused into `Convolution` operators.
+
+![post-quantized model](post_quantize.png)
+
+BTW, You can also modify the `min_calib_range` and `max_calib_range` in the JSON file directly.
+
+```
+    {
+      "op": "_sg_mkldnn_conv", 
+      "name": "quantized_sg_mkldnn_conv_bn_act_6", 
+      "attrs": {
+        "max_calib_range": "3.562147", 
+        "min_calib_range": "0.000000", 
+        "quantized": "true", 
+        "with_act": "true", 
+        "with_bn": "true"
+      }, 
+......
+```
+
+### Tips for Model Calibration
+
+#### Accuracy Tuning
+
+- Try to use `entropy` calib mode;
+
+- Try to exclude some layers which may cause obvious accuracy drop;
+
+- Change calibration dataset by setting different `num_calib_batches` or shuffle your validation dataset;
+
+#### Performance Tuning
+
+- Keep sure to perform graph fusion before quantization;
+
+- If lots of `requantize` layers exist, keep sure to perform post-quantization fusion after calibration;
+
+- Compare the MXNet profile or `MKLDNN_VERBOSE` of float32 and int8 inference;
+
+## Deploy with Python/C++
+
+MXNet also supports deploy quantized models with C++. Refer [MXNet C++ Package](https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/blob/master/cpp-package/README.md) for more details.
+
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