Accepting real pytorch device as arguments.

src/transformers/pipelines/base.py

@@ -693,7 +693,7 @@ def predict(self, X):
             Reference to the object in charge of parsing supplied pipeline parameters.
         device (`int`, *optional*, defaults to -1):
             Device ordinal for CPU/GPU supports. Setting this to -1 will leverage CPU, a positive will run the model on
-            the associated CUDA device id.
+            the associated CUDA device id. You can pass native `torch.device` too.
         binary_output (`bool`, *optional*, defaults to `False`):
             Flag indicating if the output the pipeline should happen in a binary format (i.e., pickle) or as raw text.
 """
@@ -750,7 +750,10 @@ def __init__(
         self.feature_extractor = feature_extractor
         self.modelcard = modelcard
         self.framework = framework
-        self.device = device if framework == "tf" else torch.device("cpu" if device < 0 else f"cuda:{device}")
+        if is_torch_available() and isinstance(device, torch.device):
+            self.device = device
+        else:
+            self.device = device if framework == "tf" else torch.device("cpu" if device < 0 else f"cuda:{device}")
         self.binary_output = binary_output
 
         # Special handling

tests/pipelines/test_pipelines_text_classification.py

@@ -39,6 +39,20 @@ def test_small_model_pt(self):
         outputs = text_classifier("This is great !")
         self.assertEqual(nested_simplify(outputs), [{"label": "LABEL_0", "score": 0.504}])
 
+    @require_torch
+    def test_accepts_torch_device(self):
+        import torch
+
+        text_classifier = pipeline(
+            task="text-classification",
+            model="hf-internal-testing/tiny-random-distilbert",
+            framework="pt",
+            device=torch.device("cpu"),
+        )
+
+        outputs = text_classifier("This is great !")
+        self.assertEqual(nested_simplify(outputs), [{"label": "LABEL_0", "score": 0.504}])
+
     @require_tf
     def test_small_model_tf(self):
         text_classifier = pipeline(