Stochastic Depth (Sample-Wise)

Tags: Method, Networks with Residual Connections, Method, Regularization, Increased Accuracy

TL;DR

Sample-wise stochastic depth is a regularization technique for networks with residual connections that probabilistically drops samples after the transformation function in each residual block. This means that different samples go through different combinations of blocks.

Attribution

EfficientNet model in the TPU Github repository from Google

EfficientNet model in gen-efficientnet-pytorch Github repository by Ross Wightman

Hyperparameters

  • stochastic_method - Specifies the version of the stochastic depth method to use. stochastic_method=sample applies stochastic dropping to samples. stochastic_method=block applies block-wise stochastic depth, which we address in a separate method card.

  • target_layer_name - The reference name for the module that will be replaced with a functionally equivalent sample-wise stochastic block. For example, target_layer_name=ResNetBottleNeck will replace modules in the model named BottleNeck.

  • drop_rate - The probability of dropping a sample within a residual block.

  • drop_distribution - How the drop_rate is distributed across the model’s blocks. The two possible values are uniform and linear. uniform assigns a single drop_rate across all blocks. linear linearly increases the drop rate according to the block’s depth, starting from 0 at the first block and ending with drop_rate at the last block.

Applicable Settings

Sample-wise stochastic depth requires models to have residual blocks since the method relies on skip connections to allow samples to skip blocks of the network.

Example Effects

For both ResNet-50 and ResNet-101 on ImageNet, we measure a +0.4% absolute accuracy improvement when using drop_rate=0.1 and drop_distribution=linear. The training wall-clock time is approximately 5% longer when using sample-wise stochastic depth.

Implementation Details

When training, samples are dropped after the transformation function in a residual block by multiplying the batch by a binary vector. The binary vector is generated by sampling independent Bernoulli distributions with probability (1 - drop_rate). After the samples are dropped, the skip connection is added as usual. During inference, no samples are dropped, but the batch of samples is scaled by (1 - drop_rate) to compensate for the drop frequency when training.

Suggested Hyperparameters

We observed that drop_rate=0.1 and drop_distribution=linear yielded maximum accuracy improvements on both ResNet-50 and ResNet-101.

Considerations

Because sample-wise stochastic depth randomly drops samples within each residual block, a shallow model may exhibit instability due to insufficient transformation on some samples. When using a shallow model, it is best to use a small drop rate or avoid sample-wise stochastic depth entirely.

In addition, there may be instability when training on smaller batch sizes since a significant proportion of the batch may be dropped even at low drop rates.

Composability

Combining several regularization methods may have diminishing returns, and can even degrade accuracy. This may hold true when combining sample-wise stochastic depth with other regularization methods.

Code

class composer.algorithms.stochastic_depth.StochasticDepth(stochastic_method: str, target_layer_name: str, drop_rate: float = 0.2, drop_distribution: str = 'linear', drop_warmup: float = 0.0, use_same_gpu_seed: bool = True)[source]

Applies Stochastic Depth (Huang et al.) to the specified model.

The algorithm replaces the specified target layer with a stochastic version of the layer. The stochastic layer will randomly drop either samples or the layer itself depending on the stochastic method specified. The block-wise version follows the original paper. The sample-wise version follows the implementation used for EfficientNet in the Tensorflow/TPU repo.

Parameters

  • stochastic_method – The version of stochastic depth to use. "block" randomly drops blocks during training. "sample" randomly drops samples within a block during training.

  • target_layer_name – Block to replace with a stochastic block equivalent. The name must be registered in STOCHASTIC_LAYER_MAPPING dictionary with the target layer class and the stochastic layer class. Currently, only 'ResNetBottleneck' is supported.

  • drop_rate – The base probability of dropping a layer or sample. Must be between 0.0 and 1.0.

  • drop_distribution – How drop_rate is distributed across layers. Value must be one of "uniform" or "linear". "uniform" assigns the same drop_rate across all layers. "linear" linearly increases the drop rate across layer depth starting with 0 drop rate and ending with drop_rate.

  • drop_warmup – Percentage of training epochs to linearly increase the drop probability to linear_drop_rate. Must be between 0.0 and 1.0.

  • use_same_gpu_seed – Set to True to have the same layers dropped across GPUs when using multi-GPU training. Set to False to have each GPU drop a different set of layers. Only used with "block" stochastic method.

apply(event: composer.core.event.Event, state: composer.core.state.State, logger: composer.core.logging.logger.Logger) → Optional[int][source]

Applies StochasticDepth modification to the state’s model

Parameters

  • event (Event) – the current event

  • state (State) – the current trainer state

  • logger (Logger) – the training logger

match(event: composer.core.event.Event, state: composer.core.state.State) → bool[source]

Apply on Event.INIT and Event.BATCH_START if drop_warmup is > 0.0

Parameters

  • event (Event) – The current event.

  • state (State) – The current state.

Returns

bool – True if this algorithm should run now.

composer.algorithms.stochastic_depth.apply_stochastic_depth(model: torch.nn.modules.module.Module, stochastic_method: str, target_layer_name: str, drop_rate: float = 0.2, drop_distribution: str = 'linear', use_same_gpu_seed: bool = True) → None[source]

Applies Stochastic Depth (Huang et al.) to the specified model.

The algorithm replaces the specified target layer with a stochastic version of the layer. The stochastic layer will randomly drop either samples or the layer itself depending on the stochastic method specified. The block-wise version follows the original paper. The sample-wise version follows the implementation used for EfficientNet in the Tensorflow/TPU repo.

Parameters

  • model – model containing modules to be replaced with stochastic versions

  • stochastic_method – The version of stochastic depth to use. "block" randomly drops blocks during training. "sample" randomly drops samples within a block during training.

  • target_layer_name – Block to replace with a stochastic block equivalent. The name must be registered in STOCHASTIC_LAYER_MAPPING dictionary with the target layer class and the stochastic layer class. Currently, only 'ResNetBottleneck' is supported.

  • drop_rate – The base probability of dropping a layer or sample. Must be between 0.0 and 1.0.

  • drop_distribution – How drop_rate is distributed across layers. Value must be one of "uniform" or "linear". "uniform" assigns the same drop_rate across all layers. "linear" linearly increases the drop rate across layer depth starting with 0 drop rate and ending with drop_rate.

  • use_same_gpu_seed – Set to True to have the same layers dropped across GPUs when using multi-GPU training. Set to False to have each GPU drop a different set of layers. Only used with "block" stochastic method.