Custom Path Optimizers¶

If you want to implement or just experiment with custom contaction paths then you can easily by subclassing the PathOptimizer object. For example, imagine we want to test the path that just blindly contracts the first pair of tensors again and again. We would implement this as:

import opt_einsum as oe

class MyOptimizer(oe.paths.PathOptimizer):

def __call__(self, inputs, output, size_dict, memory_limit=None):
return [(0, 1)] * (len(inputs) - 1)


Once defined we can use this as:

import numpy as np

# set-up a random contraction
eq, shapes = oe.helpers.rand_equation(10, 3, seed=42)
arrays = list(map(np.ones, shapes))

# set-up our optimizer and use it
optimizer = MyOptimizer()
path, path_info = oe.contract_path(eq, *arrays, optimize=optimizer)

print(path)
# [(0, 1), (0, 1), (0, 1), (0, 1), (0, 1), (0, 1), (0, 1), (0, 1), (0, 1)]

print(path_info.speedup)
# 133.21363671496357


Note that though we still get a considerable speedup over einsum this is of course not a good strategy to take in general.

Custom Random Optimizers¶

If your custom path optimizer is inherently random, then you can reuse all the machinery of the random-greedy approach. Namely:

• A max-repeats or max-time approach

• Minimization with respect to total flops or largest intermediate size

• Parallelization using a pool-executor

This is done by subclassing the RandomOptimizer object and implementing a setup method. Here’s an example where we just randomly select any path (again, although we get a considerable speedup over einsum this is not a good strategy to take in general):

from opt_einsum.path_random import ssa_path_compute_cost

class MyRandomOptimizer(oe.path_random.RandomOptimizer):

@staticmethod
def random_path(r, n, inputs, output, size_dict):
"""Picks a completely random contraction order.
"""
np.random.seed(r)
ssa_path = []
remaining = set(range(n))
while len(remaining) > 1:
i, j = np.random.choice(list(remaining), size=2, replace=False)
remaining.remove(i)
remaining.remove(j)
ssa_path.append((i, j))
cost, size = ssa_path_compute_cost(ssa_path, inputs, output, size_dict)
return ssa_path, cost, size

def setup(self, inputs, output, size_dict):
"""Prepares the function and arguments to repeatedly call.
"""
n = len(inputs)
trial_fn = self.random_path
trial_args = (n, inputs, output, size_dict)
return trial_fn, trial_args


Which we can now instantiate using various other options:

optimizer = MyRandomOptimizer(max_repeats=1000, max_time=10,
parallel=True, minimize='size')
path, path_info = oe.contract_path(eq, *arrays, optimize=optimizer)

print(path)
# [(3, 4), (1, 3), (0, 3), (3, 5), (3, 4), (3, 4), (1, 0), (0, 1), (0, 1)]

print(path_info.speedup)
# 712829.9451056132


There are a few things to note here:

1. The core function (MyRandomOptimizer.random_path here), should take a trial number r as it first argument

2. It should return a ssa_path (see opt_einsum.paths.ssa_to_linear and opt_einsum.paths.linear_to_ssa) as well as a flops-cost and max-size.

3. The setup method prepares this function, as well as any input to it, so that the trials will look roughly like [trial_fn(r, *trial_args) for r in range(max_repeats)]. If you need to parse the standard arguments (into a network for example), it thus only needs to be done once per optimization

More details about RandomOptimizer options can be found in The Random-Greedy Path section.