tf.train.ExponentialMovingAverage

Maintains moving averages of variables by employing an exponential decay.

tf.train.ExponentialMovingAverage(
    decay,
    num_updates=None,
    zero_debias=False,
    name='ExponentialMovingAverage'
)

When training a model, it is often beneficial to maintain moving averages of the trained parameters. Evaluations that use averaged parameters sometimes produce significantly better results than the final trained values.

The apply() method adds shadow copies of trained variables the first time it is called, and maintains a moving average of the trained variables in their shadow copies at every additional invocation. It should generally be called immediately after creating the model weights, and then after each training step.

The average() method gives access to the shadow variables. It allows you to use the moving averages in place of the last trained values for evaluations, by loading the moving averages into your model via var.assign(ema.average(var)). Additionally, although ExponentialMovingAverage objects are not directly trackable by checkpoints, average() returns the moving average variables for your model weights, which you can then checkpoint. (There is an example of this near the bottom of this docstring). So, average() is useful when building an evaluation model, or when restoring a model from a checkpoint file.

The moving averages are computed using exponential decay. You specify the decay value (as a scalar float value, Tensor, or Variable) when creating the ExponentialMovingAverage object. The shadow variables are initialized with the same initial values as the trained variables. When you run apply to update the moving averages, each shadow variable is updated with the formula:

shadow_variable -= (1 - decay) * (shadow_variable - variable)

This is mathematically equivalent to the classic formula below, but the use of an assign_sub op (the "-=" in the formula) allows concurrent lockless updates to the variables:

shadow_variable = decay * shadow_variable + (1 - decay) * variable

Reasonable values for decay are close to 1.0, typically in the multiple-nines range: 0.999, 0.9999, etc.

To have fine-grained control over the value of the decay parameter during training, pass a scalar tf.Variable as the decay value to the constructor, and update the variable as needed.

Example usage when creating a training model:

# Create variables.
var0 = tf.Variable(...)
var1 = tf.Variable(...)
# ... use the variables to build a training model...

# Create an ExponentialMovingAverage object
ema = tf.train.ExponentialMovingAverage(decay=0.9999)

# The first `apply` creates the shadow variables that hold the moving averages
ema.apply([var0, var1])

# grab the moving averages for checkpointing purposes or to be able to
# load the moving averages into the model weights
averages = [ema.average(var0), ema.average(var1)]

...
def train_step(...):
...
  # Apply the optimizer.
  opt.minimize(my_loss, [var0, var1])

  # Update the moving averages
  # of var0 and var1 with additional calls to `apply`
  ema.apply([var0, var1])

...train the model by running train_step multiple times...

There are several ways to use the moving averages for evaluations:

  1. Assign the values of the shadow variables to your model variables with Variable.assign(...) before evaluating your model. You can use the average() method to get the shadow variable for a given variable. To continue training after using this approach, make sure to record the unaveraged weights and restore them before continuing to train. You can see the tensorflow-addons' MovingAverage optimizer's swap_weights method for one example of how to swap variables efficiently in distributed settings: https://github.com/tensorflow/addons/blob/v0.13.0/tensorflow_addons/optimizers/moving_average.py#L151
  2. Make sure to checkpoint out your moving average variables in your tf.train.Checkpoint. At evaluation time, create your shadow variables and use tf.train.Checkpoint to restore the moving averages into the shadow variables. Then, load the moving averages into the actual model weights via var.assign(moving_avg).
  3. Checkpoint out your moving average variables in your tf.train.Checkpoint. For evaluation, restore your model weights directly from the moving averages instead of from the non-averaged weights. Caution: If you choose this approach, include only the object-graph paths to the averaged path in your checkpoint restore. If you point both the unaveraged and averaged paths in a checkpoint restore to the same variables, it is hard to reason about whether your model will restore the averaged or non-averaged variables.

Example of saving out then restoring the shadow variable values:

# Create variables.
var0 = tf.Variable(...)
var1 = tf.Variable(...)
# ... use the variables to build a training model...

# Create an ExponentialMovingAverage object, create the shadow variables,
# and grab the moving averages for checkpointing purposes.
# (The ExponentialMovingAverage object itself is not checkpointable)
ema = tf.train.ExponentialMovingAverage(decay=0.9999)
ema.apply([var0, var1])
avg_var0 = ema.average(var0)
avg_var1 = ema.average(var1)

# Create a Checkpoint that will manage the model weights and the averages,
checkpoint = tf.train.Checkpoint(model_weights=[var0, var1],
                                 averaged_weights=[avg_var0, avg_var1])
... # Do training

# Save out the checkpoint including the model weights and the moving averages
checkpoint.save(...)

Restore option: restore all averaged & non-averaged weights, then load moving averages into the model via var.assign()

# Create variables.
var0 = tf.Variable(...)
var1 = tf.Variable(...)
# ... use the variables to build a training model...

# Create an ExponentialMovingAverage object, create the shadow variables,
# and grab the moving averages for checkpoint restore purposes.
# (The ExponentialMovingAverage object itself is not checkpointable)
ema = tf.train.ExponentialMovingAverage(decay=0.9999)
ema.apply([var0, var1])
avg_var0 = ema.average(var0)
avg_var1 = ema.average(var1)

# Create a Checkpoint that will manage the model weights and the averages,
checkpoint = tf.train.Checkpoint(model_weights=[var0, var1],
                                 averaged_weights=[avg_var0, avg_var1])
checkpoint.restore(...)
var0.assign(avg_var0)
var1.assign(avg_var1)
# var0 and var1 now hold the moving average values

Restore option: Directly restore the moving averages into the model weights.

# Create variables.
var0 = tf.Variable(...)
var1 = tf.Variable(...)
# ... use the variables to build a training model...

# Create a Checkpoint that will manage two objects with trackable state,
checkpoint = tf.train.Checkpoint(averaged_weights=[var0, var1])
checkpoint.restore(...)
# var0 and var1 now hold the moving average values

decay A scalar float value, Tensor, or Variable. The decay parameter.
num_updates Optional count of number of updates applied to variables.
zero_debias If True, zero debias moving-averages that are initialized with tensors. (Note: moving averages may not be initialized with non-variable tensors when eager execution is enabled).
name String. Optional prefix name to use for the name of ops added in apply().

name The name of this ExponentialMovingAverage object.

Methods

apply

View source

apply(
    var_list=None
)

Maintains moving averages of variables.

var_list must be a list of Variable objects. This method creates shadow variables (holding the moving averages) for all elements of var_list, and updates the moving averages using the current var_list values. Shadow variables for Variable objects are initialized to the variable's initial value.

Shadow variables are created with trainable=False. To access them you can use the EMA object's average method. Note that EMA objects are not trackable by checkpoints, so if you want to checkpoint or restore the moving variables you will need to manually grab the shadow variables via average() and assign them as tf.Module properties or directly pass them to your tf.train.Checkpoint.

Note that apply() can be called multiple times. When eager execution is enabled each call to apply will update the variables once, so this needs to be called in a loop.

In legacy TF 1.x graphs, this method returns an op that updates all shadow variables from the current value of their associated variables. In TF 1.x graphs without automatically control dependencies this op needs to be manually run.

Args
var_list A list of Variable objects. The variables must be of types bfloat16, float16, float32, or float64. (In legacy TF 1.x graphs these may be tensors, but this is unsupported when eager execution is enabled.)

Returns
An Operation that updates the moving averages.

Raises
TypeError If the arguments are not an allowed type.

average

View source

average(
    var
)

Returns the Variable holding the average of var.

Args
var A Variable object.

Returns
A Variable object or None if the moving average of var is not maintained.