Create Custom Neural Network in PyTorch
Last Updated :
20 Mar, 2024
PyTorch is a popular deep learning framework, empowers you to build and train powerful neural networks. But what if you need to go beyond the standard layers offered by the library? Here's where custom layers come in, allowing you to tailor the network architecture to your specific needs. This comprehensive guide explores how to create custom layers in PyTorch, unlocking a new level of flexibility for your deep learning projects.
Why Custom Layers?
While PyTorch provides a rich set of built-in layers, there are scenarios where you might require more specialized functionality. Custom layers enable you to:
- Implement unique operations: Design layers for specific tasks not covered by existing layers.
- Incorporate domain knowledge: Integrate domain-specific knowledge into your neural network architecture.
- Experiment with novel architectures: Prototype and test innovative network structures for research purposes.
By creating custom layers, you gain greater control over your deep learning models, pushing the boundaries of what's achievable.
Building The Custom Layer
Let's dive into the practical aspects of creating a custom layer in PyTorch. We'll start with a simple example that performs element-wise multiplication.
- Inheritance: The
CustomLayer
class inherits from nn.Module
, the foundation for building neural network layers in PyTorch. - Initialization: The
__init__
method defines the layer's parameters. Here, we create a weight tensor with the same size as the input (ip_size
). - Weight Parameter: The weight tensor is converted to a learnable parameter using
nn.Parameter
allowing the network to optimize the weights during training. - Weight Initialization: We initialize the weights using a normal distribution with a mean of 0 and a standard deviation of 1.
- Forward Pass: The
forward
method defines the core operation of the layer. In this case, it performs element-wise multiplication between the input x
and the weight parameter self.weight
.
Python3
import torch
import torch.nn as nn
class CustomLayer(nn.Module):
def __init__(self,ip_size):
super().__init__()
self.size = ip_size
weight_tensor = torch.Tensor(self.size)
self.weight = nn.Parameter(weight_tensor)
torch.nn.init.normal_(self.weight,mean=0.0,std=1.0)
def forward(self,x):
return x * self.weight
Creating a Custom Network
Now that you have a custom layer, let's see how to use it within a neural network. An example that stacks your CustomLayer
with a ReLU activation.
This code defines a simple network with two layers:
- The first layer is your custom
CustomLayer
with an input size of 10. - The second layer is a ReLU activation layer from the
nn
module.
Python3
CustomNetwork = nn.Sequential(
CustomLayer(10),
nn.ReLU()
)
The Main Program
Let's put together all steps and see an example that demonstrates building a custom linear layer and training an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) for image classification.
1. Import libraries
Python3
import torch
import torch.nn as nn
import torch.nn.functional as F
import math
import numpy
2) Define your custom layer class
This code defines a CustomLinear
layer that mimics the behavior of a fully connected layer in PyTorch.
CustomLinear
offers a custom implementation of a linear layer with learnable weights and biases, performing linear transformations during the network's forward pass.
Python3
class CustomLinear(nn.Module):
def __init__(self, in_features, out_features):
super(CustomLinear, self).__init__()
self.in_features = in_features
self.out_features = out_features
self.weight = nn.Parameter(torch.Tensor(out_features, in_features))
self.bias = nn.Parameter(torch.Tensor(out_features))
self.reset_parameters()
def reset_parameters(self):
nn.init.kaiming_uniform_(self.weight, a=math.sqrt(5))
if self.bias is not None:
fan_in, _ = nn.init._calculate_fan_in_and_fan_out(self.weight)
bound = 1 / math.sqrt(fan_in)
nn.init.uniform_(self.bias, -bound, bound)
def forward(self, input):
return input.matmul(self.weight.t()) + self.bias
3) Use your custom layer in a neural network
CustomNetwork is a neural network composed of multiple custom linear layers (CustomLinear). The __init__ method initializes the network with five custom linear layers. The forward method defines the forward pass of the network:
- It reshapes the input tensor x into a 2D tensor (x.view(-1, 28*28)).
- It applies the custom linear layers (fc1, fc2, fc3, fc4, fc5) sequentially, followed by ReLU activation functions (F.relu).
Python3
class CustomNetwork(nn.Module):
def __init__(self):
super(CustomNetwork, self).__init__()
self.fc1 = CustomLinear(28*28, 512)
self.fc2 = CustomLinear(512, 256)
self.fc3 = CustomLinear(256, 128)
self.fc4 = CustomLinear(128, 64)
self.fc5 = CustomLinear(64, 10)
def forward(self, x):
x = x.view(-1, 28*28)
x = F.relu(self.fc1(x))
x = F.relu(self.fc2(x))
x = F.relu(self.fc3(x))
x = F.relu(self.fc4(x))
x = self.fc5(x)
return x
4) Instantiate your network and test it
Python3
model = CustomNetwork()
from torchsummary import summary
summary(model, (1, 28, 28))
dummy_input = torch.randn(1, 1, 28, 28)
Output:
----------------------------------------------------------------
Layer (type) Output Shape Param #
================================================================
CustomLinear-1 [-1, 512] 401,920
CustomLinear-2 [-1, 256] 131,328
CustomLinear-3 [-1, 128] 32,896
CustomLinear-4 [-1, 64] 8,256
CustomLinear-5 [-1, 10] 650
================================================================
Total params: 575,050
Trainable params: 575,050
Non-trainable params: 0
----------------------------------------------------------------
Input size (MB): 0.00
Forward/backward pass size (MB): 0.01
Params size (MB): 2.19
Estimated Total Size (MB): 2.20
----------------------------------------------------------------
5) Dataset load - Training and optimization
Python3
from torchvision import datasets, transforms
transform = transforms.Compose([transforms.ToTensor(),
transforms.Normalize((0.5,), (0.5,))])
trainset = datasets.MNIST('~/.pytorch/MNIST_data/', download=True, train=True, transform=transform)
trainloader = torch.utils.data.DataLoader(trainset, batch_size=64, shuffle=True)
testset = datasets.MNIST('~/.pytorch/MNIST_data/', download=True, train=False, transform=transform)
testloader = torch.utils.data.DataLoader(testset, batch_size=64, shuffle=False)
import torch.optim as optim
criterion = nn.CrossEntropyLoss()
optimizer = optim.Adam(model.parameters(), lr=0.001)
epochs = 5
for e in range(epochs):
running_loss = 0
for images, labels in trainloader:
optimizer.zero_grad()
output = model(images)
loss = criterion(output, labels)
loss.backward()
optimizer.step()
running_loss += loss.item()
else:
print(f"Training loss: {running_loss/len(trainloader)}")
Output:
Training loss: 0.3632937747079617
Training loss: 0.15736598590972709
Training loss: 0.11662620213974927
Training loss: 0.09595851497679973
Training loss: 0.08306442246748023
6.) Accuracy
Python3
correct = 0
total = 0
with torch.no_grad():
for images, labels in testloader:
output = model(images)
_, predicted = torch.max(output.data, 1)
total += labels.size(0)
correct += (predicted == labels).sum().item()
print(f"Accuracy: {100 * correct / total}%")
Output:
Accuracy: 97.29%
Conclusion
In conclusion, creating a custom layer in PyTorch allows you to extend the functionality of the framework and implement custom computations tailored to your specific needs.
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