# Graph Transform Tool

## Table of Contents

*   [Introduction](#introduction)
*   [Using the Graph Transform Tool](#using-the-graph-transform-tool)
*   [Inspecting Graphs](#inspecting-graphs)
*   [Common Use Cases](#common-use-cases)
    *   [Optimizing for Deployment](#optimizing-for-deployment)
    *   [Fixing Missing Kernel Errors on
        Mobile](#fixing-missing-kernel-errors-on-mobile)
    *   [Shrinking File Size](#shrinking-file-size)
    *   [Eight-bit Calculations](#eight-bit-calculations)
*   [Transform Reference](#transform-reference)
    *   [add_default_attributes](#add_default_attributes)
    *   [backport_concatv2](#backport_concatv2)
    *   [flatten_atrous_conv](#flatten_atrous_conv)
    *   [fold_batch_norms](#fold_batch_norms)
    *   [fold_constants](#fold_constants)
    *   [fold_old_batch_norms](#fold_old_batch_norms)
    *   [freeze_requantization_ranges](#freeze_requantization_ranges)
    *   [fuse_convolutions](#fuse_convolutions)
    *   [insert_logging](#insert_logging)
    *   [merge_duplicate_nodes](#merge_duplicate_nodes)
    *   [obfuscate_names](#obfuscate_names)
    *   [quantize_nodes](#quantize_nodes)
    *   [quantize_weights](#quantize_weights)
    *   [remove_attribute](#remove_attribute)
    *   [remove_device](#remove_device)
    *   [remove_nodes](#remove_nodes)
    *   [rename_attribute](#rename_attribute)
    *   [rename_op](#rename_op)
    *   [round_weights](#round_weights)
    *   [sparsify_gather](#sparsify_gather)
    *   [set_device](#set_device)
    *   [sort_by_execution_order](#sort_by_execution_order)
    *   [strip_unused_nodes](#strip_unused_nodes)
*   [Writing Your Own Transforms](#writing-your-own-transforms)
    *   [Transform Functions](#transform-functions)
    *   [Pattern Syntax](#pattern-syntax)
    *   [ReplaceMatchingOpTypes](#replacematchingoptypes)
    *   [Parameters](#parameters)
    *   [Function Libraries](#function-libraries)
    *   [Registering](#registering)

## Introduction

When you have finished training a model and want to deploy it in production,
you'll often want to modify it to better run in its final environment. For
example if you're targeting a phone you might want to shrink the file size by
quantizing the weights, or optimize away batch normalization or other
training-only features. The Graph Transform framework offers a suite of tools
for modifying computational graphs, and a framework to make it easy to write
your own modifications.

This guide is structured into three main parts, first giving some tutorials on
how to perform common tasks, second a reference covering all of the different
transformations that are included, together with the options that apply to them,
and third a guide to creating your own transforms.

## Using the Graph Transform Tool

The Graph Transform tool is designed to work on models that are saved as
GraphDef files, usually in a binary protobuf format. This is the low-level
definition of a TensorFlow computational graph, including a list of nodes and
the input and output connections between them. If you're using a Python API to
train your model, this will usually be saved out in the same directory as your
checkpoints, and usually has a '.pb' suffix.

If you want to work with the values of your trained parameters, for example to
quantize weights, you'll need to run
[tensorflow/python/tools/freeze_graph.py](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/blob/master/tensorflow/python/tools/freeze_graph.py)
to convert the checkpoint values into embedded constants within the graph file
itself.

You call the Graph Transform tool itself like this:

```bash
bazel build tensorflow/tools/graph_transforms:transform_graph
bazel-bin/tensorflow/tools/graph_transforms/transform_graph \
--in_graph=tensorflow_inception_graph.pb \
--out_graph=optimized_inception_graph.pb \
--inputs='Mul:0' \
--outputs='softmax:0' \
--transforms='
strip_unused_nodes(type=float, shape="1,299,299,3")
remove_nodes(op=Identity, op=CheckNumerics)
fold_old_batch_norms
'
```

The arguments here are specifying where to read the graph from, where to write
the transformed version to, what the input and output layers are, and what
transforms to modify the graph with. The transforms are given as a list of
names, and can each have arguments themselves. These transforms define the
pipeline of modifications that are applied in order to produce the output.
Sometimes you need some transforms to happen before others, and the ordering
within the list lets you specify which happen first.
Note that the optimization
`remove_nodes(op=Identity, op=CheckNumerics)` will break the model with control
flow operations, such as `tf.cond`, `tf.map_fn`, and `tf.while`.

## Inspecting Graphs

Many of the transforms that the tool supports need to know what the input and
output layers of the model are. The best source for these is the model training
process, where for a classifier the inputs will be the nodes that receive the
data from the training set, and the output will be the predictions. If you're
unsure, the
[`summarize_graph`](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/blob/master/tensorflow/tools/graph_transforms/summarize_graph_main.cc)
tool can inspect the model and provide guesses about likely input and output nodes,
as well as other information that's useful for debugging. Here's an example of
how to use it on the [Inception V3
graph](https://storage.googleapis.com/download.tensorflow.org/models/image/imagenet/inception-2015-12-05.tgz):

```bash
bazel build tensorflow/tools/graph_transforms:summarize_graph
bazel-bin/tensorflow/tools/graph_transforms/summarize_graph --in_graph=tensorflow_inception_graph.pb
```

## Common Use Cases

This section has small guides for some of the most frequently-used
transformation pipelines, aimed at users who want to quickly accomplish one of
these tasks. A lot of them will use the Inception V3 model for their examples,
which can be downloaded from
[https://storage.googleapis.com/download.tensorflow.org/models/image/imagenet/inception-2015-12-05.tgz](https://storage.googleapis.com/download.tensorflow.org/models/image/imagenet/inception-2015-12-05.tgz).

### Optimizing for Deployment

If you've finished training your model and want to deploy it on a server or a
mobile device, you'll want it to run as fast as possible, and with as few
non-essential dependencies as you can. This recipe removes all of the nodes that
aren't called during inference, shrinks expressions that are always constant
into single nodes, and optimizes away some multiply operations used during batch
normalization by pre-multiplying the weights for convolutions.

```bash
bazel build tensorflow/tools/graph_transforms:transform_graph
bazel-bin/tensorflow/tools/graph_transforms/transform_graph \
--in_graph=tensorflow_inception_graph.pb \
--out_graph=optimized_inception_graph.pb \
--inputs='Mul' \
--outputs='softmax' \
--transforms='
  strip_unused_nodes(type=float, shape="1,299,299,3")
  remove_nodes(op=Identity, op=CheckNumerics)
  fold_constants(ignore_errors=true)
  fold_batch_norms
  fold_old_batch_norms'
```

The batch norm folding is included twice because there are two different flavors
of batch normalization used in TensorFlow. The older version was implemented
with a single op like BatchNormWithGlobalNormalization or FusedBatchNorm, and
BatchNormWithGlobalNormalization was deprecated in favor of a more recent
approach using individual ops to implement the same computation. The two
transforms are in there so that both styles are recognized and optimized.

### Fixing Missing Kernel Errors on Mobile

The mobile version of TensorFlow is focused on inference, and so by default the
list of supported ops (defined in
[tensorflow/core/kernels/BUILD:android_extended_ops](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/blob/master/tensorflow/core/kernels/BUILD)
for Bazel and
[tensorflow/contrib/makefile/tf_op_files.txt](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/blob/master/tensorflow/contrib/makefile/tf_op_files.txt)
for make builds) doesn't include a lot that are training related. This can cause
`No OpKernel was registered to support Op` errors when a GraphDef is loaded,
even if the op isn't going to be executed.

If you see this error and it's an op that you do actually want to run on mobile,
then you'll need to make local modifications to the build files to include the
right .cc file that defines it. In a lot of cases the op is just a vestigial
remnant from the training process though, and if that's true then you can run
the [strip_unused_nodes](#strip_unused_nodes), specifying the inputs and outputs
of your inference usage, to remove those unnecessary nodes:

```bash
bazel build tensorflow/tools/graph_transforms:transform_graph
bazel-bin/tensorflow/tools/graph_transforms/transform_graph \
--in_graph=tensorflow_inception_graph.pb \
--out_graph=optimized_inception_graph.pb \
--inputs='Mul' \
--outputs='softmax' \
--transforms='
  strip_unused_nodes(type=float, shape="1,299,299,3")
  fold_constants(ignore_errors=true)
  fold_batch_norms
  fold_old_batch_norms'
```

### Shrinking File Size

If you're looking to deploy your model as part of a mobile app, then keeping the
download size as small as possible is important. For most TensorFlow models, the
largest contributors to the file size are the weights passed in to convolutional
and fully-connected layers, so anything that can reduce the storage size for
those is very useful. Luckily most neural networks are resistant to noise, so
it's possible to change the representation of those weights in a lossy way
without losing very much accuracy overall.

On both iOS and Android app packages are compressed before download, so the
simplest way to reduce the bandwidth your users need to receive your app is to
provide raw data that compresses more easily. By default the weights are stored
as floating-point values, and even tiny differences between numbers result in
very different bit patterns, and so these don't compress very well. If you round
the weights so that nearby numbers are stored as exactly the same values, the
resulting bit stream has a lot more repetition and so compresses down a lot more
effectively. To try this technique on your model, run the
[round_weights](#round_weights) transform.

```bash
bazel build tensorflow/tools/graph_transforms:transform_graph
bazel-bin/tensorflow/tools/graph_transforms/transform_graph \
--in_graph=tensorflow_inception_graph.pb \
--out_graph=optimized_inception_graph.pb \
--inputs='Mul' \
--outputs='softmax' \
--transforms='
  strip_unused_nodes(type=float, shape="1,299,299,3")
  fold_constants(ignore_errors=true)
  fold_batch_norms
  fold_old_batch_norms
  round_weights(num_steps=256)'
```

You should see that the `optimized_inception_graph.pb` output file is the same
size as the input, but if you run zip on it to compress it, it's almost 70%
smaller than if you zip the original! The nice thing about this transform is
that it doesn't change the structure of the graph at all, so it's running
exactly the same operations and should have the same latency and memory usage as
before. You can adjust the `num_steps` parameter to control how many values each
weight buffer is rounded to, so lower numbers will increase the compression at
the cost of accuracy.

As a further step, you can store the weights into eight-bit values directly.
Here's the recipe for that:

```bash
bazel build tensorflow/tools/graph_transforms:transform_graph
bazel-bin/tensorflow/tools/graph_transforms/transform_graph \
--in_graph=tensorflow_inception_graph.pb \
--out_graph=optimized_inception_graph.pb \
--inputs='Mul' \
--outputs='softmax' \
--transforms='
  strip_unused_nodes(type=float, shape="1,299,299,3")
  fold_constants(ignore_errors=true)
  fold_batch_norms
  fold_old_batch_norms
  quantize_weights'
```

You should see that the size of the output graph is about a quarter of the
original. The downside to this approach compared to round_weights is that extra
decompression ops are inserted to convert the eight-bit values back into
floating point, but optimizations in TensorFlow's runtime should ensure these
results are cached and so you shouldn't see the graph run any more slowly.

So far we've been concentrating on weights because those generally take up the
most space. If you have a graph with a lot of small nodes in it, the names of
those nodes can start to take up a noticeable amount of space too. To shrink
those down, you can run the [obfuscate_names](#obfuscate_names) transform, which
replaces all the names (except for inputs and outputs) with short, cryptic but
unique ids:

```bash
bazel build tensorflow/tools/graph_transforms:transform_graph
bazel-bin/tensorflow/tools/graph_transforms/transform_graph \
--in_graph=tensorflow_inception_graph.pb \
--out_graph=optimized_inception_graph.pb \
--inputs='Mul:0' \
--outputs='softmax:0' \
--transforms='
  obfuscate_names'
```

### Eight-bit Calculations

For some platforms it's very helpful to be able to do as many calculations as
possible in eight-bit, rather than floating-point. The support for this in
TensorFlow is still experimental and evolving, but you can convert models into
quantized form using the graph transform tool:

```bash
bazel build tensorflow/tools/graph_transforms:transform_graph
bazel-bin/tensorflow/tools/graph_transforms/transform_graph \
--in_graph=tensorflow_inception_graph.pb \
--out_graph=optimized_inception_graph.pb \
--inputs='Mul' \
--outputs='softmax' \
--transforms='
  add_default_attributes
  strip_unused_nodes(type=float, shape="1,299,299,3")
  remove_nodes(op=Identity, op=CheckNumerics)
  fold_constants(ignore_errors=true)
  fold_batch_norms
  fold_old_batch_norms
  quantize_weights
  quantize_nodes
  strip_unused_nodes
  sort_by_execution_order'
```

This process converts all the operations in the graph that have eight-bit
quantized equivalents, and leaves the rest in floating point. Only a subset of
ops are supported, and on many platforms the quantized code may actually be
slower than the float equivalents, but this is a way of increasing performance
substantially when all the circumstances are right.

A full guide to optimizing for quantization is beyond the scope of this guide,
but one thing that can help is using the FakeQuantWithMinMaxVars op after Conv2D
or similar operations during training. This trains the min/max variables that
control the range used for quantization, so that the range doesn't have to be
calculated dynamically by RequantizationRange during inference.

## Transform Reference

The --transforms string is parsed as a series of transform names, each of which
can have multiple named arguments inside parentheses. Arguments are separated by
commas, and double-quotes (") can be used to hold argument values if they
themselves contain commas (for example shape definitions).

The --inputs and --outputs are shared across all transforms, since it's common
to need to know what the ingoing and outgoing nodes in the graph are. You should
make sure you set these correctly before calling the graph transform tool, and
if you're in doubt check with the model's author, or use the [`summarize_graph`](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/tree/master/tensorflow/tools/graph_transforms#inspecting-graphs) tool
to examine likely inputs and outputs.

All transforms can be passed the `ignore_errors` flag, with the value set to
either true or false. By default any errors that happen within a transform will
abort the whole process, but if you enable this then an error will just be
logged and the transform skipped. This is especially useful for optional
transforms where version errors or other unimportant problems may trigger an
error.

### add_default_attributes

Args: None

When attributes are added to ops in new versions of TensorFlow, they often have
defaults to ensure backwards compatible behavior with their original versions.
These defaults usually get added when the graph is loaded by the runtime, but if
your model is going to be processed outside of the main TensorFlow framework it
can be useful to run this update process as a transform. This process finds any
op attributes that are defined in the current TensorFlow list of ops but not
within the saved model, and sets them to the defined default for that attribute.

### backport_concatv2

Args: None

If you have a GraphDef file that has been produced by a newer version of the
TensorFlow framework and includes ConcatV2, and you want to run it on an older
version that only supports Concat, this transform will take care of converting
those newer ops to the equivalent older form.

### flatten_atrous_conv

Args: None \
Prerequisites: [fold_constants](#fold_constants)

This transform flattens atrous convolution, corresponding to a sequence of
SpaceToBatchND-Conv2D-BatchToSpaceND operations, converting it to a regular
Conv2D op with upsampled filters. This transforms should only be used in order
to run graphs having atrous convolution on platforms that do not yet natively
support SpaceToBatchND and BatchToSpaceND operations. You will need to make
sure you run [fold_constants](#fold_constants) after this transform. If
applicable, you should run this transform before
[fold_batch_norms](#fold_batch_norms).

### fold_batch_norms

Args: None \
Prerequisites: [fold_constants](#fold_constants)

This transform tries to optimize away the Mul that's introduced after a Conv2D
(or a MatMul) when batch normalization has been used during training. It scans
the graph for any channel-wise multiplies immediately after convolutions, and
multiplies the convolution's (or matrix multiplication's) weights with the Mul
instead so this can be omitted at inference time. You'll need to make sure you
run [fold_constants](#fold_constants) first, since the pattern can only be
spotted if the normal complex expression that's produced by training for the Mul
input is collapsed down into a simple constant.

### fold_constants

Args:

*   clear_output_shapes: Clears tensor shape information saved as attributes.
    Some older graphs contains out-of-date information and may cause import
    errors. Defaults to true.

Prerequisites: None

Looks for any sub-graphs within the model that always evaluate to constant
expressions, and replaces them with those constants. This optimization is always
executed at run-time after the graph is loaded, so running it offline first
won't help latency, but it can simplify the graph and so make further processing
easier. It's often useful to call this with `fold_constants(ignore_errors=true)`
to continue on past transient errors, since this is just an optimization phase.

### fold_old_batch_norms

Args: None \
Prerequisites: None

In the early days of TensorFlow, batch normalization was implemented using
single monolithic ops like `BatchNormWithGlobalNormalization` or
`FusedBatchNorm`. In modern versions, adding batch normalization from Python
will give you a series of smaller math ops instead, to achieve the same effect
without special-purpose code. If you have a graph that uses the older-style,
this transform will recognize and optimize those ops for inference, in the same
way that the [fold_batch_norms](#fold_batch_norms) transform does for the new
approach.

### freeze_requantization_ranges

Args:

*   min_max_log_file: Path to a log file containing ranges for ops.
*   min_percentile: Percentage cutoff to use to calculate an overall min.
    Defaults to 5.
*   max_percentile: Percentage cutoff to use to calculate an overall max.
    Defaults to 5.

Quantized operations like convolution or matrix multiplies take their inputs as
8-bit, but produce 32-bit results. To do further operations on these, they need
to be converted back down to the lower depth. To make the most of those eight
bits, you need to scale the thirty-two bits of original data down using a scale
that matches the range that's actually being used.

Because that range information isn't stored in the original graph, the
[quantization process](#eight-bit-calculations) inserts RequantizationRange ops
before each conversion from 32 to 8 bits. This op looks at the 32-bit output and
calculates the current min and max every time it's run.

This isn't incredibly time-consuming, but it is extra work that's nice to avoid
if possible. One way of optimizing that away is replacing those
RequantizationRange ops with a pair of Const nodes holding known min/max values,
so the scaling down can be done without having to inspect the output every time.

That's what this transform does. It's usually used in conjunction with a copy of
the graph that's had [insert_logging](#insert_logging) run on it to instrument
it to record the min/max values to stderr. Why is logging used rather than
writing to a normal file? As you'll see later, to get best results you want to
collect data from a lot of runs on real data, and for mobile apps especially
it's a lot easier to do this by copying log files. As an example, here's how
you'd add the logging operations for a quantized version of the Inception v3
graph:

```bash
bazel build tensorflow/tools/graph_transforms:transform_graph
bazel-bin/tensorflow/tools/graph_transforms/transform_graph \
--in_graph=/tmp/quantized_inception.pb \
--out_graph=/tmp/logged_quantized_inception.pb \
--inputs=Mul \
--outputs=softmax \
--transforms='
insert_logging(op=RequantizationRange, show_name=true, message="__requant_min_max:")\
'
```

Now, when you run the `/tmp/logged_quantized_inception.pb` graph, it will write
out log statements that show the value of the min and max calculated by each
RequantizationRange op. Here's an example of running label_image and saving the
log:

```bash
bazel build tensorflow/examples/label_image:label_image
bazel-bin/tensorflow/examples/label_image/label_image \
--image=${HOME}/Downloads/grace_hopper.jpg \
--input_layer=Mul \
--output_layer=softmax \
--graph=/tmp/logged_quantized_inception.pb \
--labels=${HOME}/Downloads/imagenet_comp_graph_label_strings.txt \
2>/tmp/min_max_log_small.txt
```

If you look in `/tmp/min_max_log_small.txt`, you'll see a lot of lines like
this:

```
I0108 21:45:42.261883    1972 logging_ops.cc:79] ;conv/Conv2D/eightbit/requant_range__print__;__requant_min_max:[-20.887871][22.274715]
```

This is a simple way of serializing the name of the RequantizationRange op and
its min/max values every time it's run. It's a file like this that you pass into
the transform as the `min_max_log_file` argument. The transform will attempt to
extract all of the min/max values associated with ops, ignoring any irrelevant
lines in the log, and replace the RequantizationRange ops with two Const nodes
containing the found values.

This isn't the whole story though. The min/max values can vary a lot depending
on what the particular inputs to the graph are on any given run, which means
picking ranges based on just one run can lead to clipping of values and a loss
of accuracy. To get better results, you need to run your network against a range
of different inputs. In Inception's case, I often use a thousand different
images from the training set. You can then pass the whole concatenated log from
all of the runs into the transform, and it will pick ranges based on the
aggregate of the values found for each RequantizationRange op.

To ensure that outliers don't increase the range too much, and so decrease the
accuracy by putting too many bits into rare extreme values, the `min_percentile`
and `max_percentile` arguments control how the overall min and max are chosen.
At their default values of 5, this means that the lowest 5% of the minimum
values will be discarded, taking the minimum of the remainder, and the
equivalent for the maximum.

### fuse_convolutions

Args: None \
Prerequisites: None

For graphs that use ResizeBilinear or MirrorPad ops before convolutions (e.g. to
scale up in the later stages of an image style transfer model), it can improve
memory usage and latency to combine the spatial transformations with the
convolution's im2col patch generation. This transform looks out for that
particular pattern of ops and replaces them with a fused version that combines
the resizing and padding with the convolution.

### insert_logging

Args:

*   op: Insert a Print after every occurrence of this op type. Can be repeated
    to cover multiple types. If not present, all op types will be instrumented.
*   prefix: Insert a Print after every node whose name starts with this value.
    Can be repeated to cover multiple nodes. If not present, all node names will
    be matched.
*   show_op: If true, the op type will be prepended to all log messages.
*   show_name: If true, the node's name will be prepended to all log messages.
*   message: Arbitrary text to log before the values.
*   first_n: How many times to print before suppressing. Defaults to -1, which
    means never stop.
*   summarize: How long numerical results can be before they're truncated.
    Defaults to 1024.

The Print operator writes strings to stderr when it's run inside a graph, and
prints out the numerical results of the node that it's reading from. This can be
very useful when you're debugging and want to follow particular internal values
while a graph is running. This transform allows you to insert those ops at
particular points in the graph, and customize the message that's displayed. It's
also used in conjunction with the
[freeze_requantization_ranges](#freeze_requantization_ranges) transform to
output information that it needs.

### merge_duplicate_nodes

Args: None \
Prerequisites: None

If there are Const nodes with the same types and contents, or nodes with the
same inputs and attributes, this transform will merge them together. It can be
useful when you want to cut down the number of nodes in a graph that has a lot
of redundancy (e.g. this transform is always run as part of
[quantize_nodes](#quantize_nodes) since the processing there can introduce
duplicates of constants that are used in the quantize/dequantize process).

### obfuscate_names

Args: None \
Prerequisites: None

Replaces all nodes' names with short generated ids, other than the inputs and
outputs. This also updates all references within the graph so that the structure
is preserved. This can be useful if you want to shrink the file size, or if you
want to make it harder to understand the architecture of your model before
releasing it.

### quantize_nodes

Args:

*   input_min: The lowest float value for any quantized placeholder inputs.
*   input_max: The highest float value for any quantized placeholder inputs. If
    both input_min and input_max are set, then any float placeholders in the
    graph will be replaced with quantized versions, and consts will be created
    to pass the range to subsequent operations.
*   fallback_min: The lowest float value to use for requantizing activation
    layers.
*   fallback_max: The highest float value to use for requantizing activation
    layers. If both fallback_min and fallback_max are set, then instead of using
    RequantizationRange ops to figure out the useful range dynamically when
    converting the 32-bit output of ops like QuantizedConv2D and
    QuantizedBiasAdd, hardwired consts with these values will be used instead.
    This can help performance, if you know the range of your activation layers
    ahead of time.

Prerequisites: [quantize_weights](#quantize_weights)

Replaces any calculation nodes with their eight-bit equivalents (if available),
and adds in conversion layers to allow remaining float operations to
interoperate. This is one of the most complex transforms, and involves multiple
passes and a lot of rewriting. It's also still an active area of research, so
results may vary depending on the platform and operations you're using in your
model. You should run quantize_weights first to ensure your Const ops are in
eight-bit form.

### quantize_weights

Args:

*   minimum_size: Tensors with fewer elements than this won't be quantized
(defaults to 1024)

Prerequisites: None

Converts any large (more than minimum_size) float Const op into an eight-bit
equivalent, followed by a float conversion op so that the result is usable by
subsequent nodes. This is mostly useful for [shrinking file
sizes](#shrinking-file-size), but also helps with the more advanced
[quantize_nodes](#quantize_nodes) transform. Even though there are no
prerequisites, it is advisable to run [fold_batch_norms](#fold_batch_norms) or
[fold_old_batch_norms](#fold_old_batch_norms), because rounding variances down
to zero may cause significant loss of precision.

### remove_attribute

Args:

*   attribute_name: Name of the attribute you want to remove.
*   op_name: Optional name of a single op to restrict the removal to.

Prerequisites: None

Deletes the given attribute from either all nodes, or just the one specified in
`op_name`. This can be a dangerous transform since it's easy to leave your graph
in an invalid state if you remove a required attribute. It can be useful in
special circumstances though.

### remove_device

Args: None \
Prerequisites: None

All ops can have a hardware device specified. This can be a problem when you're
loading a graph on a different system than the model was trained on, since some
specified devices may not be available. In order to work with graphs like these,
you can run this transform to wipe the slate clean and delete the device
specifier from all ops.

### remove_control_dependencies

Args: None \
Prerequisites: None

Removes all control dependencies from the graph.

### remove_nodes

Args:

*   op: The name of the op you want to remove. Can be repeated to remove
    multiple ops.

Prerequisites: None

This is a potentially dangerous transform that looks for single-input,
single-output ops with the given names, removes them from the graph, and rewires
all inputs that use to pull from them to pull from the preceding node instead.
This is most useful for getting rid of ops like `CheckNumerics` that are useful
during training but just complicate the graph and increase latency during
inference. It's dangerous because it's possible that removing some ops may
change the output of your graph, so make sure you check the overall accuracy
after using this.

### rename_attribute

Args:

*   old_attribute_name: Current name of the attribute you want to rename.
*   new_attribute_name: Name that you want the attribute to have now.
*   op_name: If this is set, only change attributes for a given op type,
    otherwise apply to all nodes with attribute names that match.

Prerequisites: None

Changes the name of the given attribute. This is often useful for upgrading
graph files as op definitions change over versions, since the renaming is often
enough to deal with minor changes.

### rename_op

Args:

*   old_op_name: Current name of the operation.
*   new_op_name: Name to change to.

Prerequisites: None

Finds all ops with the given name, and changes them to the new one. This can be
useful for version upgrading if the changes between ops are minor apart from the
name.

### round_weights

Args:

*   num_steps: How many unique values to use in each buffer.

Prerequisites: None

Rounds all float values in large Const ops (more than 15 elements) to the given
number of steps. The unique values are chosen per buffer by linearly allocating
between the largest and smallest values present. This is useful when you'll be
deploying on mobile, and you want a model that will compress effectively. See
[shrinking file size](#shrinking-file-size) for more details. Even though there
are no prerequisites, it is advisable to run
[fold_batch_norms](#fold_batch_norms) or
[fold_old_batch_norms](#fold_old_batch_norms), because rounding variances down
to zero may cause significant loss of precision.

### sparsify_gather

Args: None \
Prerequisites: None

Transform 'Gather' op to a sparsified version where 'params' input of 'Gather'
is replaced from a dense 'Const' to a 'HashTable'. 'Gather' op itself is
replaced by a hashtable lookup. This is mostly useful for reducing sparse
TF.learn linear model memory footprint.

### set_device

Args:

*   device: What device to assign to ops.
*   if_default: If this is true, only assign to ops with empty existing devices.

Updates nodes to use the specified device. A device is a way to tell the code
that executes the graph which piece of hardware it should run particular nodes
on. The right assignment to use may change between training and deployment, so
this transform (and [remove_device](#remove_device)) provide a way of updating
the placement. If the `is_default` parameter is set, then only ops that don't
have a device assigned already will be updated. This is mostly useful for
preprocessing of graphs for other stages that expect all ops to have an explicit
device assigned.

### sort_by_execution_order

Args: None \
Prerequisites: None

Arranges the nodes in the GraphDef in topological order, so that the inputs of
any given node are always earlier than the node itself. This is especially
useful when you're targeting a minimal inference engine, since you can just
execute the nodes in the given order knowing that the inputs will be computed
before they're needed.

### strip_unused_nodes

Args:

*   type: Default type for any new Placeholder nodes generated, for example
    int32, float, quint8.
*   shape: Default shape for any new Placeholder nodes generated, as
    comma-separated dimensions. For example shape="1,299,299,3". The double
    quotes are important, since otherwise the commas will be taken as argument
    separators.
*   name: Identifier for the placeholder arguments.
*   type_for_name: What type to use for the previously-given name.
*   shape_for_name: What shape to use for the previously-given name.

Prerequisites: None

Removes all nodes not used in calculated the layers given in `--outputs`, fed by
`--inputs`. This is often useful for removing training-only nodes like
save-and-restore or summary ops. It's also handy for solving the [missing kernel
errors problem](#fixing-missing-kernel-errors-on-mobile) when there are decode
or other ops you don't need in the inference path.

The biggest complication is that it sometimes has to create new Placeholder ops,
so there are options to control their characteristics. This will happen if you
bypass a DecodeJpeg op by specifying an input layer deeper in the network, for
example, so you can pass in a raw image array instead of an encoded string as an
input. The decode op will be removed, together with the Placeholder that fed it,
but a new Placeholder is needed for the input layer you specify. The type and
shape arguments let you control the attributes of any new Placeholders that are
created. Plain `type` and `shape` set global defaults, but if you have different
inputs with varying characteristics, you'll need to pass in a list of arguments
where the preceding name specifies what layer each applies to. For example, if
you had two inputs in1 and in2, you could call `strip_unused_nodes(name=in1,
type_for_name=int32, shape_for_name="2,3", name=in2, type_for_name=float,
shape_for_name="1,10,10,3")`.

## Writing Your Own Transforms

The Graph Transform Tool is designed to make it as easy as possible to create
your own optimization, modification, and pre-processing transforms. At their
heart, all of the transforms take in a valid GraphDef, make some changes, and
output a new GraphDef. Each GraphDef is just a list of NodeDefs, each defining
one node in the graph and its connections. You can find more information on the
format at [this guide to TensorFlow model
files](https://www.tensorflow.org/versions/master/extend/tool_developers/index.html),
but for a simple example take a look at
[tensorflow/tools/graph_transforms/rename_op.cc](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/tree/master/tensorflow/tools/graph_transforms/rename_op.cc),
which implements the [rename_op](#rename_op) transform:

```C++
Status RenameOp(const GraphDef& input_graph_def,
                const TransformFuncContext& context,
                GraphDef* output_graph_def) {
  if (!context.params.count("old_op_name") ||
      (context.params.at("old_op_name").size() != 1) ||
      !context.params.count("new_op_name") ||
      (context.params.at("new_op_name").size() != 1)) {
    return errors::InvalidArgument(
        "rename_op expects exactly one 'old_op_name' and 'new_op_name' "
        "argument, e.g. rename_op(old_op_name=Mul, new_op_name=Multiply)");
  }

  const string old_op_name = context.params.at("old_op_name")[0];
  const string new_op_name = context.params.at("new_op_name")[0];
  output_graph_def->Clear();
  for (const NodeDef& node : input_graph_def.node()) {
    NodeDef* new_node = output_graph_def->mutable_node()->Add();
    new_node->CopyFrom(node);
    if (node.op() == old_op_name) {
      new_node->set_op(new_op_name);
    }
  }

  return Status::OK();
}

REGISTER_GRAPH_TRANSFORM("rename_op", RenameOp);
```

The heart of this transform is the loop through the input_graph_def's nodes. We
go through each op, add a new one to the output, copy the original's contents,
and then change the op over if it matches the parameters. There's a standard set
of parameters for every transform, so they all take in a GraphDef and context,
and write out into a new GraphDef. The registration macro at the bottom lets the
tool know what function to call when it finds the `rename_op` string in a
transforms list.

### Transform Functions

The standard signature that all transform functions have is defined as
`TransformFunc`, which takes in an input GraphDef, a `TransformFuncContext`
containing environment information, writes to an output GraphDef, and returns a
Status indicating whether the transform succeeded.

The `TransformFuncContext` has a list of the inputs and outputs for the graph,
and the [parameter arguments](#parameters) that were passed into the transform
by the user.

If you write a function that matches this signature, and [register
it](#registration), the graph transform tool will take care of calling it.

### Pattern Syntax

The `rename_op` example only needs to look at a single node at a time, but one
of the most common needs is to modify small sub-graphs within a model. To make
this easy, the Graph Transform Tool provides the `OpTypePattern` syntax. This is
a simple and compact way to specify patterns of nodes that you want to look for.
The format is:

```
OP_TYPE_PATTERN ::= "{" OP "," INPUTS "}"
INPUTS ::= OP_TYPE_PATTERN
```

The `OP` field can either contain a single "*", which means match any op type,
one op type (for example "Const"), or a set of op types separated by `|` symbols
(for example "Conv2D|MatMul|BiasAdd"). General regex patterns are not supported,
just these special cases.

You can think of these patterns as very limited regular expressions designed to
pick out sub-trees in graphs. They are deliberately very constrained to the kind
of things we commonly find ourselves needing to do, to make creating and
debugging as straightforward as possible.

For example, if you want all Conv2D nodes that have a constant as their second
input, you would set up a pattern like this, using C++ initializer lists to
populate the structure:

```C++
OpTypePattern conv_pattern({"Conv2D", {{"*"}, {"Const"}}});
```

It can be easier to visualize these initializers using indentation to show the
tree structure more clearly:

```C++
OpTypePattern conv_pattern({
  "Conv2D",
  {
    {"*"},
    {"Const"}
  }
});
```

In plain English this is saying, a Conv2D op with two inputs, the first of which
is any op type, and the second is a Const op.

Here's a much more complex example, from the [quantize_nodes](#quantize_nodes)
transform:

```C++
{"QuantizeV2",
  {
    {"Dequantize"},
    {"Min",
      {
        {"Reshape",
          {
            {"Dequantize"},
            {"Const"},
          }
        },
        {"Const"},
      }
    },
    {"Max",
      {
        {"Reshape",
          {
            {"Dequantize"},
            {"Const"},
          }
        },
        {"Const"},
      }
    },
  }
}
```

This is looking for QuantizeV2 nodes, with three inputs, the first of which is a
Dequantize, the second is a Min that ultimately pulls from a Dequantize, and the
third is a Max which does the same. Assuming we know the Dequantize ops are
pulling from the same eight-bit buffer, the end result of this sub-graph is a
no-op, since it's just turning the eight-bit buffer into float, and then
immediately converting it back to eight-bits, so if we look for this pattern and
remove it we can optimize the graph without changing the result.

### ReplaceMatchingOpTypes

It's very common to want to find all occurrences of a particular sub-graph in a
model, and replace them all with a different sub-graph that keeps the same local
input and output connections. For example with
[fuse_convolutions](#fuse_convolutions), we needed to find all Conv2D ops that
read their inputs from BilinearResizes, and replace those combinations with a
single FusedResizeAndPadConv2D op, but without affecting other ops.

To make that sort of transformation easy, we created the
`ReplaceMatchingOpTypes` helper. This takes in a graph, an `OpTypePattern`
defining the sub-graph to look for, and a callback function to run for every
occurrence it finds. The job of this callback function is to look at the
`NodeMatch` that contains information about the current sub-graph, and return a
new sub-graph in the new_nodes list that will be used to replace the old
sub-graph.

You can see how it's used in practice in the
[fuse_convolutions](#fuse_convolutions) code:

```C++
TF_RETURN_IF_ERROR(ReplaceMatchingOpTypes(
    input_graph_def,  // clang-format off
    {"Conv2D",
        {
            {"ResizeBilinear"},
            {"*"}
        }
    },  // clang-format on
    [](const NodeMatch& match, const std::set<string>& input_nodes,
       const std::set<string>& output_nodes,
       std::vector<NodeDef>* new_nodes) {
      // Find all the nodes we expect in the subgraph.
      const NodeDef& conv_node = match.node;
      const NodeDef& resize_node = match.inputs[0].node;
      const NodeDef& weights_node = match.inputs[1].node;

      // We'll be reusing the old weights.
      new_nodes->push_back(weights_node);

      // Create a 'no-op' mirror padding node that has no effect.
      NodeDef pad_dims_node;
      pad_dims_node.set_op("Const");
      pad_dims_node.set_name(conv_node.name() + "_dummy_paddings");
      SetNodeAttr("dtype", DT_INT32, &pad_dims_node);
      SetNodeTensorAttr<int32>("value", {4, 2}, {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0},
                               &pad_dims_node);
      new_nodes->push_back(pad_dims_node);

      // Set up the new fused version of the convolution op.
      NodeDef fused_conv;
      fused_conv.set_op("FusedResizeAndPadConv2D");
      fused_conv.set_name(match.node.name());
      AddNodeInput(resize_node.input(0), &fused_conv);
      AddNodeInput(resize_node.input(1), &fused_conv);
      AddNodeInput(pad_dims_node.name(), &fused_conv);
      AddNodeInput(conv_node.input(1), &fused_conv);
      CopyNodeAttr(resize_node, "align_corners", "resize_align_corners",
                   &fused_conv);
      SetNodeAttr("mode", "REFLECT", &fused_conv);
      CopyNodeAttr(conv_node, "T", "T", &fused_conv);
      CopyNodeAttr(conv_node, "padding", "padding", &fused_conv);
      CopyNodeAttr(conv_node, "strides", "strides", &fused_conv);
      new_nodes->push_back(fused_conv);

      return Status::OK();
    },
    {}, &replaced_graph_def));
```

Here you can see we define the pattern to look for, and in the callback function
use information from each of the nodes in the old sub-graph to create a new
fused node. We also copy over the old weights input node so that isn't lost.

There are a few things to know about the `ReplaceMatchingOpTypes` function:

*   All of the nodes in any matching sub-graphs are removed from the new graph
    created by the function. If any of them are needed, it's the callback
    function's responsibility to add them back in. There's a `CopyOriginalMatch`
    convenience call that will copy over all of the original nodes if you decide
    you don't actually want to modify a particular sub-graph.

*   It is assumed that the same nodes will never appear in more than one matched
    sub-graph. This is to ensure that sub-trees are only replaced once, but it
    may mean that some sub-graphs aren't spotted if they overlap with earlier
    matches.

*   The calling framework tries to ensure that the graph remains sane, by
    looking at the new_nodes that are returned and making sure that no nodes
    which are needed as inputs by nodes outside the sub-graph are removed. These
    important nodes are listed in the `output_nodes` argument that's passed into
    each replacement function call. You can disable this checking by setting
    `allow_inconsistencies` to true in the options, but otherwise any
    replacements that break the graph constraints will be canceled. If you do
    allow inconsistencies, it's your transform's responsibility to fix them up
    before you return your final result. Functions like `RenameNodeInputs` can
    be useful if you are doing wholesale node renaming for example.

### Parameters

The arguments that are in parentheses after the transform name when the tool is
called are parsed and placed into the params member of the TransformFuncContext
that's given to each transform. For every named argument, there's a vector of
strings containing all the values that it was given, in the order they were
given. These are treated a bit like command-line parameters, and it's the
transform's responsibility to parse them into the data types it needs, and raise
errors by returning a bad Status if any of them are ill-formed.

As an example, here's a hypothetical transform call:

```
some_transform(foo=a, foo=b, bar=2, bob="1,2,3")
```

Here's what the std::map of strings looks like in the params member:

```
{{"foo", {"a", "b"}}, {"bar", {"2"}}, {"bob", {"1,2,3"}}}
```

The double quotes around the comma-separated argument to `bob` are important
because otherwise they'll be treated as separate arguments, and the parsing will
fail.

Here's an example of how [round_weights](#round_weights) reads its `num_steps`
parameter:

```C++
TF_RETURN_IF_ERROR(context.GetOneInt32Parameter("num_steps", 256, &num_steps));
```

If the conversion fails or the parameter occurs more than once the helper
function will raise a meaningful error through the status result of the
transform. If the parameter isn't specified at all then the default will be
used.

### Function Libraries

A newer feature of TensorFlow is the ability to create libraries of functions as
part of graphs. These are a bit like templates, which define macro operations in
terms of smaller components, which can then be instantiated with different input
and output connections inside the graph just like regular ops. Right now the
graph transform tool just copies these libraries between the input and output
graphs, but it's likely that more complex operations will be supported on them
in the future.

### Registering

The Graph Transform Tool associates names of transforms with the code to
implement them using the `REGISTER_GRAPH_TRANSFORM()` macro. This takes a string
and a function, and automatically registers the transform with the tool. You
will need to watch out for a few things though:

*   Because it's using global C++ objects in each file under the hood, the
    linker can sometimes strip them out and lose the registration. In Bazel you
    need to make sure you're linking any new transforms in as libraries, and use
    the `alwayslink` flag in your `cc_binary` call.

*   You should be able to create your own copy of the transform_graph tool by
    linking against the transform_graph_main_lib library in
    tensorflow/tools/graph_transforms/BUILD. This contains all the `main()`
    logic to parse command line arguments and call transforms.
