Using MindSpore Lite for Model Inference

When to Use

MindSpore Lite is an AI engine that provides AI model inference for different hardware devices. It has been used in a wide range of fields, such as image classification, target recognition, facial recognition, and character recognition.

This document describes the general development process for MindSpore Lite model inference.

Basic Concepts

Before getting started, you need to understand the following basic concepts:

Tensor: a special data structure that is similar to arrays and matrices. It is a basic data structure used in MindSpore Lite network operations.

Float16 inference: a mode in which Float16 is used for inference. Float16, also called half-precision, uses 16 bits to represent a number.

Available APIs

APIs involved in MindSpore Lite model inference are categorized into context APIs, model APIs, and tensor APIs.

Context APIs

Model APIs

Tensor APIs

How to Develop

The following figure shows the development process for MindSpore Lite model inference.

Figure 1 Development process for MindSpore Lite model inference

The development process consists of the following main steps:

1. Prepare the required model.

   The required model can be downloaded directly or obtained using the model conversion tool.

   • If the downloaded model is in the .ms format, you can use it directly for inference. The following uses the mobilenetv2.ms model as an example.
   • If the downloaded model uses a third-party framework, such as TensorFlow, TensorFlow Lite, Caffe, or ONNX, you can use the model conversion tool to convert it to the .ms format.

2. Create a context, and set parameters such as the number of runtime threads and device type.

   // Create a context, and set the number of runtime threads to 2 and the thread affinity mode to 1 (big cores first).
   OH_AI_ContextHandle context = OH_AI_ContextCreate();
   if (context == NULL) {
     printf("OH_AI_ContextCreate failed.\n");
     return OH_AI_STATUS_LITE_ERROR;
   }
   const int thread_num = 2;
   OH_AI_ContextSetThreadNum(context, thread_num);
   OH_AI_ContextSetThreadAffinityMode(context, 1);
   // Set the device type to CPU, and disable Float16 inference.
   OH_AI_DeviceInfoHandle cpu_device_info = OH_AI_DeviceInfoCreate(OH_AI_DEVICETYPE_CPU);
   if (cpu_device_info == NULL) {
     printf("OH_AI_DeviceInfoCreate failed.\n");
     OH_AI_ContextDestroy(&context);
     return OH_AI_STATUS_LITE_ERROR;
   }
   OH_AI_DeviceInfoSetEnableFP16(cpu_device_info, false);
   OH_AI_ContextAddDeviceInfo(context, cpu_device_info);
   

3. Create, load, and build the model.

   Call OH_AI_ModelBuildFromFile to load and build the model.

   In this example, the argv[1] parameter passed to OH_AI_ModelBuildFromFile indicates the specified model file path.

   // Create a model.
   OH_AI_ModelHandle model = OH_AI_ModelCreate();
   if (model == NULL) {
     printf("OH_AI_ModelCreate failed.\n");
     OH_AI_ContextDestroy(&context);
     return OH_AI_STATUS_LITE_ERROR;
   }
   
   // Load and build the model. The model type is OH_AI_ModelTypeMindIR.
   int ret = OH_AI_ModelBuildFromFile(model, argv[1], OH_AI_ModelTypeMindIR, context);
   if (ret != OH_AI_STATUS_SUCCESS) {
     printf("OH_AI_ModelBuildFromFile failed, ret: %d.\n", ret);
     OH_AI_ModelDestroy(&model);
     return ret;
   }
   

4. Input data.

   Before executing model inference, you need to populate data to the input tensor. In this example, random data is used to populate the model.

   // Obtain the input tensor.
   OH_AI_TensorHandleArray inputs = OH_AI_ModelGetInputs(model);
   if (inputs.handle_list == NULL) {
     printf("OH_AI_ModelGetInputs failed, ret: %d.\n", ret);
     OH_AI_ModelDestroy(&model);
     return ret;
   }
   // Use random data to populate the tensor.
   ret = GenerateInputDataWithRandom(inputs);
   if (ret != OH_AI_STATUS_SUCCESS) {
     printf("GenerateInputDataWithRandom failed, ret: %d.\n", ret);
     OH_AI_ModelDestroy(&model);
     return ret;
   }
   

5. Execute model inference.

   Call OH_AI_ModelPredict to perform model inference.

   // Execute model inference.
   OH_AI_TensorHandleArray outputs;
   ret = OH_AI_ModelPredict(model, inputs, &outputs, NULL, NULL);
   if (ret != OH_AI_STATUS_SUCCESS) {
     printf("OH_AI_ModelPredict failed, ret: %d.\n", ret);
     OH_AI_ModelDestroy(&model);
     return ret;
   }
   

6. Obtain the output.

   After model inference is complete, you can obtain the inference result through the output tensor.

   // Obtain the output tensor and print the information.
   for (size_t i = 0; i < outputs.handle_num; ++i) {
     OH_AI_TensorHandle tensor = outputs.handle_list[i];
     int64_t element_num = OH_AI_TensorGetElementNum(tensor);
     printf("Tensor name: %s, tensor size is %zu ,elements num: %lld.\n", OH_AI_TensorGetName(tensor),
           OH_AI_TensorGetDataSize(tensor), element_num);
     const float *data = (const float *)OH_AI_TensorGetData(tensor);
     printf("output data is:\n");
     const int max_print_num = 50;
     for (int j = 0; j < element_num && j <= max_print_num; ++j) {
       printf("%f ", data[j]);
     }
     printf("\n");
   }
   

7. Destroy the model.

   If the MindSpore Lite inference framework is no longer needed, you need to destroy the created model.

   // Destroy the model.
   OH_AI_ModelDestroy(&model);
   

Verification

1. Compile CMakeLists.txt.

   cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.14)
   project(Demo)
   
   add_executable(demo main.c)
   
   target_link_libraries(
           demo
           mindspore-lite.huawei
           pthread
           dl
   )
   

   • To use ohos-sdk for cross compilation, you need to set the native toolchain path for the CMake tool as follows: -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE="/xxx/ohos-sdk/linux/native/build/cmake/ohos.toolchain.cmake".

   • The toolchain builds a 64-bit application by default. To build a 32-bit application, add the following configuration: -DOHOS_ARCH="armeabi-v7a".

2. Run the CMake tool.

   • Use hdc_std to connect to the device and put demo and mobilenetv2.ms to the same directory on the board.
   • Run the hdc_std shell command to access the device, go to the directory where demo is located, and run the following command:

   ./demo mobilenetv2.ms
   

   The inference is successful if the output is similar to the following:

   # ./QuickStart ./mobilenetv2.ms                                            
   Tensor name: Softmax-65, tensor size is 4004 ,elements num: 1001.
   output data is:
   0.000018 0.000012 0.000026 0.000194 0.000156 0.001501 0.000240 0.000825 0.000016 0.000006 0.000007 0.000004 0.000004 0.000004 0.000015 0.000099 0.000011 0.000013 0.000005 0.000023 0.000004 0.000008 0.000003 0.000003 0.000008 0.000014 0.000012 0.000006 0.000019 0.000006 0.000018 0.000024 0.000010 0.000002 0.000028 0.000372 0.000010 0.000017 0.000008 0.000004 0.000007 0.000010 0.000007 0.000012 0.000005 0.000015 0.000007 0.000040 0.000004 0.000085 0.000023