X-RLflow: Graph Reinforcement Learning for Neural Network Subgraphs Transformation

Abstract: Tensor graph superoptimisation systems perform a sequence of subgraph substitution to neural networks, to find the optimal computation graph structure. Such a graph transformation process naturally falls into the framework of sequential decision-making, and existing systems typically employ a greedy search approach, which cannot explore the whole search space as it cannot tolerate a temporary loss of performance. In this paper, we address the tensor graph superoptimisation problem by exploring an alternative search approach, reinforcement learning (RL). Our proposed approach, X-RLflow, can learn to perform neural network dataflow graph rewriting, which substitutes a subgraph one at a time. X-RLflow is based on a model-free RL agent that uses a graph neural network (GNN) to encode the target computation graph and outputs a transformed computation graph iteratively. We show that our approach can outperform state-of-the-art superoptimisation systems over a range of deep learning models and achieve by up to 40% on those that are based on transformer-style architectures.