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Machine Learning Benchmark Scripts

Develop branch build status:

Build Status

Visit http://www.mlpack.org/benchmark.html to see our latest results.

This repository contains a collection of benchmark scripts for various machine learning libraries. The scripts serve as an infrastructure for measuring and comparing the performance, of different algorithms and libraries on various datasets using visual tools and different metrics. It aims to give the machine learning community a streamlined tool to get information on those changesets that may have caused speedups or slowdowns.

The system has several key attributes that lead to its highly and easily customizable nature. It makes extensive use of the Python standard library and the YAML file format to provide a very easy way to efficiently run the performance measurements on custom setups with different operating systems. The tools and metrics used for the visualization are highly flexible, e.g. with one line you can measure the size of your program’s stack, get the variance or standard deviation of the measurements. The architecture is easily maintainable since each part is a single module. with the results that the framework can be easily integrated into the main workflow.

Quick links to this file:

Prerequisites

  • Python 3.3+: The main benchmark script is written with the programming language python: The benchmark script by default uses the version of Python on your path.
  • Python-yaml: PyYAML is a YAML parser and emitter for Python. We've picked YAML as the configuration file format for specifying the structure for the project.
  • SQLite (Optional): SQLite is a lightweight disk-based database that doesn't require a separate server process. We use the python built-in SQLite database to save the benchmark results.
  • Valgrind (Optional): Valgrind is a suite of tools for debugging and profiling. This package is only needed if you want to run the memory benchmarks.
  • python-xmlrunner (Optional): The xmlrunner module is a unittest test runner that can save test results to XML files. This package is only needed if you want to run the tests.

Running

Benchmarks are run with the make command.

  • make run -- Perform the benchmark.
  • make memory -- Get memory profiling information.
  • make test -- Test the configuration file. Check for correct syntax and then try to open files referred in the configuration file.
  • make setup -- Download and set up all of the libraries to compare against.
  • make datasets -- Download datasets into the datasets/ folder.
  • make scripts -- Make additional scripts.

Running make with no additional arguments except the task option will use the default parameters specified in the Makefile (e.g. config file). You can set an alternate config file with the CONFIG flag. You can also run a single benchmark script with the BLOCK and METHODBLOCK flag. Use make help to see a full list of options.

Running the scripts

Benchmarking and save the Output

By default running the benchmarks will produce some logging to standard out. To save the results in the database, set the LOG flag. If you wanted to run all scripts and save the output in the database located in the reports directory use the following command line:

$ make run LOG=True

Benchmarking a Single Method

If you are making changes to any of the scripts, or if you simply want to benchmark a single method, you can benchmark the method with the METHODBLOCK flag. For example, if you only want to benchmark all K-Means scripts use the following command line:

$ make run METHODBLOCK=KMEANS

You can also run a list of methods with the following command line:

$ make run METHODBLOCK=KMEANS,ALLKNN

Benchmarking a Single Library

If you are making changes to any of the scripts for a specified library, or if you simply want to benchmark a single library, you can benchmark the library with the BLOCK flag. For example, if you only wanted to benchmark all MLPACK scripts use the following command line:

$ make run BLOCK=mlpack

You can also benchmark a list of libraries with the following command line:

$ make run BLOCK=mlpack,shogun

Benchmarking a Single Libary and a Single Method

You can also combine the BLOCK and METHODBLOCK flag to benchmark single methods for a specific libraries. For example, if you only wanted to benchmark the MLPACK and Shogun, K-Means scripts use the following command line:

$ make run BLOCK=mlpack,shogun METHODBLOCK=KMEANS

Update Benchmark Results

In case of a failure you can update the last benchmark results stored in the database. You can combine the other flag to specify the libary or method you like to update. For example, if you only wanted to update the MLPACK, HMM script use the following command line:

$ make run UPDATE=True BLOCK=mlpack METHODBLOCK=HMM

Directory Structure

Source directories

./                      -- config file and the Makefile to start the benchmarks
./datasets              -- several datasets which are used for the benchmarks
./util                  -- common files used by several scripts
./tests                 -- source code for tests
./benchmark             -- executables for the different benchmarks tasks
./methods/<library>     -- source code for scripts

Working directories

./
./reports               -- output from the memory_benchmark executable
./reports/benchmark.db  -- database for benchmark runs

Getting the datasets

You can get the datasets by running:

$ make datasets

from within your working directory. This will download the datasets listed in datasets/dataset-urls.txt.

Configuration

The benchmark script requires several parameters that specify the benchmark runs, the parameters of the graph to be generated, etc.

For complete details, refer the wiki page : https://github.com/zoq/benchmarks/wiki/Google-Summer-of-Code-2014-:-Improvement-of-Automatic-Benchmarking-System

The benchmark script comes with a default configuration. The default configuration will run all available benchmarks. This configuration can take quite a while to run (more than two weeks), so it would be best to adjust the configuration to suite your time constraints. You can also use command line options to selectively run benchmarks the options are described below.

General Block

The general block contains some settings that control the benchmark itself, and the output of the reports page.

library: general
settings:
    timeout: 9000
    database: 'reports/benchmark.db'
    keepReports: 20
    topChartColor: '#F3F3F3'
    chartColor: '#FFFFFF'
    textColor: '#6E6E6E'
  • timeout: Limit the execution time for the benchmarks. This can be an easy way to keep a benchmark from eating up all the execution time.
  • database: The location of the databse. If there is no database at the specified location, the script creates a new database.
  • keepReports: Limit the report pages. This can be an easy way to keep a benchmark from eating up all your space.
  • topChartColor: The background color of the top chart.
  • chartColor: The background color of the charts.
  • textColor: The font color of the charts.

Library Block

The library block contains some settings that control the specified benchmark scripts.

library: mlpack
methods:
    PCA:
        run: ['timing', 'metric', 'bootstrap']
        script: methods/mlpack/pca.py
        format: [csv, txt]
        datasets:
            - files: [['datasets/iris_train.csv', 'datasets/iris_test.csv', 'datasets/iris_labels.csv']]

            - files: [['datasets/wine_train.csv', 'datasets/wine_test.csv', 'datasets/wine_labels.csv']]
              options: '-d 2'
    NMF:
        run: []
        script: methods/mlpack/nmf.py
        format: [csv, txt]
        datasets:
            - files: [['datasets/iris_train.csv', 'datasets/iris_test.csv', 'datasets/iris_labels.csv']]
              options: '-r 6 -s 42 -u multdist'
library
Description A name to identify the library. The name is also used for the output, for this reason it should be avoided to choose a name with more than 23 characters.
Syntax library: name
Required Yes
script
Description Path to the current method which should be tested. You can use the relative path from the benchmark root folder, a absolute path or a symlink.
Syntax script: name
Required Yes
files
Description List of datasets for this method. You can use the relative path from the benchmark root folder, a absolute path or a symlink. Requires a method more than one data set, you should add the data sets in an extra list.
Syntax files: [...] or [ [...] ]
Required Yes
run
Description List of benchmark tasks for this method.
Syntax run: ['timing', 'metrics']
Default []
Required No
iterations
Description The number of executions for this method. It is recommended to set the value higher than one in order to obtain meaningful results.
Syntax iterations: number
Default 3
Required No
format
Description A array of supported file formats for this method. If this data set isn't available in this format, the benchmark script tries to convert the data set.
Syntax format: [...]
Required No
options
Description description The string contains options for this method. The string is passed when the script is started.
Syntax options: String
Default None
Required No

Minimal Configuration

The configuration described here is the smallest possible configuration. The configuration combines all required options to benchmark a method.

# MLPACK:
# A Scalable C++  Machine Learning Library
library: mlpack
methods:
    PCA:
        script: methods/mlpack/pca.py
        format: [csv, txt, hdf5, bin]
        datasets:
            - files: ['isolet.csv']

In this case we benchmark the pca method located in methods/mlpack/pca.py and use the isolet dataset. The pca method supports the following formats txt, csv, hdf5 and bin. The benchmark script use the default values for the non-specified values.

Full Configuration

Combining all the elements discussed above results in the following configuration, which should be placed typically in the config.yaml.

# MLPACK:
# A Scalable C++  Machine Learning Library
library: mlpack
methods:
    PCA:
        script: methods/mlpack/pca.py
        format: [csv, txt, hdf5, bin]
        run: ['timing', 'metric', 'bootstrap']
        iterations: 2
        datasets:
            - files: [['datasets/iris_train.csv', 'datasets/iris_test.csv', 'datasets/iris_labels.csv']]
              options: '-s'

In this case we benchmark the pca method located in methods/mlpack/pca.py with the isolet and the cities dataset. The pca method scales the data before running the pca method. The benchmark performs twice for each dataset. Additionally the pca.py script supports the following file formats txt, csv, hdf5 and bin. If the data isn't available in this particular case the format will be generated.

Competing libraries

Citation details

If you use the benchmarks in your work, we'd really appreciate it if you could cite the following paper (given in BiBTeX format):

@inproceedings{edel2014automatic,
  title={An automatic benchmarking system},
  author={Edel, Marcus and Soni, Anand and Curtin, Ryan R},
  booktitle={NIPS 2014 Workshop on Software Engineering for Machine Learning (SE4ML’2014)},
  volume={1},
  year={2014}
}