average_gradients.py

# Copyright 2015 The TensorFlow Authors. All Rights Reserved.
#
# Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
# you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
# You may obtain a copy of the License at
#
#     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
#
# Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
# distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
# WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
# See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
# limitations under the License.

from __future__ import absolute_import, division, print_function
import tensorflow as tf

def average_gradients(tower_grads):

    average_grads = []
    for grad_and_vars in zip(*tower_grads):
    # Note that each grad_and_vars looks like the following:
    #   ((grad0_gpu0, var0_gpu0), ... , (grad0_gpuN, var0_gpuN))
        grads = []
        for g, _ in grad_and_vars:
            # Add 0 dimension to the gradients to represent the tower.
            expanded_g = tf.expand_dims(g, 0)

            # Append on a 'tower' dimension which we will average over below.
            grads.append(expanded_g)

        # Average over the 'tower' dimension.
        grad = tf.concat(axis=0, values=grads)
        grad = tf.reduce_mean(grad, 0)

        # Keep in mind that the Variables are redundant because they are shared
        # across towers. So .. we will just return the first tower's pointer to
        # the Variable.
        v = grad_and_vars[0][1]
        grad_and_var = (grad, v)
        average_grads.append(grad_and_var)

    return average_grads