[GitHub] stephenrawls commented on issue #14053: in-place reshape ops

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stephenrawls commented on issue #14053: in-place reshape ops
URL: https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/pull/14053#issuecomment-460005020
 
 
   @szha -- Thanks for putting in this patch!
   
   I have a couple questions about the operator `expand_dims`, which I understand you are actually changing the python code to *not* use that operator, but I think still has relevance.
   
   (1) I originally discovered this because I was using the C API to call MXImperativeInvoke() using the expand_dims operator, and I noticed it was causing a copy. This fix only effects the Python version when operating on ndarrays, not users of the expand_dims operator.
   
   I see that there is a path in the operator that checks if it is an in-place operation. Presumably it uses that path if I pass an output array that is the same NDArrayHandle as the input array? But what if I still need the original input array handle, and I want to create a new output array handle with the expanded dim but still not make a copy?
   
   (2) In the issue I created you commented that: "For symbol (and thus the hybridized version), since in-place identity is possible it should not matter".
   
   Can you talk a little more about that? I assume you mean that in this case:
   ```
   x_expanded = x.expand_dims(1)
   y = x_expanded + foo
   ```
   The engine can figure out that x is not needed again, and can thus turn the expand_dims(1) into an in-place operation that doesn't make a copy?
   
   I'm not very familiar with how this part of the code works, so what happens if you had code that looked like this?
   ```
   x_expanded = x.expand_dims(1)
   y = x_expanded + foo
   z = 2 * x
   ```
   i.e. the code still makes a reference to the original x, and thus presumably the engine can't decide to use the in-place version of expand_dims in that case, right? So I guess my question is -- Does the ability for the Syblolic / hybridized engine to elide the copy depend on the code not referencing the un-expanded version of the array after calling expand_dims()? If so, it seems like there will still be some use cases where an unexpected copy is happening.

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