MATLAB Demo MerchData reproducibility Problem

Dear all,

I am trying the MATLAB demo for Transfer Learning using Alexnet found here:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/deeplearning/ref/alexnet.html

However, I couldn't reproduce the same result when using the same dataset. My code as follows:

% Inputes

Number_of_Images_Each_Folder = 14;
Number_of_Classes = 5;
Starting_T = 1;


Experiment_Address = 'I:\DeepLearningDemos_1';  % parent directory of MerchData folder

%***********************************
Starting_T = Starting_T + 2; % because "files" strats from 3
Number_of_T = Number_of_Classes +2; % because "files" strats from 3
%*************************************
%
Root = pwd;
%
files = dir(Root);
net = alexnet;
layers = net.Layers;

Image_Data = '\MerchData';

cd (Experiment_Address)  % go to the images address

layers(23) = fullyConnectedLayer(Number_of_Classes);
layers(25) = classificationLayer;

%%
allImages = imageDatastore('MerchData', 'IncludeSubfolders', true, 'LabelSource', 'foldernames');
[imdsTrain, imdsValidation] = splitEachLabel(allImages, 0.8, 'randomize');

%************************************************************************************************

%%
layersTransfer = net.Layers(1:end-3);

%%
layers = [
    layersTransfer
    fullyConnectedLayer(Number_of_Classes,'WeightLearnRateFactor',20,'BiasLearnRateFactor',20)
    softmaxLayer
    classificationLayer];

%%
inputSize = net.Layers(1).InputSize

%%
pixelRange = [-30 30];
imageAugmenter = imageDataAugmenter( ...
    'RandXReflection',true, ...
    'RandXTranslation',pixelRange, ...
    'RandYTranslation',pixelRange);
augimdsTrain = augmentedImageDatastore(inputSize(1:2),imdsTrain, ...
    'DataAugmentation',imageAugmenter);


%%
augimdsValidation = augmentedImageDatastore(inputSize(1:2),imdsValidation);


%%

options = trainingOptions('sgdm', ...
    'MiniBatchSize',10, ...
    'MaxEpochs',6, ...
    'InitialLearnRate',1e-4, ...
    'Shuffle','every-epoch', ...
    'ValidationData',augimdsValidation, ...
    'ValidationFrequency',3, ...
    'Verbose',false, ...
    'Plots','training-progress');

%%

rng(0)

netTransfer = trainNetwork(augimdsTrain,layers,options);
%%
save net
% Measure network accuracy
predictedLabels = classify(netTransfer, imdsValidation);
accuracy = mean(predictedLabels == imdsValidation.Labels)

%               End of training

%**************************************************************************
%**************************************************************************
%%
Result_Table = {};

for T = Starting_T:Number_of_T  
    %
    allImages_Group_B = imageDatastore('MerchData', 'IncludeSubfolders', true, 'LabelSource', 'foldernames');
    dir_Group_B = allImages_Group_B.Files{Number_of_Images_Each_Folder*(T-2),1};
    [Testing_Images_Path, name, ext] = fileparts(dir_Group_B);
    cd (Testing_Images_Path)

    for Tr = 1:Number_of_Images_Each_Folder       
        fileList = getAllFiles(Testing_Images_Path);
        Testing_Image = imread(fileList{Tr,1});
        
        First_Col_Table (Tr) = Tr; 
        p = predict(netTransfer, Testing_Image);
        [p3,i3] = maxk(p,5); %Top 5 predictions
        netTransfer.Layers(end)
        All_posibilities = netTransfer.Layers(end).ClassNames(i3)  
        
        %***********************************************************
        First_high_Posibility_1 = All_posibilities{1,1};
        First_high_Posibility(Tr) =  {First_high_Posibility_1};

        Second_high_Posibility_2 = All_posibilities{2,1};
        Second_high_Posibility(Tr) = {Second_high_Posibility_2};

        Third_high_Posibility_3 = All_posibilities{3,1};
        Third_high_Posibility (Tr) = {Third_high_Posibility_3};

        Fourth_high_Posibility_4 = All_posibilities{4,1};
        Fourth_high_Posibility (Tr) = {Fourth_high_Posibility_4};
        
        Fifth_high_Posibility_5 = All_posibilities{5,1};
        Fifth_high_Posibility (Tr) = {Fifth_high_Posibility_5};
    end
    
    
    First_high_Pos = First_high_Posibility'; 
    Second_high_Pos = Second_high_Posibility';
    Third_high_Pos = Third_high_Posibility';
    Fourth_high_Pos = Fourth_high_Posibility';
    Fifth_high_Pos = Fifth_high_Posibility';

    New_ResultsX = [First_high_Pos, Second_high_Pos, Third_high_Pos, Fourth_high_Pos, Fifth_high_Pos];
    
    cd (Root)  % go back to the parent folder
    xlswrite('All_possibilities_MerchData', New_ResultsX, T-2)
end

You will need (getAllFiles) function to import all the images in the current folder

function fileList = getAllFiles(dirName)

  dirData = dir(dirName);      %# Get the data for the current directory
  dirIndex = [dirData.isdir];  %# Find the index for directories
  fileList = {dirData(~dirIndex).name}';  %'# Get a list of the files
  if ~isempty(fileList)
    fileList = cellfun(@(x) fullfile(dirName,x),...  %# Prepend path to files
                       fileList,'UniformOutput',false);
  end
  subDirs = {dirData(dirIndex).name};  %# Get a list of the subdirectories
  validIndex = ~ismember(subDirs,{'.','..'});  %# Find index of subdirectories
                                               %#   that are not '.' or '..'
  for iDir = find(validIndex)                  %# Loop over valid subdirectories
    nextDir = fullfile(dirName,subDirs{iDir});    %# Get the subdirectory path
    fileList = [fileList; getAllFiles(nextDir)];  %# Recursively call getAllFiles
  end

end

If you run this code two times and save the excel file results with different names, you can compare and see that results are different from each other. Any idea on how to solve this problem?

Any comment will be appreciated.

Meshoo

Answer 1

[Naoya]

Unfortunately, there is no way to obtain reproducible results on GPU mode, even though the user specfied same seed for random number on MATLAB side.

Answer 2

[Naoya]

The irreproducibility that you reported is due to the non-determinism of the cuDNN routines which Deep Learning Toolbox uses when training on the GPU. The non-deterministic routines are restricted to the backward methods, so a forward pass should always be reproducible.

The simplest way to guarantee reproducible training runs is to train on the CPU, though the tranfer learning script did not take long time to train on CPU.

[Meshooo]

I have too many samples and doing the processing in CPU takes really a lot of time.

Is there any alternative way to optain reproducible results using GPU?

Many thanks in advance.