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1. GPU-Based Homotopy Continuation for Minimal Problems in Computer Vision

   Chiang-Heng Chien ; Hongyi Fan ; Ahmad Abdelfattah ; Elias Tsigaridas ; Stanimire Tomov ; Benjamin Kimia ( June 2022 , IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition)

   Systems of polynomial equations arise frequently in computer vision, especially in multiview geometry problems. Traditional methods for solving these systems typically aim to eliminate variables to reach a univariate polynomial, e.g., a tenth-order polynomial for 5-point pose estimation, using clever manipulations, or more generally using Grobner basis, resultants, and elimination templates, leading to successful algorithms for multiview geometry and other problems. However, these methods do not work when the problem is complex and when they do, they face efficiency and stability issues. Homotopy Continuation (HC) can solve more complex problems without the stability issues, and with guarantees of a global solution, but they are known to be slow. In this paper we show that HC can be parallelized on a GPU, showing significant speedups up to 56 times on polynomial benchmarks. We also show that GPU-HC can be generically applied to a range of computer vision problems, including 4-view triangulation and trifocal pose estimation with unknown focal length, which cannot be solved with elimination template but they can be efficiently solved with HC. GPU-HC opens the door to easy formulation and solution of a range of computer vision problems. 

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2. Parallel Path Tracking for Homotopy Continuation using GPU

   Chiang-Heng Chien ; Hongyi Fan ; Ahmad Abdelfattah ; Elias Tsigaridas ; Stanimire Tomov ; Benjamin Kimia ( July 2022 , Proceedings of the International Symposium on Symbolic and Algebraic Computation)

   The Homotopy Continuation (HC) method is known as a prevailing and robust approach for solving numerically complicated polyno- mial systems with guarantees of a global solution. In recent years we are witnessing tremendous advances in the theoretical and al- gorithmic foundations of HC. Furthermore, there are very efficient implementations of several variants of HC that solve large polyno- mial systems that we could not even imagine some years ago. The success of HC has motivated approaching even larger problems or gaining real-time performance. We propose to accelerate the HC computation significantly through a parallel implementation of path tracker in both straight line coefficient HC and parameter HC on a Graphical Processing Unit (GPU). The implementation involves computing independent tracks to convergence simulta- neously, as well as a parallel linear system solver and a parallel evaluation of Jacobian matrices and vectors. We evaluate the per- formance of our implementation using both popular benchmarking polynomial systems as well as polynomial systems of computer vi- sion applications. The experiments demonstrate that our GPU-HC provides as high as 28× and 20× faster than the multi-core Julia in polynomial benchmark problems and polynomial systems for computer vision applications, respectively. Code is made publicly available in https://rb.gy/cvcwgq. 

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3. Issues in the Reproducibility of Deep Learning Results

   https://doi.org/10.1109/SPMB47826.2019.9037840  

   Jean-Paul, S. ; Elseify, T. ; Obeid, I. ; Picone, J. ( December 2019 , IEEE Signal Processing in Medicine and Biology Symposium (SPMB))

   Obeid, I. ; Selesnik, I. ; Picone, J. (Ed.)

   The Neuronix high-performance computing cluster allows us to conduct extensive machine learning experiments on big data [1]. This heterogeneous cluster uses innovative scheduling technology, Slurm [2], that manages a network of CPUs and graphics processing units (GPUs). The GPU farm consists of a variety of processors ranging from low-end consumer grade devices such as the Nvidia GTX 970 to higher-end devices such as the GeForce RTX 2080. These GPUs are essential to our research since they allow extremely compute-intensive deep learning tasks to be executed on massive data resources such as the TUH EEG Corpus [2]. We use TensorFlow [3] as the core machine learning library for our deep learning systems, and routinely employ multiple GPUs to accelerate the training process. Reproducible results are essential to machine learning research. Reproducibility in this context means the ability to replicate an existing experiment – performance metrics such as error rates should be identical and floating-point calculations should match closely. Three examples of ways we typically expect an experiment to be replicable are: (1) The same job run on the same processor should produce the same results each time it is run. (2) A job run on a CPU and GPU should produce identical results. (3) A job should produce comparable results if the data is presented in a different order. System optimization requires an ability to directly compare error rates for algorithms evaluated under comparable operating conditions. However, it is a difficult task to exactly reproduce the results for large, complex deep learning systems that often require more than a trillion calculations per experiment [5]. This is a fairly well-known issue and one we will explore in this poster. Researchers must be able to replicate results on a specific data set to establish the integrity of an implementation. They can then use that implementation as a baseline for comparison purposes. A lack of reproducibility makes it very difficult to debug algorithms and validate changes to the system. Equally important, since many results in deep learning research are dependent on the order in which the system is exposed to the data, the specific processors used, and even the order in which those processors are accessed, it becomes a challenging problem to compare two algorithms since each system must be individually optimized for a specific data set or processor. This is extremely time-consuming for algorithm research in which a single run often taxes a computing environment to its limits. Well-known techniques such as cross-validation [5,6] can be used to mitigate these effects, but this is also computationally expensive. These issues are further compounded by the fact that most deep learning algorithms are susceptible to the way computational noise propagates through the system. GPUs are particularly notorious for this because, in a clustered environment, it becomes more difficult to control which processors are used at various points in time. Another equally frustrating issue is that upgrades to the deep learning package, such as the transition from TensorFlow v1.9 to v1.13, can also result in large fluctuations in error rates when re-running the same experiment. Since TensorFlow is constantly updating functions to support GPU use, maintaining an historical archive of experimental results that can be used to calibrate algorithm research is quite a challenge. This makes it very difficult to optimize the system or select the best configurations. The overall impact of all of these issues described above is significant as error rates can fluctuate by as much as 25% due to these types of computational issues. Cross-validation is one technique used to mitigate this, but that is expensive since you need to do multiple runs over the data, which further taxes a computing infrastructure already running at max capacity. GPUs are preferred when training a large network since these systems train at least two orders of magnitude faster than CPUs [7]. Large-scale experiments are simply not feasible without using GPUs. However, there is a tradeoff to gain this performance. Since all our GPUs use the NVIDIA CUDA® Deep Neural Network library (cuDNN) [8], a GPU-accelerated library of primitives for deep neural networks, it adds an element of randomness into the experiment. When a GPU is used to train a network in TensorFlow, it automatically searches for a cuDNN implementation. NVIDIA’s cuDNN implementation provides algorithms that increase the performance and help the model train quicker, but they are non-deterministic algorithms [9,10]. Since our networks have many complex layers, there is no easy way to avoid this randomness. Instead of comparing each epoch, we compare the average performance of the experiment because it gives us a hint of how our model is performing per experiment, and if the changes we make are efficient. In this poster, we will discuss a variety of issues related to reproducibility and introduce ways we mitigate these effects. For example, TensorFlow uses a random number generator (RNG) which is not seeded by default. TensorFlow determines the initialization point and how certain functions execute using the RNG. The solution for this is seeding all the necessary components before training the model. This forces TensorFlow to use the same initialization point and sets how certain layers work (e.g., dropout layers). However, seeding all the RNGs will not guarantee a controlled experiment. Other variables can affect the outcome of the experiment such as training using GPUs, allowing multi-threading on CPUs, using certain layers, etc. To mitigate our problems with reproducibility, we first make sure that the data is processed in the same order during training. Therefore, we save the data from the last experiment and to make sure the newer experiment follows the same order. If we allow the data to be shuffled, it can affect the performance due to how the model was exposed to the data. We also specify the float data type to be 32-bit since Python defaults to 64-bit. We try to avoid using 64-bit precision because the numbers produced by a GPU can vary significantly depending on the GPU architecture [11-13]. Controlling precision somewhat reduces differences due to computational noise even though technically it increases the amount of computational noise. We are currently developing more advanced techniques for preserving the efficiency of our training process while also maintaining the ability to reproduce models. In our poster presentation we will demonstrate these issues using some novel visualization tools, present several examples of the extent to which these issues influence research results on electroencephalography (EEG) and digital pathology experiments and introduce new ways to manage such computational issues. 

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4. Provably efficient machine learning for quantum many-body problems

   https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abk3333  

   Huang, Hsin-Yuan ; Kueng, Richard ; Torlai, Giacomo ; Albert, Victor V. ; Preskill, John ( September 2022 , Science)

   INTRODUCTION Solving quantum many-body problems, such as finding ground states of quantum systems, has far-reaching consequences for physics, materials science, and chemistry. Classical computers have facilitated many profound advances in science and technology, but they often struggle to solve such problems. Scalable, fault-tolerant quantum computers will be able to solve a broad array of quantum problems but are unlikely to be available for years to come. Meanwhile, how can we best exploit our powerful classical computers to advance our understanding of complex quantum systems? Recently, classical machine learning (ML) techniques have been adapted to investigate problems in quantum many-body physics. So far, these approaches are mostly heuristic, reflecting the general paucity of rigorous theory in ML. Although they have been shown to be effective in some intermediate-size experiments, these methods are generally not backed by convincing theoretical arguments to ensure good performance. RATIONALE A central question is whether classical ML algorithms can provably outperform non-ML algorithms in challenging quantum many-body problems. We provide a concrete answer by devising and analyzing classical ML algorithms for predicting the properties of ground states of quantum systems. We prove that these ML algorithms can efficiently and accurately predict ground-state properties of gapped local Hamiltonians, after learning from data obtained by measuring other ground states in the same quantum phase of matter. Furthermore, under a widely accepted complexity-theoretic conjecture, we prove that no efficient classical algorithm that does not learn from data can achieve the same prediction guarantee. By generalizing from experimental data, ML algorithms can solve quantum many-body problems that could not be solved efficiently without access to experimental data. RESULTS We consider a family of gapped local quantum Hamiltonians, where the Hamiltonian H ( x ) depends smoothly on m parameters (denoted by x ). The ML algorithm learns from a set of training data consisting of sampled values of x , each accompanied by a classical representation of the ground state of H ( x ). These training data could be obtained from either classical simulations or quantum experiments. During the prediction phase, the ML algorithm predicts a classical representation of ground states for Hamiltonians different from those in the training data; ground-state properties can then be estimated using the predicted classical representation. Specifically, our classical ML algorithm predicts expectation values of products of local observables in the ground state, with a small error when averaged over the value of x . The run time of the algorithm and the amount of training data required both scale polynomially in m and linearly in the size of the quantum system. Our proof of this result builds on recent developments in quantum information theory, computational learning theory, and condensed matter theory. Furthermore, under the widely accepted conjecture that nondeterministic polynomial-time (NP)–complete problems cannot be solved in randomized polynomial time, we prove that no polynomial-time classical algorithm that does not learn from data can match the prediction performance achieved by the ML algorithm. In a related contribution using similar proof techniques, we show that classical ML algorithms can efficiently learn how to classify quantum phases of matter. In this scenario, the training data consist of classical representations of quantum states, where each state carries a label indicating whether it belongs to phase A or phase B . The ML algorithm then predicts the phase label for quantum states that were not encountered during training. The classical ML algorithm not only classifies phases accurately, but also constructs an explicit classifying function. Numerical experiments verify that our proposed ML algorithms work well in a variety of scenarios, including Rydberg atom systems, two-dimensional random Heisenberg models, symmetry-protected topological phases, and topologically ordered phases. CONCLUSION We have rigorously established that classical ML algorithms, informed by data collected in physical experiments, can effectively address some quantum many-body problems. These rigorous results boost our hopes that classical ML trained on experimental data can solve practical problems in chemistry and materials science that would be too hard to solve using classical processing alone. Our arguments build on the concept of a succinct classical representation of quantum states derived from randomized Pauli measurements. Although some quantum devices lack the local control needed to perform such measurements, we expect that other classical representations could be exploited by classical ML with similarly powerful results. How can we make use of accessible measurement data to predict properties reliably? Answering such questions will expand the reach of near-term quantum platforms. Classical algorithms for quantum many-body problems. Classical ML algorithms learn from training data, obtained from either classical simulations or quantum experiments. Then, the ML algorithm produces a classical representation for the ground state of a physical system that was not encountered during training. Classical algorithms that do not learn from data may require substantially longer computation time to achieve the same task. 

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5. Trifocal Relative Pose From Lines at Points

   https://doi.org/10.1109/TPAMI.2022.3226165  

   Fabbri, Ricardo ; Duff, Timothy ; Fan, Hongyi ; Regan, Margaret H. ; de Pinho, David da ; Tsigaridas, Elias ; Wampler, Charles W. ; Hauenstein, Jonathan D. ; Giblin, Peter J. ; Kimia, Benjamin ; et al ( December 2022 , IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence)

   Abstract—We present a method for solving two minimal problems for relative camera pose estimation from three views, which are based on three view correspondences of (i) three points and one line and the novel case of (ii) three points and two lines through two of the points. These problems are too difficult to be efficiently solved by the state of the art Gro ̈bner basis methods. Our method is based on a new efficient homotopy continuation (HC) solver framework MINUS, which dramatically speeds up previous HC solving by specializing HC methods to generic cases of our problems. We characterize their number of solutions and show with simulated experiments that our solvers are numerically robust and stable under image noise, a key contribution given the borderline intractable degree of nonlinearity of trinocular constraints. We show in real experiments that (i) SIFT feature location and orientation provide good enough point-and-line correspondences for three-view reconstruction and (ii) that we can solve difficult cases with too few or too noisy tentative matches, where the state of the art structure from motion initialization fails. 

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