A Complete Guide to Using TensorBoard with PyTorch | by Ajinkya Pahinkar | Towards Data Science

In this article, we will be integrating TensorBoard into our PyTorch project. TensorBoard is a suite of web applications for inspecting and understanding your model runs and graphs. TensorBoard currently supports five visualizations: scalars, images, audio, histograms, and graphs. In this guide, we will be covering all five except audio and also learn how to use TensorBoard for efficient hyperparameter analysis and tuning.
Make sure that your PyTorch version is above 1.10. For this guide, I’m using version 1.5.1. Use this command to check your PyTorch version.
Make sure that your PyTorch version is above 1.10. For this guide, I’m using version 1.5.1. Use this command to check your PyTorch version.
import torchprint(torch.__version__)
2. There are two package managers to install TensordBoard — pip or Anaconda. Depending on your python version use any of the following:
Pip installation command:
pip install tensorboard
Anaconda Installation Command:
conda install -c conda-forge tensorboard
Note: Having TensorFlow installed is not a prerequisite to running TensorBoard, although it is a product of the TensorFlow ecosystem, TensorBoard by itself can be used with PyTorch.
In this guide, we will be using the FashionMNIST dataset (60,000 clothing images and 10 class labels for different clothing types) which is a popular dataset inbuilt in the torch vision library. It consists of images of clothes, shoes, accessories, etc. along with an integer label corresponding to each category. We will create a simple CNN classifier and then draw inferences from it. Nonetheless, this guide will help you extend the power of TensorBoard to any project in PyTorch that you might be working on including ones that are created using Custom Datasets.
Note that in this guide we will not go into details of implementing the CNN model and setting up the training loops. Instead, the focus of the article will be on the bookkeeping aspect of Deep Learning projects to get visuals of the inner workings of the models(weights and biases) and the evaluation metrics(loss, accuracy, num_correct_predictions) along with hyperparameter tuning. If you are new to the PyTorch framework take a look at my other article on Implementing CNN in PyTorch(working with datasets, moving data to GPU, creating models and training loops) before moving forward.
import torchimport torch.nn as nnimport torch.optim as opttorch.set_printoptions(linewidth=120)import torch.nn.functional as Fimport torchvisionimport torchvision.transforms as transformsfrom torch.utils.tensorboard import SummaryWriter
The last command is the one which enables us to import the Tensorboard class. We will be creating instances of “SummaryWriter” and then add our model’s evaluation features like loss, the number of correct predictions, accuracy, etc. to it. One of the novel features of TensorBoard is that we simply have to feed our output tensors to it and it displays the plot of all those metrics, in this way TensorBoard can take care of all the plotting for us.
def get_num_correct(preds, labels):    return preds.argmax(dim=1).eq(labels).sum().item()
This line of code helps us to get the number of correct labels after training of the model and applying the trained model to the test set. “argmax “ gets the index corresponding to the highest value in a tensor. It’s taken across the dim=1 because dim=0 corresponds to the batch of images.”eq” compares the predicted labels to the True labels in the batch and returns 1 if matched and 0 if unmatched. Finally, we take the sum of the 1’s to get total number of correct predictions. After performing operations on tensors the output is also returned as a tensor. “item” converts the one dimensional tensor of correct_predictions to a floating point value so that it can be appended to a list(total_correct) for plotting in TensorBoard(Tensors if appended to a list cannot be plotted in TensorBoard, hence we need to convert them to floating point values, append them to a list and then pass this list to TensorBoard for plotting).
We create a simple CNN model by passing the images through two Convolution layers followed by a set of fully connected layers. Finally we will use a Softmax Layer at the end to predict the class labels.
class CNN(nn.Module):    def __init__(self):        super().__init__()        self.conv1 = nn.Conv2d(in_channels=1, out_channels=6, kernel_size=5)        self.conv2 = nn.Conv2d(in_channels=6, out_channels=12, kernel_size=5)        self.fc1 = nn.Linear(in_features=12*4*4, out_features=120)        self.fc2 = nn.Linear(in_features=120, out_features=60)        self.out = nn.Linear(in_features=60, out_features=10)    def forward(self, x):        x = F.relu(self.conv1(x))        x = F.max_pool2d(x, kernel_size = 2, stride = 2)        x = F.relu(self.conv2(x))        x = F.max_pool2d(x, kernel_size = 2, stride = 2)        x = torch.flatten(x,start_dim = 1)        x = F.relu(self.fc1(x))        x = F.relu(self.fc2(x))        x = self.out(x)        return x
train_set = torchvision.datasets.FashionMNIST(root="./data",train = True, download=True,transform=transforms.ToTensor())train_loader = torch.utils.data.DataLoader(train_set,batch_size = 100, shuffle = True)
tb = SummaryWriter()model = CNN()images, labels = next(iter(train_loader))grid = torchvision.utils.make_grid(images)tb.add_image("images", grid)tb.add_graph(model, images)tb.close()
We create an instance ‘tb’ of the SummaryWriter and add images to it by using the tb.add_image function. It takes two main arguments, one for the heading of the image and another for the tensor of images. In this case, we have created a batch of 100 images and passed them to a grid which is then added to the tb instance. To the tb.add_graph function, we pass our CNN model and a single batch of input images to generate a graph of the model. After running the code a “runs” folder will be created in the project directory. All runs going ahead will be sorted in the folder by date. This way you have an efficient log of all runs which can be viewed and compared in TensorBoard.
Now use the command line(I use Anaconda Prompt) to redirect into your project directory where the runs folder is present and run the following command:
tensorboard --logdir runs
It will then serve TensorBoard on the localhost, the link for which will be displayed in the terminal:
After opening the link we will be able to see all our runs. The Images are visible under the “Images” tab. We can use regex to filter through the runs and tick those that we are interested in visualizing.
Under the “Graphs” tab you will find the graph for the model. It gives details of the entire pipeline of how the dimensions of the batch of images changes after every convolution and linear layer operations. Just double click on any of the icons to grab more information from the graph. It also gives the dimensions of all the weight and bias matrices by double-clicking on any of the Conv2d or Linear layers.
device = ("cuda" if torch.cuda.is_available() else cpu)model = CNN().to(device)train_loader = torch.utils.data.DataLoader(train_set,batch_size = 100, shuffle = True)optimizer = opt.Adam(model.parameters(), lr= 0.01)criterion = torch.nn.CrossEntropyLoss()tb = SummaryWriter()for epoch in range(10):    total_loss = 0    total_correct = 0    for images, labels in train_loader:        images, labels = images.to(device), labels.to(device)        preds = model(images)        loss = criterion(preds, labels)        total_loss+= loss.item()        total_correct+= get_num_correct(preds, labels)        optimizer.zero_grad()        loss.backward()        optimizer.step()    tb.add_scalar("Loss", total_loss, epoch)    tb.add_scalar("Correct", total_correct, epoch)    tb.add_scalar("Accuracy", total_correct/ len(train_set), epoch)    tb.add_histogram("conv1.bias", model.conv1.bias, epoch)    tb.add_histogram("conv1.weight", model.conv1.weight, epoch)    tb.add_histogram("conv2.bias", model.conv2.bias, epoch)    tb.add_histogram("conv2.weight", model.conv2.weight, epoch)    print("epoch:", epoch, "total_correct:", total_correct, "loss:",total_loss)tb.close()
Alternatively, we can also use a for loop to iterate through all the model parameters including the fc and softmax layers:
for name, weight in model.named_parameters():    tb.add_histogram(name,weight, epoch)    tb.add_histogram(f'{name}.grad',weight.grad, epoch)
We run the loop for 10 epochs and at the end of the training loop, we pass augments to the tb variable we created. We have created total_loss and total_correct variable to keep track of the loss and correct predictions at the end of each epoch. Note that every “tb” takes three arguments, one for the string which will be the heading of the line chart/histogram, then the tensors containing the values to be plotted, and finally a global step. Since we are doing an epoch wise analysis, we have set it to epoch. Alternatively, it can also be set to the batch id by shifting the tb commands inside the for loop for a batch by using “enumerate” and set the step to batch_id as follows:
for batch_id, (images, labels) in enumerate(train_loader):......    tb.add_scalar("Loss", total_loss, batch_id)
As seen below running the command mentioned earlier to run TensorBoard will display the line graph and the histograms for the loss, num_correct_predictions, and accuracy.
Moving the orange dot along the graph will give us a log of the respective metric(Accuracy/Correct/Loss) for that particular epoch.
Firstly we need to change the batch_size, learning_rate, shuffle to dynamic variables. We do that by creating a dictionary as follows:
from itertools import productparameters = dict(    lr = [0.01, 0.001],    batch_size = [32,64,128],    shuffle = [True, False])param_values = [v for v in parameters.values()]print(param_values)for lr,batch_size, shuffle in product(*param_values):    print(lr, batch_size, shuffle)
This will allow us to get tuples of three, corresponding to all combinations of the three hyperparameters and then call a for loop on them before running each epoch loop. In this way, we will be able to have 12 runs(2(learning_rates)*3(batch_sizes)*2(shuffles)) of all the different hyperparameter combinations and compare them on TensorBoard. We will modify the training loop as follows:
for run_id, (lr,batch_size, shuffle) in enumerate(product(*param_values)):    print("run id:", run_id + 1)    model = CNN().to(device)    train_loader = torch.utils.data.DataLoader(train_set,batch_size = batch_size, shuffle = shuffle)    optimizer = opt.Adam(model.parameters(), lr= lr)    criterion = torch.nn.CrossEntropyLoss()    comment = f' batch_size = {batch_size} lr = {lr} shuffle = {shuffle}'    tb = SummaryWriter(comment=comment)    for epoch in range(5):        total_loss = 0        total_correct = 0        for images, labels in train_loader:            images, labels = images.to(device), labels.to(device)            preds = model(images)            loss = criterion(preds, labels)            total_loss+= loss.item()            total_correct+= get_num_correct(preds, labels)            optimizer.zero_grad()            loss.backward()            optimizer.step()        tb.add_scalar("Loss", total_loss, epoch)        tb.add_scalar("Correct", total_correct, epoch)        tb.add_scalar("Accuracy", total_correct/ len(train_set), epoch)        print("batch_size:",batch_size, "lr:",lr,"shuffle:",shuffle)        print("epoch:", epoch, "total_correct:", total_correct, "loss:",total_loss)    print("__________________________________________________________")    tb.add_hparams(            {"lr": lr, "bsize": batch_size, "shuffle":shuffle},            {                "accuracy": total_correct/ len(train_set),                "loss": total_loss,            },        )tb.close()
As seen above we have moved everything under the for loop to go over all different combinations of hyperparameters and at each run, we have to re-instantiate the model as well as reload the batches of the dataset. “comment” allows us to create different folders inside the runs folder depending on specified hyperparameters. We pass this comment as an argument to the SummaryWriter. Note that we will be able to see all the runs together and draw comparative analysis across all hyperparameters in TensorBoard. tb.add_scalar is the same as earlier just that we have it displayed for all runs this time. tb.add_hparams allows us to add hyperparameters inside as arguments to keep track of the training progress. It takes two dictionaries as inputs, one for the hyperparameters and another for the evaluation metrics to be analyzed. The results are mapped across all these hyperparameters. It will be clear from the graph mapping diagram at the bottom.
As seen above we can filter any runs that we want or have all of them plotted on the same graph. In this way, we can draw a comparative study of the performance of the model across several hyperparameters and tune the model to the ones which give us the best performance. All details like batch size, learning rate, shuffle, and corresponding accuracy values are visible in the pop-up box.
It is evident from the results that a batch size of 32, shuffle set to True, and a learning rate of 0.01 yields the best result. For demonstration purposes it’s run for only 5 epochs. Increasing the number of epochs can very well affect the result, hence it’s important to train and test with several values of epochs.
This graph has the combined logs of all 12 runs so that you can use the highest accuracy and lowest loss value and trace it back to the corresponding batch size, learning rate and shuffle configurations.
From the Hyperparameter Graph it is very clear that setting shuffle to False(0) tends to yield very poor results. Hence setting shuffle to always True(1) is ideal for training as it adds randomization.
Feel free to play around with TensorBoard, try to add more hyperparameters to the graph to gain as much information on the pattern of loss convergence and performance of the model given various hyperparameters. We could also potentially add a set of optimizers other than Adam and draw a comparative study. In case of Sequence models like LSTMs, GRUs one can add the time-steps as well to the graph and draw insightful conclusions. Hope this article gave you a thorough insight into using TensorBoard with PyTorch.
Link to code: https://github.com/ajinkya98/TensorBoard_PyTorch