transformers/docs/source/en/perf_infer_cpu.mdx

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# Efficient Inference on CPU

This guide focuses on inferencing large models efficiently on CPU.

## `BetterTransformer` for faster inference

We have recently integrated `BetterTransformer` for faster inference on CPU for text, image and audio models. Check the documentation about this integration [here](https://huggingface.co/docs/optimum/bettertransformer/overview) for more details.

## PyTorch JIT-mode (TorchScript)
TorchScript is a way to create serializable and optimizable models from PyTorch code. Any TorchScript program can be saved from a Python process and loaded in a process where there is no Python dependency.
Comparing to default eager mode, jit mode in PyTorch normally yields better performance for model inference from optimization methodologies like operator fusion.

For a gentle introduction to TorchScript, see the Introduction to [PyTorch TorchScript tutorial](https://pytorch.org/tutorials/beginner/Intro_to_TorchScript_tutorial.html#tracing-modules).

### IPEX Graph Optimization with JIT-mode
Intel® Extension for PyTorch provides further optimizations in jit mode for Transformers series models. It is highly recommended for users to take advantage of Intel® Extension for PyTorch with jit mode. Some frequently used operator patterns from Transformers models are already supported in Intel® Extension for PyTorch with jit mode fusions. Those fusion patterns like Multi-head-attention fusion, Concat Linear, Linear+Add, Linear+Gelu, Add+LayerNorm fusion and etc. are enabled and perform well. The benefit of the fusion is delivered to users in a transparent fashion. According to the analysis, ~70% of most popular NLP tasks in question-answering, text-classification, and token-classification can get performance benefits with these fusion patterns for both Float32 precision and BFloat16 Mixed precision.

Check more detailed information for [IPEX Graph Optimization](https://intel.github.io/intel-extension-for-pytorch/cpu/latest/tutorials/features/graph_optimization.html).

#### IPEX installation:

IPEX release is following PyTorch, check the approaches for [IPEX installation](https://intel.github.io/intel-extension-for-pytorch/).

### Usage of JIT-mode
To enable JIT-mode in Trainer for evaluaion or prediction, users should add `jit_mode_eval` in Trainer command arguments.

<Tip warning={true}>

for PyTorch >= 1.14.0. JIT-mode could benefit any models for prediction and evaluaion since dict input is supported in jit.trace

for PyTorch < 1.14.0. JIT-mode could benefit models whose forward parameter order matches the tuple input order in jit.trace, like question-answering model
In the case where the forward parameter order does not match the tuple input order in jit.trace, like text-classification models, jit.trace will fail and we are capturing this with the exception here to make it fallback. Logging is used to notify users.

</Tip>

Take an example of the use cases on [Transformers question-answering](https://github.com/huggingface/transformers/tree/main/examples/pytorch/question-answering)


- Inference using jit mode on CPU:
<pre>python run_qa.py \
--model_name_or_path csarron/bert-base-uncased-squad-v1 \
--dataset_name squad \
--do_eval \
--max_seq_length 384 \
--doc_stride 128 \
--output_dir /tmp/ \
--no_cuda \
<b>--jit_mode_eval </b></pre> 

- Inference with IPEX using jit mode on CPU:
<pre>python run_qa.py \
--model_name_or_path csarron/bert-base-uncased-squad-v1 \
--dataset_name squad \
--do_eval \
--max_seq_length 384 \
--doc_stride 128 \
--output_dir /tmp/ \
--no_cuda \
<b>--use_ipex \</b>
<b>--jit_mode_eval</b></pre>