NNI v2.7 Release

Documentation

A full-size upgrade of the documentation, with the following significant improvements in the reading experience, practical tutorials, and examples:

• Reorganized the document structure with a new document template. (Upgraded doc entry)
• Add more friendly tutorials with jupyter notebook.(New Quick Starts)
• New model pruning demo available. (Youtube entry, Bilibili entry)

Hyper-Parameter Optimization

• [Improvement] TPE and random tuners will not generate duplicate hyperparameters anymore.
• [Improvement] Most Python APIs now have type annotations.

Neural Architecture Search

• Jointly search for architecture and hyper-parameters: ValueChoice in evaluator. (doc)
• Support composition (transformation) of one or several value choices. (doc)
• Enhanced Cell API (merge_op, preprocessor, postprocessor). (doc)
• The argument depth in the Repeat API allows ValueChoice. (doc)
• Support loading state_dict between sub-net and super-net. (doc, example in spos)
• Support BN fine-tuning and evaluation in SPOS example. (doc)
• Experimental Model hyper-parameter choice. (doc)
• Preview Lightning implementation for Retiarii including DARTS, ENAS, ProxylessNAS and RandomNAS. (example usage)
• Preview A search space hub that contains 10 search spaces. (code)

Model Compression

• Pruning V2 is promoted as default pruning framework, old pruning is legacy and keeps for a few releases.(doc)
• A new pruning mode balance is supported in LevelPruner.(doc)
• Support coarse-grained pruning in ADMMPruner.(doc)
• [Improvement] Support more operation types in pruning speedup.
• [Improvement] Optimize performance of some pruners.

Experiment

• [Improvement] Experiment.run() no longer stops web portal on return.

Notable Bugfixes

• Fixed: experiment list could not open experiment with prefix.
• Fixed: serializer for complex kinds of arguments.
• Fixed: some typos in code. (thanks @a1trl9 @mrshu)
• Fixed: dependency issue across layer in pruning speedup.
• Fixed: uncheck trial doesn't work bug in the detail table.
• Fixed: filter name | id bug in the experiment management page.