Deploy models into production (advanced)

Audience: Machine learning engineers optimizing models for enterprise-scale production environments.


Compile your model to TorchScript

TorchScript allows you to serialize your models in a way that it can be loaded in non-Python environments. The LightningModule has a handy method to_torchscript() that returns a scripted module which you can save or directly use.

class SimpleModel(LightningModule):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__()
        self.l1 = torch.nn.Linear(in_features=64, out_features=4)

    def forward(self, x):
        return torch.relu(self.l1(x.view(x.size(0), -1)))


# create the model
model = SimpleModel()
script = model.to_torchscript()

# save for use in production environment
torch.jit.save(script, "model.pt")

It is recommended that you install the latest supported version of PyTorch to use this feature without limitations.

Once you have the exported model, you can run it in PyTorch or C++ runtime:

inp = torch.rand(1, 64)
scripted_module = torch.jit.load("model.pt")
output = scripted_module(inp)

If you want to script a different method, you can decorate the method with torch.jit.export():

class LitMCdropoutModel(L.LightningModule):
    def __init__(self, model, mc_iteration):
        super().__init__()
        self.model = model
        self.dropout = nn.Dropout()
        self.mc_iteration = mc_iteration

    @torch.jit.export
    def predict_step(self, batch, batch_idx):
        # enable Monte Carlo Dropout
        self.dropout.train()

        # take average of `self.mc_iteration` iterations
        pred = [self.dropout(self.model(x)).unsqueeze(0) for _ in range(self.mc_iteration)]
        pred = torch.vstack(pred).mean(dim=0)
        return pred


model = LitMCdropoutModel(...)
script = model.to_torchscript(file_path="model.pt", method="script")