TensorFlow: Remember LSTM state for next batch (stateful LSTM)

Question

Given a trained LSTM model I want to perform inference for single timesteps, i.e. seq_length = 1 in the example below. After each timestep the internal LSTM (me

Answer 1

Tensorflow, best way to save state in RNNs? was actually my original question. The code bellow is how I use the state tuples.

with tf.variable_scope('decoder') as scope:
    rnn_cell = tf.nn.rnn_cell.MultiRNNCell \
    ([
        tf.nn.rnn_cell.LSTMCell(512, num_proj = 256, state_is_tuple = True),
        tf.nn.rnn_cell.LSTMCell(512, num_proj = WORD_VEC_SIZE, state_is_tuple = True)
    ], state_is_tuple = True)

    state = [[tf.zeros((BATCH_SIZE, sz)) for sz in sz_outer] for sz_outer in rnn_cell.state_size]

    for t in range(TIME_STEPS):
        if t:
            last = y_[t - 1] if TRAINING else y[t - 1]
        else:
            last = tf.zeros((BATCH_SIZE, WORD_VEC_SIZE))

        y[t] = tf.concat(1, (y[t], last))
        y[t], state = rnn_cell(y[t], state)

        scope.reuse_variables()

Rather than using tf.nn.rnn_cell.LSTMStateTuple I just create a lists of lists which works fine. In this example I am not saving the state. However you could easily have made state out of variables and just used assign to save the values.

Answer 2

I found out it was easiest to save the whole state for all layers in a placeholder.

init_state = np.zeros((num_layers, 2, batch_size, state_size))

...

state_placeholder = tf.placeholder(tf.float32, [num_layers, 2, batch_size, state_size])

Then unpack it and create a tuple of LSTMStateTuples before using the native tensorflow RNN Api.

l = tf.unpack(state_placeholder, axis=0)
rnn_tuple_state = tuple(
[tf.nn.rnn_cell.LSTMStateTuple(l[idx][0], l[idx][1])
 for idx in range(num_layers)]
)

RNN passes in the API:

cell = tf.nn.rnn_cell.LSTMCell(state_size, state_is_tuple=True)
cell = tf.nn.rnn_cell.MultiRNNCell([cell]*num_layers, state_is_tuple=True)
outputs, state = tf.nn.dynamic_rnn(cell, x_input_batch, initial_state=rnn_tuple_state)

The state - variable will then be feeded to the next batch as a placeholder.