Vespa has support for advanced ranking models through its tensor API. If you have your model in the ONNX format, Vespa can import the models and use them directly.
See embedding and the simple-semantic-search sample application for a minimal, practical example.
Add the file containing the ONNX models somewhere under the application
package. For instance, if your model file is my_model.onnx you could
add it to the application package under a files directory something like
this:
├── files
│ └── my_model.onnx
├── schemas
│ └── main.sd
└── services.xml
An application package can have multiple models.
To download models during deployment, see deploying remote models.
See the model-exporting notebook for examples of how to export models to ONNX. Use this when experimenting with different models. Also relevant is the model-deployment example, which is a minimal create-train-convert-deploy script. This also includes sample use of the onnx/onnxruntime modules.
To make the above model available for ranking, you define the model in the
schema, and then you can refer to the model using the onnx (or onnxModel)
ranking feature:
schema my_schema {
document my_document {
field my_field type tensor(d0[1],d1[10]) {
indexing: attribute | summary
}
}
rank-profile my_rank_profile {
inputs {
query(myTensor) tensor(d0[1],d1[784])
}
onnx-model my_onnx_model {
file: files/my_model.onnx
input "model_input_0": attribute(my_field)
input "model_input_1": my_function
output "model_output_0": output_name
}
function my_function() {
expression: tensor<float>(d0[1],d1[10])(d1)
}
first-phase {
expression: sum( onnx(my_onnx_model).output_name )
}
}
}
This defines the model called my_onnx_model. It is evaluated using the
onnx ranking feature.
This rank feature specifies which model to evaluate in the ranking expression
and, optionally, which output to use from the model.
The onnx-model section defines three things:
In the example above, the model should be found in files/my_model.onnx. This
model has two inputs. For inputs, the first name specifies the input as
named in the ONNX model file. The source is where the input should
come from. This can be either:
attribute(field_name)query(query_param)constant(name)function_nameFor outputs, the output name is the name used in Vespa to specify the output. If this is omitted, the first output in the ONNX file will be used.
The output of a model is usually a tensor, however the rank score should result
in a single scalar value. In the example above we use sum to sum all the elements
of the tensor to a single value. You can also slice out parts of
the result using Vespa’s tensor API.
For instance, if the output of the example above is a tensor with the two dimensions d0 and d1,
and you want to extract the first value, this can be expressed by:
onnx(my_onnx_model).output_name{d0:0,d1:0}
Note that inputs to the ONNX model must be tensors; scalars are not supported.
The input tensors must have dimension names starting with "d0" for the first
dimension, and increasing for each dimension (i.e. "d1", "d2", etc.). The
result of the evaluation will likewise be a tensor with names "d0", "d1",
etc.
The types of document and input tensors are specified in the schema as shown above. You can pass tensors in HTTP requests by using the HTTP parameter “input.query(myTensor)” (assuming the ranking expression contains “query(myTensor)”).
A tensor example can be found in the sample application.
When training your model you will typically have an input which contains a
dimension for batches, for instance an input with sizes [-1, 784]. Here, -1
typically denotes the batch dimension. This allows control over the batch size
during training, and it is common to use a batch size much smaller than the
entire training set (i.e. mini-batches) during training.
During run-time evaluation, Vespa typically does inference over a single exemplar. If this is the case in your network, take care to specifically set the batch dimension to size 1.
Note that in the above rank profile example, the onnx model evaluation
was put in the first phase ranking. In general, evaluating these models are
expensive and more suitable in the second phase ranking.
The assumption when evaluating ONNX models in Vespa is that the models will be used in ranking, meaning that the model will be evaluated once for each document. Please be aware that this imposes some natural restrictions on the size and complexity of the models, particularly if the application has a large number of documents. However, effective use of the first and second phase can make running deep models feasible.
The Transformers sample application uses an ONNX model to re-rank documents. The model is exported from HuggingFace’s Transformers library.
The Question-Answering sample application uses two different ONNX models:
vespa-analyze-onnx-model is useful to find model inputs and outputs - example run on a config server where an application package with a model is deployed to:
$ docker exec vespa /opt/vespa/bin/vespa-analyze-onnx-model \
/opt/vespa/var/db/vespa/config_server/serverdb/tenants/default/sessions/1/files/Network.onnx
unspecified option[0](optimize model), fallback: true
vm_size: 230228 kB, vm_rss: 44996 kB (before loading model)
vm_size: 233792 kB, vm_rss: 54848 kB (after loading model)
model meta-data:
input[0]: 'input' float[input][4]
output[0]: 'output' float[output][3]
unspecified option[1](symbolic size 'input'), fallback: 1
test setup:
input[0]: tensor<float>(d0[1],d1[4]) -> float[1][4]
output[0]: float[1][3] -> tensor<float>(d0[1],d1[3])
unspecified option[2](max concurrent evaluations), fallback: 1
vm_size: 233792 kB, vm_rss: 54848 kB (no evaluations yet)
vm_size: 233792 kB, vm_rss: 54848 kB (concurrent evaluations: 1)
estimated model evaluation time: 0.00227701 ms
The corresponding input/output tensors should be defined as:
document doc {
...
field flowercategory type tensor<float>(d0[1],d1[3]) {
indexing: attribute | summary
}
}
rank-profile myRank {
inputs {
query(myTensor) tensor<float>(d0[1],d1[4])
}
onnx-model my_onnx_model {
file: files/Network.onnx
input "input" : query(myTensor)
output "output": outputTensor
}
first-phase {
expression: sum( onnx(my_onnx_model).outputTensor * attribute(flowercategory) )
}
}