Paddle/doc/fluid/howto/optimization/timeline_en.md

how to use timeline tool to do profile

1. Add profiler.start_profiler(...)和profiler.stop_profiler(...) to the main training loop. After run, the code will generate a profile record file /tmp/profile. Warning: Please do not run too many batches when use profiler to record timeline information, for the profile record will grow with the batch number.

   for pass_id in range(pass_num):
       for batch_id, data in enumerate(train_reader()):
           if pass_id == 0 and batch_id == 5:
               profiler.start_profiler("All")
           elif pass_id == 0 and batch_id == 10:
               profiler.stop_profiler("total", "/tmp/profile")
           exe.run(fluid.default_main_program(),
                   feed=feeder.feed(data),
                   fetch_list=[])
               ...
   

2. Run python paddle/tools/timeline.py to process /tmp/profile, it will generate another file /tmp/timeline by default. You can change the path by cmd parameter, please take a look at timeline.py for details.

python Paddle/tools/timeline.py --profile_path=/tmp/profile --timeline_path=timeline

1. Open chrome and visit chrome://tracing/, use load button to load the generated timeline file.

   

2. The resulting timeline should be like: