odop.rst

Objective data-oriented programming

Taichi is a data-oriented programming (DOP) language. However, simple DOP makes modularization hard.

To allow modularized code, Taichi borrow some concepts from object-oriented programming (OOP).

For convenience, let's call the hybrid scheme objective data-oriented programming (ODOP).

TODO: More documentation here.

A brief example:

import taichi as ti

ti.init()

@ti.data_oriented
class Array2D:
  def __init__(self, n, m, increment):
    self.n = n
    self.m = m
    self.val = ti.var(ti.f32)
    self.total = ti.var(ti.f32)
    self.increment = increment
    ti.root.dense(ti.ij, (self.n, self.m)).place(self.val)
    ti.root.place(self.total)

  @staticmethod
  @ti.func
  def clamp(x):  # Clamp to [0, 1)
      return max(0, min(1 - 1e-6, x))

  @ti.kernel
  def inc(self):
    for i, j in self.val:
      ti.atomic_add(self.val[i, j], self.increment)

  @ti.kernel
  def inc2(self, increment: ti.i32):
    for i, j in self.val:
      ti.atomic_add(self.val[i, j], increment)

  @ti.kernel
  def reduce(self):
    for i, j in self.val:
      ti.atomic_add(self.total, self.val[i, j] * 4)

arr = Array2D(128, 128, 3)

double_total = ti.var(ti.f32, shape=())

ti.root.lazy_grad()

arr.inc()
arr.inc.grad()
assert arr.val[3, 4] == 3
arr.inc2(4)
assert arr.val[3, 4] == 7

with ti.Tape(loss=arr.total):
  arr.reduce()

for i in range(arr.n):
  for j in range(arr.m):
    assert arr.val.grad[i, j] == 4

@ti.kernel
def double():
  double_total[None] = 2 * arr.total

with ti.Tape(loss=double_total):
  arr.reduce()
  double()

for i in range(arr.n):
  for j in range(arr.m):
    assert arr.val.grad[i, j] == 8