Pipeline

Pipelines allow one to connect flows of inference data transformed by Model components. A directed acyclic graph (DAG) of steps can be defined to join Models together. Each Model will need to be capable of receiving a V2 inference request and respond with a V2 inference response. An example Pipeline is shown below:

https://github.com/SeldonIO/seldon-core/blob/v2/samples/pipelines/tfsimples-join.yaml

apiVersion: mlops.seldon.io/v1alpha1
kind: Pipeline
metadata:
  name: join
spec:
  steps:
    - name: tfsimple1
    - name: tfsimple2
    - name: tfsimple3      
      inputs:
      - tfsimple1.outputs.OUTPUT0
      - tfsimple2.outputs.OUTPUT1
      tensorMap:
        tfsimple1.outputs.OUTPUT0: INPUT0
        tfsimple2.outputs.OUTPUT1: INPUT1
  output:
    steps:
    - tfsimple3

The steps list shows three models: tfsimple1, tfsimple2 and tfsimple3. These three models each take two tensors called INPUT0 and INPUT1 of integers. The models produce two outputs OUTPUT0 (the sum of the inputs) and OUTPUT1 (subtraction of the second input from the first).

tfsimple1 and tfsimple2 take as inputs the input to the Pipeline: the default assumption when no explicit inputs are defined. tfsimple3 takes one V2 tensor input from each of the outputs of tfsimple1 and tfsimple2. As the outputs of tfsimple1 and tfsimple2 have tensors named OUTPUT0 and OUTPUT1 their names need to be changed to respect the expected input tensors and this is done with a tensorMap component providing this tensor renaming. This is only required if your models can not be directly chained together.

The output of the Pipeline is the output from the tfsimple3 model.

Detailed Specification

The full GoLang specification for a Pipeline is shown below:

type PipelineSpec struct {
	// External inputs to this pipeline, optional
	Input *PipelineInput `json:"input,omitempty"`

	// The steps of this inference graph pipeline
	Steps []PipelineStep `json:"steps"`

	// Synchronous output from this pipeline, optional
	Output *PipelineOutput `json:"output,omitempty"`
}

// +kubebuilder:validation:Enum=inner;outer;any
type JoinType string

const (
	// data must be available from all inputs
	JoinTypeInner JoinType = "inner"
	// data will include any data from any inputs at end of window
	JoinTypeOuter JoinType = "outer"
	// first data input that arrives will be forwarded
	JoinTypeAny JoinType = "any"
)

type PipelineStep struct {
	// Name of the step
	Name string `json:"name"`

	// Previous step to receive data from
	Inputs []string `json:"inputs,omitempty"`

	// msecs to wait for messages from multiple inputs to arrive before joining the inputs
	JoinWindowMs *uint32 `json:"joinWindowMs,omitempty"`

	// Map of tensor name conversions to use e.g. output1 -> input1
	TensorMap map[string]string `json:"tensorMap,omitempty"`

	// Triggers required to activate step
	Triggers []string `json:"triggers,omitempty"`

	// +kubebuilder:default=inner
	InputsJoinType *JoinType `json:"inputsJoinType,omitempty"`

	TriggersJoinType *JoinType `json:"triggersJoinType,omitempty"`

	// Batch size of request required before data will be sent to this step
	Batch *PipelineBatch `json:"batch,omitempty"`
}

type PipelineBatch struct {
	Size     *uint32 `json:"size,omitempty"`
	WindowMs *uint32 `json:"windowMs,omitempty"`
	Rolling  bool    `json:"rolling,omitempty"`
}

type PipelineInput struct {
	// Previous external pipeline steps to receive data from
	ExternalInputs []string `json:"externalInputs,omitempty"`

	// Triggers required to activate inputs
	ExternalTriggers []string `json:"externalTriggers,omitempty"`

	// msecs to wait for messages from multiple inputs to arrive before joining the inputs
	JoinWindowMs *uint32 `json:"joinWindowMs,omitempty"`

	// +kubebuilder:default=inner
	JoinType *JoinType `json:"joinType,omitempty"`

	// +kubebuilder:default=inner
	TriggersJoinType *JoinType `json:"triggersJoinType,omitempty"`

	// Map of tensor name conversions to use e.g. output1 -> input1
	TensorMap map[string]string `json:"tensorMap,omitempty"`
}

type PipelineOutput struct {
	// Previous step to receive data from
	Steps []string `json:"steps,omitempty"`

	// msecs to wait for messages from multiple inputs to arrive before joining the inputs
	JoinWindowMs uint32 `json:"joinWindowMs,omitempty"`

	// +kubebuilder:default=inner
	StepsJoin *JoinType `json:"stepsJoin,omitempty"`

	// Map of tensor name conversions to use e.g. output1 -> input1
	TensorMap map[string]string `json:"tensorMap,omitempty"`
}