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composable_kernel/client_example/05_layernorm/README.md
2025-10-16 10:13:27 +00:00

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# Client Example: Layer Normalization (Forward and Backward)
## Theory
This client example demonstrates **layer normalization** in both forward and backward modes, for 2D and 4D tensors. Layer normalization is used in transformers and other neural networks to normalize activations across the feature dimension, improving training stability.
**Mathematical Formulation:**
Given input $X$:
- Mean: $\mu = \frac{1}{N} \sum_{i=1}^N X_i$
- Variance: $\sigma^2 = \frac{1}{N} \sum_{i=1}^N (X_i - \mu)^2$
- Normalized: $\hat{X}_i = \frac{X_i - \mu}{\sqrt{\sigma^2 + \epsilon}}$
- Output: $Y_i = \gamma \hat{X}_i + \beta$
$\gamma$, $\beta$ are learnable scale and shift parameters.
**Algorithmic Background:**
- Forward pass computes mean, variance, normalization, and affine transformation.
- Backward pass computes gradients with respect to input, gamma, and beta.
- Supports both 2D (batch, feature) and 4D (batch, channel, height, width) tensors.
## How to Run
### Prerequisites
Please follow the instructions in the main [Build Guide](../../README.md#building-ck) section as a prerequisite to building and running this example.
### Build and run
```bash
cd composable_kernel/client_example/05_layernorm
mkdir build && cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=/opt/rocm/bin/hipcc ..
make -j
# Example run (2D forward)
./layernorm2d_fwd
# Example run (4D forward)
./layernorm4d_fwd
# Example run (2D backward, data)
./layernorm2d_bwd_data
# Example run (2D backward, gamma/beta)
./layernorm2d_bwd_gamma_beta
```
## Source Code Structure
### Directory Layout
```
client_example/05_layernorm/
├── layernorm2d_fwd.cpp # 2D layernorm forward
├── layernorm4d_fwd.cpp # 4D layernorm forward
├── layernorm2d_bwd_data.cpp # 2D layernorm backward (data)
├── layernorm2d_bwd_gamma_beta.cpp # 2D layernorm backward (gamma/beta)
├── CMakeLists.txt # Build configuration for the example
```
### Key Functions
- **main()** (in each `.cpp`):
Sets up input tensors, configures normalization parameters, launches the forward or backward kernel, and verifies the result.
- **LayerNorm implementation**:
Demonstrates both forward and backward passes for different tensor shapes.
This client example provides a comprehensive demonstration of layer normalization for both inference and training in deep learning models.