Trick matlab into thinking gpuArray is scalar - matlab

I have following function which I would like to apply to each element:
function result = f(a, b, bs)
% Simplified code
result = a
for i=0:bs
result = dosomething(result, b(i))
end
end
% Use
arrayfun(#result, gpuArray(A), gpuArray(B), size(B));
Is there a way of 'tricking' MATLAB into thinking b is scalar for purpose of passing to function?

Unfortunately, there's currently no way to do this for two reasons: firstly, the ARRAYFUN implementation for gpuArrays always insists that inputs are either scalar or all of the same size. Secondly, the gpuArray ARRAYFUN body does not currently support either indexing or anonymous functions that refer to variables from the outer scope.

The only way to do it is to use bsxfun function:
C = bsxfun(f, A, B') % A is column vector
is more or less equivalent to
C(i,j) = f(A(i,1), B(j,1))
Other useful function is repmat.
Then the series of matrices and vectors are JITted so there is in effect no O(MN) space penalty (checked by nvidia-smi).

I'm not entirely sure what you want to do, but I suspect that you want the whole of array B to be passed into the function on each call to result. The best way of achieving this would be to use an anonymous function something like so (untested code):
arrayfun( #(a_in) result(a_in, gpuArray(B), size(B)), gpuArray(A) );
What this should do is to make an anonymous function which only takes one argument (a_in), and calls result (actually f in your function header), with the full B array, regardless of the value of a_in.
So on each iteration of arrayfun, result will be called using just one slice of A, but the whole of B.
A more syntaxically explicit way of writing the above code would be as follows:
my_anon_fun = #(a_in) result(a_in, gpuArray(B), size(B));
arrayfun( my_anon_fun , gpuArray(A) );
A disclaimer: code is untested, and I have little experience with code using gpuArray so this may not apply.

Related

How to write an anonymous function with a variable number of output arguments?

Using deal we can write anonymous functions that have multiple output arguments, like for example
minmax = #(x)deal(min(x),max(x));
[u,v] = minmax([1,2,3,4]); % outputs u = 1, v = 4
But if you want to provide a function with its gradient to the optimization function fminunc this does not work. The function fminunc calls the input function sometimes with one and sometimes with two output arguments. (EDIT: This is not true, you just have to specify whether you actually want to use the gradient or not, using e.g. optimset('SpecifyObjectiveGradient',true). Then within one call it always asks for the same number of arguments.)
We have to provide something like
function [f,g] = myFun(x)
f = x^2; % function
g = 2*x; % gradient
which can be called with one or two output arguments.
So is there a way to do the same inline without using the function keyword?
Yes there is, it involves a technique used in this question about recursive anonymous functions. First we define a helper function
helper = #(c,n)deal(c{1:n});
which accepts a cell array c of the possible outputs as well as an integer n that says how many outputs we need. To write our actual function we just need to define the cell array and pass nargout (the number of expected output arguments) to helper:
myFun = #(x)helper({x^2,2*x,2},nargout);
This now works perfectly when calling fminunc:
x = fminunc(myFun,1);
The OP's solution is good in that it's concise and useful in many cases.
However, it has one main shortcoming, in that it's less scalable than otherwise possible. This claim is made because all functions ({x^2,2*x,2}) are evaluated, regardless of whether they're needed as outputs or not - which results in "wasted" computation time and memory consumption when less than 3 outputs are requested.
In the example of this question this is not an issue because the function and its derivatives are very easy to compute and the input x is a scalar, but under different circumstances, this can be a very real issue.
I'm providing a modified version, which although uglier, avoids the aforementioned problem and is somewhat more general:
funcs_to_apply = {#(x)x.^2, #(x)2*x, #(x)2};
unpacker = #(x)deal(x{:});
myFun = #(x)unpacker(cellfun(#(c)feval(c,x),...
funcs_to_apply(1:evalin('caller','nargout')),...
'UniformOutput',false)...
);
Notes:
The additional functions I use are cellfun, evalin and feval.
The 'UniformOutput' argument was only added so that the output of cellfun is a cell (and can be "unpacked" to a comma-separated list; we could've wrapped it in num2cell instead).
The evalin trick is required since in the myFun scope we don't know how many outputs were requested from unpacker.
While eval in its various forms (here: evalin) is usually discouraged, in this case we know exactly who the caller is and that this is a safe operation.

How to use pcg with a function in MATLAB

I am going to solve an inverse problem, AX=b, using conjugate gradient method in MATLAB. I want to use pcg function in MATLAB and as I know instead of matrix A I can use a function.
I have a function for example afun which has some entries. In the documents, I have seen that the afun function is entered in pcg function without entries, however, when I do the same, the error not enough input arguments appears. I use a code like this:
b = afun(ent1,ent2);
x = pcg(#afun,b,tol,max_iter);
How should I use my function in pcg?
According to the documentation, the function handle should the have the signature afun(x) and return A*x.
Your function apparently takes two inputs... You need to use a anonymous function to wrap the call, something like this:
% I dont know what these ent1/ent2 represent exactly,
% so you must complete the ".." part first
fcn = #(x) afun(x, ..)
% now you can call PCG
x = pcg(fcn, b, tol, maxiter);
There is a doc page explaining how to parameterize functions to pass extra args using function handles.

Create vector-valued function with arbitrary components

Good evening everyone,
I want to create a function
f(x) = [f1(x), f2(x), ... , fn(x)]
in MatLab, with an arbitrary form and number for the fi. In my current case they are meant to be basis elements for a finite-dimensional function space, so for example a number of multi variable polynomials. I want to able to be able to set form (e.g. hermite/lagrange polynomials, ...) and number via arguments in some sort of "function creating" function, so I would like to solve this for arbitrary functions fi.
Assume for now that the fi are fi:R^d -> R, so vector input to scalar output. This means the result from f should be a n-dim vector containing the output of all n functions. The number of functions n could be fairly large, as there is permutation involved. I also need to evaluate the resulting function very often, so I hope to do it as efficiently as possible.
Currently I see two ways to do this:
Create a cell with each fi using a loop, using something like
funcell{i}=matlabFunction(createpoly(degree, x),'vars',{x})
and one of the functions from the symbolic toolbox and a symbolic x (vector). It is then possible to create the desired function with cellfun, e.g.
f=#(x) cellfun(#(v) v(x), funcell)
This is relatively short, easy and what can be found when doing searches. It even allows extension to vector output using 'UniformOutput',false and cell2mat. On the downside it is very inefficient, first during creation because of matlabFunction and then during evaluation because of cellfun.
The other idea I had is to create a string and use eval. One way to do this would be
stringcell{i}=[char(createpoly(degree, x)),';']
and then use strjoin. In theory this should yield an efficient function. There are two problems however. The first is the use of eval (mostly on principle), the second is inserting the correct arguments. The symbolic toolbox does not allow symbols of the form x(i), so the resulting string will not contain them either. The only remedy I have so far is some sort of string replacement on the xi that are allowed, but this is also far from elegant.
So I do have ways to do what I need right now, but I would appreciate any ideas for a better solution.
From my understanding of the problem, you could do the straightforward:
Initialization step:
my_fns = cell(n, 1); %where n is number of functions
my_fns{1} = #f1; % Assuming f1 is defined in f1.m etc...
my_fns{2} = #f2;
Evaluation at x:
z = zeros(n, 1);
for i=1:n,
z(i) = my_fns{i}(x)
end
For example if you put it in my_evaluate.m:
function z = my_evaluate(my_fns, x)
z = zeros(n, 1);
for i=1:n,
z(i) = my_fns{i}(x)
end
How might this possibly be sped up?
Depends on if you have special structure than can be exploited.
Are there calculations common to some subset of f1 through fn that need not be repeated with each function call? Eg. if the common calculation step is costly, you could do y = f_helper(x) and z(i) = fi(x, y).
Can the functions f1...fn be vector / matrix friendly, allowing evaluation of multiple points with each function call?
The big issue is how fast your function calls f1 through fn are, not how you collect the results from those calls in a vector.

I am having trouble creating function handles. I want to embed a maximizing function within a minimizing function

The following code won't work, but this is the idea I'm trying to get at.
c = #(x)constraints;
%this is where I would initialize sum as 0 but not sure how...
for i = 1:length(c)
sum = #(x)(sum(x) + (min(c(x)(i),0))^2);
end
penFunc = #(x)(funcHandle(x) + sig*sum(x));
where constraints and funcHandle are functions of x. This entire code would iterate for a sequence of sig's.
Obviously c(x)(i) isn't functional. I'm trying to write the function where the minimum of c(x) at i (c(x) is a vector) or 0 is taken and then squared.
I know I could calculate c(x) and then analyze it at each i, but I eventually want to pass penFunc as a handle to another function which calculates the minimum of penFunc, so I need to keep it as a function.
I confess I don't understand entirely what you're trying to achieve, but it appears you're trying to create a function handle of an anonymous function with a changing value sum that you precompute. MATLAB anonymous functions do allow you to do this.
It appears there might be some confusion with anonymous functions here. To start with, the line:
c = #(x)constraints;
is probably supposed to be something else, unless you really want c to be a function handle. The # at the start of the line declares a new anonymous function, when I think you just want to call the existing function constraints. It appears you really want c to be an array of constraints coming from the constraints function, in which case I think you mean to say
c = constraints(x);
Then we get to the sum, which I can't tell if you want as a vector or as a single sum. To start with, let's not name it 'sum', since that's the name of a built-in MATLAB function. Let's call it 'sumval'. If it's just a single value, then it's easy (it's easy both ways, but let's do this.) Start before the for loop with sumval=0; to initialize it, then the loop would be:
sumval = 0;
for i = 1:length(c)
sumval = sumval + (min(c(i),0))^2);
end
All four lines could be vectorized if you like to:
c(c>0) = 0; %Replace all positive values with 0
sumval = sum(c.^2); % Use .^ to do a element by element square.
The last line is obviously where you make your actual function handle, and I'm still not quite sure what is desired here. If sig is a function, then perhaps you really meant to have:
penFunc = #(x)(funcHandle(x) + sig*sumval);
But I'm not sure. If you wanted sum to be a vector, then how we specified it here wouldn't work.
Notice that it is indeed fine to have penFunc be an anonymous function with a variable within it (namely sumval), but it will continue to use the value of sumval that existed at the time of the function handle declaration.
So really the issues are A) the creation of c, which I don't think you meant to be a function handle, and B) the initialization of sum, which should probably be sumval (to not interact with MATLAB's own function), and which probably shouldn't declare a new function handle.

bsxfun() Invalid output dimensions

I have a function that takes upto seven arguments and returns a row vector. The first three arguments are vectors (column, column, row) and the remaining four are optional scalars.
I want to use bsxfun() to apply the function to a vector of its last argument. Below is my attempt to do that.
o = #(m,pulse,N0,samples_per_pulse,sample_select,filter,channel_cutoff) ELE452Functions.EvaluateBER(m,pulse,N0,samples_per_pulse,sample_select,filter,channel_cutoff);
oo = #(m,pulse,N0,samples_per_pulse,sample_select,filter,channel_cutoff) bsxfun(#(N0,channel_cutoff) o(m,pulse,N0,samples_per_pulse,sample_select,filter,channel_cutoff), N0' , channel_cutoff);
when I try to call the function with a vector, oo(m,pulse,N0,1,1,1,[0.5 0.2]); for example, I get this error:
Error using bsxfun
Invalid output dimensions.
I am not experienced in using bsxfun and I tried to follow the documentation.
Update:
May be this is a clearer way to ask my question:
I want to use bsxfun to rewrite (improve) the code below with out a loop.
for i=1:length(channel_normalized_cuttoffs)
BER_LPchannel(i,:) = ELE452Functions.EvaluateBER(m,pulse,N0,1,1,1,channel_normalized_cuttoffs(i));
end
The idea behind bsxfun is to evaluate a certain function for all possible combinations of two elements (b in bsxfun stands for binary), each coming from one of the arrays. (NB: This is valid if you use it with a row and a column vector. But bsxfun can also do more.)
What you want to achieve is simply: For all entries of a single array, evaluate a function.
So bsxfun is just not the correct choice here.
You could use arrayfun instead, but this still may not perform a lot better than your original for loop, as it looks like the Matlab JIT Compiler would be able to optimize most of it, considering it's simplicity.
As I don't have the code of your function, I'm not able to test it, but your solution might look a lot like this:
evalBER = #(CNcutoffi) ELE452Functions.EvaluateBER(m,pulse,N0,1,1,1,CNcutoffi);
BER_LPchannel = arrayfun(evalBER, channel_normalized_cuttoffs, 'UniformOutput', false)