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tensor_matrix.rst

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Tensors and matrices

Tensors are global variables provided by Taichi. Tensors can be either sparse or dense. An element of a tensor can be either a scalar or a vector/matrix.

Although mathematically matrices are treated as 2D tensors, in Taichi, tensor and matrix are two completely different things. Matrices can be used as tensor elements, so you have tensors of matrices.

Tensors of scalars

  • Every global variable is an N-dimensional tensor.
  • Global scalars are treated as 0-D tensors of scalars.
  • Tensors are accessed using indices, e.g. x[i, j, k] if x is a scalar 3D tensor. For a 0-D tensor, access it as x[None].
  • Even when accessing 0-D tensor x, use x[None] = 0 instead of x = 0. Please always use indexing to access entries in tensors.
  • Tensor values are initially zero.
  • Sparse tensors are initially inactive.

Tensors of matrices

Suppose you have a 128 x 64 global grid A, each node containing a 3 x 2 matrices. In this case you need to allocate a 128 x 64 tensor of 3 x 2 matrix, using the statement A = ti.Matrix(3, 2, dt=ti.f32, shape=(128, 64)).

  • If you want to get the matrix of grid node i, j, please use mat = A[i, j]. mat is simply a 3 x 2 matrix
  • To get the element on the first row and second column of that matrix, use mat[0, 1] or A[i, j][0, 1].
  • As you may have noticed, there are two indexing operators [], the first is for tensor indexing, the second for matrix indexing.
  • For a tensor F of element ti.Matrix, make sure you first index the tensor dimensions, and then the matrix dimensions: F[i, j, k][0, 2]. (Assuming F is a 3D tensor with ti.Matrix of size 3x3 as elements)
  • ti.Vector is simply an alias of ti.Matrix.
  • See :ref:`linalg` for more on matrices.

Matrix size

For performance reasons matrix operations will be unrolled, therefore we suggest using only small matrices. For example, 2x1, 3x3, 4x4 matrices are fine, yet 32x6 is probably too big as a matrix size.

Warning

Due to the unrolling mechanisms, operating on large matrices (e.g. 32x128) can lead to long compilation time and low performance.

If you have a dimension that is too large (e.g. 64), it's better to declare a tensor of size 64. E.g., instead of declaring ti.Matrix(64, 32, dt=ti.f32, shape=(3, 2)), declare ti.Matrix(3, 2, dt=ti.f32, shape=(64, 32)). Try to put large dimensions to tensors instead of matrices.