max-ilse / pytorch-binary-converter

Turning float tensors to binary tensors according to IEEE-754 standard.

Binary Converter

This is a tool to turn pytorch's floats into binary tensors and back. This code converts tensors of floats or bits into the respective other. We use the IEEE-754 guideline [1] to convert. The default for conversion are based on 32 bit / single precision floats: 8 exponent bits and 23 mantissa bits. Other common formats are

num total bits	precision	exponent bits	mantissa bits	bias
64 bits	double	11	52	1023
32 bits	single	8	23	127
16 bits	half	5	10	15

Usage

To turn a float tensor into a binary one

from binary_converter import float2bit
binary_tensor = float2bit(float_tensor, num_e_bits=8, num_m_bits=23, bias=127.)

To turn a binary tensor into a float one

from binary_converter import bit2float
float_tensor = bit2float(binary_tensor, num_e_bits=8, num_m_bits=23, bias=127.)

Requirements

This code has been tested with

• python 3.6
• pytorch 1.1.0

Maintenance

Please be warned that this repository is not going to be maintained regularly.

References

[1] IEEE Computer Society (2008-08-29). IEEE Standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic. IEEE Std 754-2008. IEEE. pp. 1–70. doi:10.1109/IEEESTD.2008.4610935. ISBN 978-0-7381-5753-5. IEEE Std 754-2008