XGBoost#

XGBoost is an optimized distributed gradient boosting library designed to be highly efficient, flexible and portable. This guide provides an overview of using XGBoost with BentoML.

Compatibility#

BentoML has been validated to work with XGBoost version 0.7post3 and higher.

Saving a Trained Booster#

First, train or load a booster. In this example, we will be training a new booster using UCI’s breast cancer dataset. If you’ve already saved a model using XGBoost, simply load it back into Python using Booster.load_model.

import xgboost as xgb
from sklearn.datasets import load_breast_cancer

cancer = load_breast_cancer()

X = cancer.data
y = cancer.target

dt = xgb.DMatrix(X, label=y)

param = {"max_depth": 3, "eta": 0.3, "objective": "multi:softprob", "num_class": 2}
bst = xgb.train(param, dt)

After training, use save_model() to save the Booster instance to BentoML model store. XGBoost has no framework-specific save options.

import bentoml
bento_model = bentoml.xgboost.save_model("booster_tree", bst)

To verify that the saved learner can be loaded properly:

import bentoml
booster = bentoml.xgboost.load_model("booster_tree:latest")
booster.predict(xgb.DMatrix([[1.308e+01, 1.571e+01, 8.563e+01, 5.200e+02, 1.075e-01, 1.270e-01,
    4.568e-02, 3.110e-02, 1.967e-01, 6.811e-02, 1.852e-01, 7.477e-01,
    1.383e+00, 1.467e+01, 4.097e-03, 1.898e-02, 1.698e-02, 6.490e-03,
    1.678e-02, 2.425e-03, 1.450e+01, 2.049e+01, 9.609e+01, 6.305e+02,
    1.312e-01, 2.776e-01, 1.890e-01, 7.283e-02, 3.184e-01, 8.183e-02]]))

Note

load_model should only be used when the booster object itself is required. When using a saved booster in a BentoML service, use get and create a runner as described below.

Building a Service#

See also

Building a Service: more information on creating a prediction service with BentoML.

Create a service.py file separate from your training code that will be used to define the BentoML service:

import bentoml
from bentoml.io import NumpyNdarray
import numpy as np

# create a runner from the saved Booster
runner = bentoml.xgboost.get("booster_tree:latest").to_runner()

# create a BentoML service
svc = bentoml.Service("cancer_classifier", runners=[runner])

# define a new endpoint on the BentoML service
@svc.api(input=NumpyNdarray(), output=NumpyNdarray())
async def classify_tumor(input: np.ndarray) -> np.ndarray:
    # use 'runner.predict.run(input)' instead of 'booster.predict'
    res = await runner.predict.async_run(input)
    return res

Take note of the name of the service (svc in this example) and the name of the file.

You should also have a bentofile.yaml alongside the service file that specifies that information, as well as the fact that it depends on XGBoost. This can be done using either python (if using pip), or conda:

service: "service:svc"
description: "My XGBoost service"
python:
  packages:
  - xgboost
service: "service:svc"
description: "My XGBoost service"
conda:
  channels:
  - conda-forge
  dependencies:
  - xgboost

Using Runners#

See also

concepts/runner:Using Runners: a general introduction to the Runner concept and its usage.

A runner for a Booster is created like so:

bentoml.xgboost.get("model_name:model_version").to_runner()

runner.predict.run is generally a drop-in replacement for booster.predict. However, while it is possible to pass a DMatrix as input, BentoML does not support adaptive batching in that case. It is therefore recommended to use a NumPy ndarray or Pandas DataFrame as input instead.

There are no special options for loading XGBoost.

Runners must to be initialized in order for their run methods to work. This is done by BentoML internally when you serve a bento with bentoml serve. See the runner debugging guide for more information about initializing runners locally.

GPU Inference#

If there is a GPU available, the XGBoost Runner will automatically use gpu_predictor by default. This can be disabled by using the BentoML configuration file to disable Runner GPU access:

runners:
   # resources can be configured at the top level
   resources:
      nvidia.com/gpu: 0
   # or per runner
   my_runner_name:
      resources:
          nvidia.com/gpu: 0

Adaptive Batching#

See also

Adaptive Batching: a general introduction to adaptive batching in BentoML.

XGBoost’s booster.predict supports taking batch input for inference. This is disabled by default, but can be enabled using the appropriate signature when saving your booster.

bento_model = bentoml.xgboost.save_model("booster_tree", booster, signatures={"predict": {"batchable": True}})

Note

You can find more examples for XGBoost in our bentoml/examples/xgboost directory.