Incubator-mxnet: Problem with gluon.utils.split_data()

[zburning]

Description

The current gluon.utils.split_data() has:

step = size // num_slice

# If size < num_slice, make fewer slices
if not even_split and size < num_slice:
        step = 1
        num_slice = size

if batch_axis == 0:
        slices = [data[i*step:(i+1)*step] if i < num_slice - 1 else data[i*step:size]
                  for i in range(num_slice)]

Considering an example:
we have a tensor of shape (31, *), and we want to split it into 8 slices. According to the function, step will be (31 // 8 = 3), so that the tensor will be split into 8 tensors of size [3, 3 ,3 ,3 ,3 ,3, 3, 10], in which the last tensor is excessive large. A better result could be [4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 3]

Maybe we can follow np.array_split()?

Error Message

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To Reproduce

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Steps to reproduce

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What have you tried to solve it?

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Environment

We recommend using our script for collecting the diagnositc information. Run the following command and paste the outputs below:

curl --retry 10 -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dmlc/gluon-nlp/master/tools/diagnose.py | python

# paste outputs here

[wkcn]

slice_len = length // num_slice
rest = length % num_slice
start = slice_len * index + min(index, rest)
end = start + slice_len + (index < rest)

[zburning]

Thank you, this is a clean solution.

[leezu]

Following np.array_split is a good idea. It should have been done from the beginning. Would you like to create a PR?

[zburning]

@leezu Yes

[sxjscience]

@leezu @zburning How about labeling it as a performance issue?