Major Updates

Neural Architecture Search

• Retiarii Framework (NNI NAS 2.0) Beta Release with new features:

  • Support new high-level APIs: Repeat and Cell (#3481)
  • Support pure-python execution engine (#3605)
  • Support policy-based RL strategy (#3650)
  • Support nested ModuleList (#3652)
  • Improve documentation (#3785)

  Note: there are more exciting features of Retiarii planned in the future releases, please refer to Retiarii Roadmap for more information.

• Add new NAS algorithm: Blockwise DNAS FBNet (#3532, thanks the external contributor @alibaba-yiwuyao)

Model Compression

• Support Auto Compression Framework (#3631)
• Support slim pruner in Tensorflow (#3614)
• Support LSQ quantizer (#3503, thanks the external contributor @chenbohua3)
• Improve APIs for iterative pruners (#3507 #3688)

Training service & Rest

• Support 3rd-party training service (#3662 #3726)
• Support setting prefix URL (#3625 #3674 #3672 #3643)
• Improve NNI manager logging (#3624)
• Remove outdated TensorBoard code on nnictl (#3613)

Hyper-Parameter Optimization

• Add new tuner: DNGO (#3479 #3707)
• Add benchmark for tuners (#3644 #3720 #3689)

WebUI

• Improve search parameters on trial detail page (#3651 #3723 #3715)
• Make selected trials consistent after auto-refresh in detail table (#3597)
• Add trial stdout button on local mode (#3653 #3690)

Examples & Documentation

• Convert all trial examples' from config v1 to config v2 (#3721 #3733 #3711 #3600)
• Add new jupyter notebook examples (#3599 #3700)

Dev Excellent

• Upgrade dependencies in Dockerfile (#3713 #3722)
• Substitute PyYAML for ruamel.yaml (#3702)
• Add pipelines for AML and hybrid training service and experiment config V2 (#3477 #3648)
• Add pipeline badge in README (#3589)
• Update issue bug report template (#3501)

Bug Fixes & Minor Updates

• Fix syntax error on Windows (#3634)
• Fix a logging related bug (#3705)
• Fix a bug in GPU indices (#3721)
• Fix a bug in FrameworkController (#3730)
• Fix a bug in export_data_url format (#3665)
• Report version check failure as a warning (#3654)
• Fix bugs and lints in nnictl (#3712)
• Fix bug of optimize_mode on WebUI (#3731)
• Fix bug of useActiveGpu in AML v2 config (#3655)
• Fix bug of experiment_working_directory in Retiarii config (#3607)
• Fix a bug in mask conflict (#3629, thanks the external contributor @Davidxswang)
• Fix a bug in model speedup shape inference (#3588, thanks the external contributor @Davidxswang)
• Fix a bug in multithread on Windows (#3604, thanks the external contributor @Ivanfangsc)
• Delete redundant code in training service (#3526, thanks the external contributor @maxsuren)
• Fix typo in DoReFa compression doc (#3693, thanks the external contributor @Erfandarzi)
• Update docstring in model compression (#3647, thanks the external contributor @ichejun)
• Fix a bug when using Kubernetes container (#3719, thanks the external contributor @rmfan)