Keras GRU with Layer Normalization

gruln.py

import numpy as np
from keras.layers import GRU, initializations, K
from collections import OrderedDict

class GRULN(GRU):
    '''Gated Recurrent Unit with Layer Normalization
    Current impelemtation only works with consume_less = 'gpu' which is already
    set.

    # Arguments
        output_dim: dimension of the internal projections and the final output.
        ...: see GRU documentation for all other arguments.
        gamma_init: name of initialization function for scale parameter.
            The default is 1, but in some cases this is too high resulting
            in NaN loss while training. If this happens try reducing to 0.2

    # References
        -[Layer Normalization](https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.06450)
    '''
    def __init__(self, output_dim, gamma_init=1., **kwargs):
        if 'consume_less' in kwargs:
            assert kwargs['consume_less'] == 'gpu'
        else:
            kwargs = kwargs.copy()
            kwargs['consume_less']='gpu'
        super(GRULN, self).__init__(output_dim, **kwargs)

        def gamma_init_func(shape, c=gamma_init, **kwargs):
            if c == 1.:
                return initializations.get('one')(shape, **kwargs)
            return K.variable(np.ones(shape) * c, **kwargs)

        self.gamma_init = gamma_init_func
        self.beta_init = initializations.get('zero')
        self.epsilon = 1e-5

    def build(self, input_shape):
        super(GRULN, self).build(input_shape)
        shape = (self.output_dim,)
        shape1 = (2*self.output_dim,)
        # LN is applied in 4 inputs/outputs (fields) of the cell
        gammas = OrderedDict()
        betas = OrderedDict()
        # each location has its own BN
        for slc, shp in zip(['state_below', 'state_belowx', 'preact', 'preactx'], [shape1, shape, shape1, shape]):
            gammas[slc] = self.gamma_init(shp,
                                          name='{}_gamma_{}'.format(
                                              self.name, slc))
            betas[slc] = self.beta_init(shp,
                                        name='{}_beta_{}'.format(
                                            self.name, slc))

        self.gammas = gammas
        self.betas = betas

        self.trainable_weights += self.gammas.values() + self.betas.values()

    def ln(self, x, slc):
        # sample-wise normalization
        m = K.mean(x, axis=-1, keepdims=True)
        std = K.sqrt(K.var(x, axis=-1, keepdims=True) + self.epsilon)
        x_normed = (x - m) / (std + self.epsilon)
        x_normed = self.gammas[slc] * x_normed + self.betas[slc]
        return x_normed

    def step(self, x, states):
        h_tm1 = states[0]  # previous memory
        B_U = states[1]  # dropout matrices for recurrent units
        B_W = states[2]

        matrix_x = K.dot(x * B_W[0], self.W) + self.b
        x_ = self.ln(matrix_x[:, : 2 * self.output_dim], 'state_below')
        xx_ = self.ln(matrix_x[:, 2 * self.output_dim:], 'state_belowx')
        matrix_inner = self.ln(K.dot(h_tm1 * B_U[0], self.U[:, :2 * self.output_dim]), 'preact')

        x_z = x_[:, :self.output_dim]
        x_r = x_[:, self.output_dim: 2 * self.output_dim]
        inner_z = matrix_inner[:, :self.output_dim]
        inner_r = matrix_inner[:, self.output_dim: 2 * self.output_dim]

        z = self.inner_activation(x_z + inner_z)
        r = self.inner_activation(x_r + inner_r)

        x_h = xx_
        inner_h = r * self.ln(K.dot(h_tm1 * B_U[0], self.U[:, 2 * self.output_dim:]), 'preactx')
        hh = self.activation(x_h + inner_h)

        h = z * h_tm1 + (1 - z) * hh
        return h, [h]

if __name__ == '__main__':
    from keras.layers import Input
    from keras.engine.training import Model

    np.random.seed(42)

    input = Input(batch_shape=(5, 6, 7), dtype='float32',name='input')

    rnn = GRULN(10)
    output = rnn(input)
    model = Model(input=input, output=output)
    model.compile(loss='mse', optimizer='sgd')
    data = np.ones((5,6,7), dtype='float32')
    probs = model.predict(data,batch_size=5)
    print probs.shape,probs.mean()
    # (5, 10) 0.0689924
    print rnn.trainable_weights

Hi @udibr , I have used your code in standard fully connected neural network here. I have already reduced the gamma to 0.2 as you said. But it still could not learn and the loss are all NaN. Could you please take a look and see what's wrong? Thank you in advance!

In my experiments on RNNs and FFNs, NNs with layer normalization never outperform NNs without layer normalization.
Does anyone observe positive results using layer normalization?
If so, please share the tips :)