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© 2020 The MathWorks, Inc.
Processing Large Datasets for ADAS applications
using Spark
Arvind Hosagrahara (ahosagra@mathworks.com)
Lead Solutions Architect
May 2021

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Outline
§ The Big Picture
– Problem Statement / Challenges
§ Architecture of the system (ETL, Training, Inference)
§ Deep-Dive into Spark Workflows
– Cluster Management
– Interactive exploration
– Pushdown of analytics to Spark Clusters
– Experiment and metadata management
§ Design considerations
– Scaling, Accuracy and Interoperability
– Security, Governance, Model Lifecycle management
§ Conclusions / Key Takeaways
§ Q&A

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The Big Picture – Automated Driving
How can I
analyze & simulate
scenarios?
How can I
design & deploy
algorithms?
How can I
integrate & test
systems?
Control
Planning
Perception

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Semantic Segmentation
What?
§ Semantic segmentation is the classification
of every pixel in an image/video
Why?
§ Semantic segmentation: Higher quality
perception outcomes, easier to analyze and
validation of localization modules for AD.
§ Automation: Faster design iterations

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“…autonomous vehicles would have
to be driven hundreds of millions of
miles and sometimes hundreds of
billions of miles to demonstrate their
reliability in terms of fatalities and
injuries.” [1]
[1] Driving to Safety, Rand Corporation
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR1400/RR1478/RAND_RR1478.pdf

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Problem Statement
How can we:
1. Accelerate development of semantic segmentation
models from prototype to production in order to build better
perception software
2. Scale the workflows, capabilities and throughput of
engineering processes by leveraging automation, cloud
storage, compute and other infrastructure

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Challenges
Business Challenges
§ Prototype to production: establish system & software engineering processes
§ Verification and validation: connect data, embedded software and simulation
§ Workforce development: hire & integrate engineers with disparate
background
Technical Challenges
§ Handling large datasets and specialized formats
§ Leveraging the cloud to scale computational requirements
§ Enable self-serve analytics for the data scientist / engineer

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Demonstration / Results
(Image-level features with batch normalization)

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Demo / Results
3-D simulation data to train a semantic segmentation
network and fine-tune it to real-world data using
generative adversarial networks (GANs)

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Big Picture: Architecture

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Architecture of the demo system
Burst
Data access
Experiment
Management
/
Governance
/
Security

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Burst
Data access
Experiment
Management
/
Governance
/
Security
Data access
Experiment
Management
/
Governance
/
Security
Development
Environment
(Desktop / Cloud)
Storage
(Large Datasets /
Models / Metadata)
Model Inference Engine
for ETL and Performance
Monitoring
Monitoring / Visualization
Front-ends
Cloud-based training
system
(Spark Clusters / GPU
support / Fast networks)
Recorded and
Simulated Data
(Batch and
Streaming
Ingest)
Burst
Ingest

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Data access
Experiment
Management
/
Governance
/
Security
Development
Environment
(Desktop / Cloud)
Storage
(Large Datasets /
Models / Metadata)
Model Inference Engine
for ETL and Performance
Monitoring
Monitoring / Visualization
Front-ends
Cloud-based training
system
(Spark Clusters / GPU
support / Fast networks)
Recorded and
Simulated Data
(Batch and
Streaming
Ingest)
Burst
Ingest

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A simplified view of the system architecture
Experiment
Management
/
Governance
/
Security
Development Environment
(Desktop / Cloud)
Storage
(Large Datasets / Models /
Metadata)
Model Inference Engine for
ETL and Performance
Monitoring
Monitoring / Visualization
Front-ends
Cloud-based training system
(Spark Clusters / GPU support /
Fast networks)
Recorded and
Simulated Data
(Batch and
Streaming Ingest)
Burst
Ingest
Data access

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The ETL (Extract Transform Load) Pipeline
§ The ETL (Extract
Transform Load) Pipeline
Experiment
Management
/
Governance
/
Security
Storage
(Large Datasets / Models /
Metadata)
Model Inference Engine for
ETL and Performance
Monitoring
Recorded and
Simulated Data
(Batch and
Streaming Ingest)
Ingest
§
§

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The Training Pipeline
§
Experiment
Management
/
Governance
/
Security
Development Environment
(Desktop / Cloud)
Storage
(Large Datasets / Models /
Metadata)
Cloud-based training system
(Spark Clusters / GPU support /
Fast networks)
Burst
Ingest
Data access § The Training Pipeline
§

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The Inference Pipeline
§
Experiment
Management
/
Governance
/
Security
Storage
(Large Datasets / Models /
Metadata)
Model Inference Engine for
ETL and Performance
Monitoring
Monitoring / Visualization
Front-ends
Burst
Ingest
Data access §
§ The Inference Pipeline

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The Software Stack
Experiment
Management
/
Governance
/
Security
Development Environment
(Desktop / Cloud)
Storage
(Large Datasets / Models /
Metadata)
Model Inference Engine for
ETL and Performance
Monitoring
Monitoring / Visualization
Front-ends
Cloud-based training system
(Spark Clusters / GPU support /
Fast networks)
Recorded and
Simulated Data
(Batch and
Streaming Ingest)
Burst
Ingest
Data access

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The Software Stack
Experiment
Management
/
Governance
/
Security
Development Environment
(Desktop / Cloud)
Storage
(Large Datasets / Models /
Metadata)
Model Inference Engine for
ETL and Performance
Monitoring
Monitoring / Visualization
Front-ends
Cloud-based training system
(Spark Clusters / GPU support /
Fast networks)
Recorded and
Simulated Data
(Batch and
Streaming Ingest)
Burst
Ingest
Data access
MATLAB® and
Simulink®
MATLAB
Production
Server™
MATLAB
Webapp
Server™
3P Dashboards
Amazon S3™
AWS Identity
and Access
Management
(IAM)
AWS™
MLflow™

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The DevOps perspective

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Workflows supporting DevOps
Development Environment Operational Environment
TEST
O
P
E
R
A
T
E
DEPLOY
MONITOR
DESIGN
B
U
I
L
D
P
L
A
N
F
E
E
D
B
A
C
K
Cluster
Management
JDBC based
connectivity to
data sources
Databricks-
connect and
interactive
exploration
CI/CD
integration
Jobs and
Spark-Submit
Model Lifecycle
Management
Experiment
Management
Coder based
acceleration
Embedded
Applications
Inference engine
Central result,
config, data
management

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Deep-Dive: Spark Workflows

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Workflow: Cluster management and Data Engineering via REST
Engineers
Developers
Scientists
Data Analyst
Compute Cluster
(Cloud/On-Prem)
jobsubmission.m
MATLAB
HTTP
Client
MATLAB Integration (REST 2.0 API)
• Create Clusters
• CRUD with DBFS
• Create Jobs
• Authentication /Tokens
• Secrets
• Notifications
• Libraries
• Workspace
Databricks
specific
runtime
image
MATLAB
Runtime
init_script Dockerfile
dockerized runtime
analytics.jar

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Video 1 Outline
§ Planning capacity and performance
§ Cluster creation
§ Data and application transfer via the DBFS API

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Workflow: JDBC and Database toolbox (a)
Engineers
Developers
Scientists
Data Analyst
Existing Compute Cluster
(Cloud/On-Prem)
DatabaseToolbox
ODBC 2.6.x
JDBC 2.6.x
Driver
SQL

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Workflow: JDBC and Database toolbox (b)
Engineers
Developers
Scientists
Data Analyst
Existing Compute Cluster
(Cloud/On-Prem)
ODBC 2.6.x
JDBC 2.6.x
Driver
SparkSession
SQL
Databases / Delta
Tables

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Workflow: Databricks-connect
Engineers
Developers
Scientists
Data Analyst
Existing Compute Cluster
(Cloud/On-Prem)
Databricks-connect
Spark DAG
Spark Master
Spark API

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Video 2 Outline
§ Databricks-Connect workflows
§ Read/Write delta tables

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The Training Pipeline

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The Training Pipeline (Local Experimentation)
§ Optimized for GPU
§ High-level API (“write less and do
more”)
§ Language abstractions to improve
accuracy (eg: imageDataAugmenter)
§ Workflows for ease-of-use and
debug
– apps for model selection
– monitor accuracy, loss and training
performance
– many quick-start examples

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Workflow: Push-down via MATLAB Compiler
Engineers
Developers
Scientists
Data Analyst
Compute Cluster
(Cloud/On-Prem)
spark-submit job for New
Clusters
analytics.jar
Spark DAG
Spark Master
analytics.m
MATLAB
Compiler/SDK
MATLAB API for Spark Tall Arrays
Libraries for Existing Clusters

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Video 3 Outline
§ SparkSession and RDD abstractions
§ Tall-based workflows
§ Deploytool and app based workflows
– Compiler SDK for Java
§ mcc
– Spark Submit
§ DBFS API to push application to Databricks

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Build and Test
§ Improve quality of code and
models by testing on CI Servers
(self-hosted or Cloud-hosted)
§ Package libraries for deployment
§ Adhere to agile development
practices
https://www.mathworks.com/solutions/continuous-integration.html

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The Training Pipeline (Cloud-based training)
§ Infrastructure defined as code
§ Leverage the latest hardware,
optimized drivers and toolkits
§ APIs for command and control of
Jobs, artifacts, notifications,
execution, etc.
§ Capital Expenses (CapEx) è
Operating Expenses (OpEx)

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Management of Experiments and tracking of performance

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Video 4 Outline
§ MLFlow Demo
– Creation of Experiments / Runs
– Logging of Parameters and Metrics
– Integration with Experiment Management features

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Training Benchmarks and Performance
VGG-16 based network on
NVIDIA Quadro GV100

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The Inference Pipeline

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The Inference Pipeline
§ Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAG)
used to resolve changes to:
– Training models, ETL changes
– The training data
– New data / changes to the cache
§ Trained Models can be deployed
as cloud services
§ Cloud Reference Architectures
available on github.com to
integrate with existing systems

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Scaling Inference on the MATLAB Production Server
§ Scales gracefully
§ Optimal usage of
available CPU and GPU
resources
§ Can increase throughput
as desired
§ PAYG models available
on the cloud

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The ETL (Extract-Transform-Load) Pipeline

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The ETL Pipeline
§ Wide variety of Automotive and Engineering
Formats (eg: ROSBag, MP4, MDF, BLF, PCAP)
§ RESTful endpoints or Client based access
§ Connectivity to Cloud Storage (S3) and distributed
streaming systems (Kafka)
§ Horizontally scalable and designed to run
24x7x365 on headless cloud systems
§ Provides data proximity when executing on the
cloud
§ Accelerated CUDA execution on NVIDIA® via GPU
Coder™

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Putting it all together

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Build Graph (DAG)
§ Engine code
§ Trained models
§ New/Cached Data
§ Operates on S3 version metadata
§ Can be triggered manually or
automatically (eg: via CI/CD
pipelines)

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Design Considerations

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Scaling considerations
Storage
§ Cloud based storage allows
ingestion of larger datasets
Compute
§ Quicker training iterations both
locally and on the cloud
§ Faster inference pipeline
Cost
§ CapEx è OpEx
Workflows
§ Self-serve analytics optimized for
agility along a maturity framework
"Glue code and pipeline jungles are symptomatic of
integration issues that may have a root cause in
overly separated “research” and “engineering”
roles…
… engineers and researchers are embedded together
on the same teams (and indeed, are often the same
people) can help reduce this source of friction
significantly [1].
[1] The Hidden Technical Debt of Machine Learning Systems
https://proceedings.neurips.cc/paper/2015/file/86df7dcfd896fcaf2674f757a2463eba-Paper.pdf

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Accuracy considerations
§ More Training Data
§ Simulation / Scene generation
– Roadrunner
Simulation

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Interop considerations
§ ONNX interop
§ Transfer learning techniques
§ Import/Export to
– OpenDRIVE®,
– FBX®,
– glTF™,
– OpenFlight,
– OpenSceneGraph,
– OBJ, and USD formats.
§ Automated driving simulators
and game engines (eg: CARLA, VIRES VTD, NVIDIA DRIVE Sim®,
Metamoto®, LGSVL, Baidu Apollo®, Unity®, and Unreal Engine®)

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Embedded Targeting
§ GPU Coder™ Support Package
for NVIDIA GPUs
§ NVIDIA® DRIVE™ and Jetson
hardware platforms

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Governance and Lifecycle management
§ Local Experimentation
§ Centralized Tracking

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Security Considerations
§ Cloud Storage Best Practices
§ ACL based permissions
§ IAM based identity and access

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Conclusions
§ Well-architected systems [1] accelerate development of automated
semantic segmentation against large datasets
§ Local development provides smooth workflows for the development and
refinement of deep learning models
§ Cloud-based scaling of compute and storage can be leveraged on
Databricks to enable self-service analytics
§ Techniques that are relevant for ADAS development are equally applicable
across other domains such as medical, geo-exploration, etc.
[1] AWS Well-Architected
https://aws.amazon.com/architecture/well-architected/

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Key Takeaways
§ Build upon proven, safety compliant, and DevOps-ready development tools
§ Leveraging best-in-class simulation integration platform and modeling tools
leads to faster time-to-market outcomes for ADAS development
§ Domain specific tooling allows practitioners to write less and do more
§ If this is interesting, please contact us at databricks@mathworks.com for
more details or to get started.

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Q&A
Contact us at: databricks@mathworks.com

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