The fundamental unit in PyTorch is the Tensor. This post will serve as an overview for how we implement Tensors in PyTorch, such that the user can interact with it from the Python shell. In particular, we want to answer four main questions:
- How does PyTorch extend the Python interpreter to define a Tensor type that can be manipulated from Python code?
- How does PyTorch wrap the C libraries that actually define the Tensor's properties and methods?
- How does PyTorch cwrap work to generate code for Tensor methods?
- How does PyTorch's build system take all of these components to compile and generate a workable application?
PyTorch defines a new package torch. In this post we will consider the ._C module. This module is known as an "extension module" - a Python module written in C. Such modules allow us to define new built-in object types (e.g. the Tensor) and to call C/C++ functions.