tf.scatter_nd

TensorFlow 1 version

Scatter updates into a new tensor according to indices.

tf.scatter_nd(
    indices, updates, shape, name=None
)

Creates a new tensor by applying sparse updates to individual values or slices within a tensor (initially zero for numeric, empty for string) of the given shape according to indices. This operator is the inverse of the tf.gather_nd operator which extracts values or slices from a given tensor.

This operation is similar to tensor_scatter_add, except that the tensor is zero-initialized. Calling tf.scatter_nd(indices, values, shape) is identical to tensor_scatter_add(tf.zeros(shape, values.dtype), indices, values)

If indices contains duplicates, then their updates are accumulated (summed).

indices is an integer tensor containing indices into a new tensor of shape shape. The last dimension of indices can be at most the rank of shape:

indices.shape[-1] <= shape.rank

The last dimension of indices corresponds to indices into elements (if indices.shape[-1] = shape.rank) or slices (if indices.shape[-1] < shape.rank) along dimension indices.shape[-1] of shape. updates is a tensor with shape

indices.shape[:-1] + shape[indices.shape[-1]:]

The simplest form of scatter is to insert individual elements in a tensor by index. For example, say we want to insert 4 scattered elements in a rank-1 tensor with 8 elements.

In Python, this scatter operation would look like this:

    indices = tf.constant([[4], [3], [1], [7]])
    updates = tf.constant([9, 10, 11, 12])
    shape = tf.constant([8])
    scatter = tf.scatter_nd(indices, updates, shape)
    with tf.Session() as sess:
      print(sess.run(scatter))

The resulting tensor would look like this:

[0, 11, 0, 10, 9, 0, 0, 12]

We can also, insert entire slices of a higher rank tensor all at once. For example, if we wanted to insert two slices in the first dimension of a rank-3 tensor with two matrices of new values.

In Python, this scatter operation would look like this:

    indices = tf.constant([[0], [2]])
    updates = tf.constant([[[5, 5, 5, 5], [6, 6, 6, 6],
                            [7, 7, 7, 7], [8, 8, 8, 8]],
                           [[5, 5, 5, 5], [6, 6, 6, 6],
                            [7, 7, 7, 7], [8, 8, 8, 8]]])
    shape = tf.constant([4, 4, 4])
    scatter = tf.scatter_nd(indices, updates, shape)
    with tf.Session() as sess:
      print(sess.run(scatter))

The resulting tensor would look like this:

[[[5, 5, 5, 5], [6, 6, 6, 6], [7, 7, 7, 7], [8, 8, 8, 8]],
 [[0, 0, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 0]],
 [[5, 5, 5, 5], [6, 6, 6, 6], [7, 7, 7, 7], [8, 8, 8, 8]],
 [[0, 0, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 0]]]

Note that on CPU, if an out of bound index is found, an error is returned. On GPU, if an out of bound index is found, the index is ignored.