A doubt about scale layer's backward (may be bug)

[huchhong]

Issue summary

I read scale layer code recently. I found some suspicious code. Here is it:

template <typename Dtype>
void ScaleLayer<Dtype>::Backward_cpu(const vector<Blob<Dtype>*>& top,
    const vector<bool>& propagate_down, const vector<Blob<Dtype>*>& bottom) {
   ...
  else {
        const Dtype* sum_mult = sum_multiplier_.cpu_data();
        sum_result = (outer_dim_ == 1) ?
            scale->mutable_cpu_diff() : sum_result_.mutable_cpu_data();
        caffe_cpu_gemv(CblasNoTrans, sum_result_.count(), inner_dim_,
                       Dtype(1), product, sum_mult, Dtype(0), sum_result);
      }
      if (outer_dim_ != 1) {
      ...
}

In the above code, if outer_dim == 1, then scale_diff will be replaced instead of adding by caffe_cpu_gemv's result since BETA param of gemv is zero. This seems wrong. The same happens
in gpu version.

Steps to reproduce

Just code review.

Tried solutions

System configuration

• Operating system:
• Compiler:
• CUDA version (if applicable):
• CUDNN version (if applicable):
• BLAS:
• Python version (if using pycaffe):
• MATLAB version (if using matcaffe):

Issue checklist

• read the guidelines and removed the first paragraph
• written a short summary and detailed steps to reproduce
• explained how solutions to related problems failed (tick if found none)
• filled system configuration
• attached relevant logs/config files (tick if not applicable)

[huchhong]

I have tried this compare:

1. set train batch to 1 and iter_size to 2
2. set train batch to 2 and iter_size to 1

the input data is set to one single image, so theoretically, these two test should give the same scale diff, but it don't.