MATLAB: What does SequenceLength property in the training options for an LSTM layer really mean and why is it there

Question

Hello,

I am trying to understand the different terminologies used for creating an lstmLayer in MATLAB. I finally understood that numHiddenUnits parameter is the number of LSTM "cells" and the higher it is, the "longer" the network is. So, as far as I am concerned, for e.g. numHiddenUnits=100, the network always takes 100 time steps of the data for each training iteration. So according to my logic, I cannot find any use for SequenceLength.

Answer 1

Hi,

Indeed, the software "unrolls" the layer to have length given by 'SequenceLength'. The network is stateful, so it also updates the network state between split sequences.