ONNX: the Open Neural Network Exchange Format

Braddock Gaskill — Wed, 25 Apr 2018 14:19:00 +0000

An open-source battle is being waged for the soul of artificial intelligence. It is being fought by industry titans, universities and communities of machine-learning researchers world-wide. This article chronicles one small skirmish in that fight: a standardized file format for neural networks. At stake is the open exchange of data among a multitude of tools instead of competing monolithic frameworks.

The good news is that the battleground is Free and Open. None of the big players are pushing closed-source solutions. Whether it is Keras and Tensorflow backed by Google, MXNet by Apache endorsed by Amazon, or Caffe2 or PyTorch supported by Facebook, all solutions are open-source software.

Unfortunately, while these projects are open, they are not interoperable. Each framework constitutes a complete stack that until recently could not interface in any way with any other framework. A new industry-backed standard, the Open Neural Network Exchange format, could change that.

Now, imagine a world where you can train a neural network in Keras, run the trained model through the NNVM optimizing compiler and deploy it to production on MXNet. And imagine that is just one of countless combinations of interoperable deep learning tools, including visualizations, performance profilers and optimizers. Researchers and DevOps no longer need to compromise on a single toolchain that provides a mediocre modeling environment and so-so deployment performance.

What is required is a standardized format that can express any machine-learning model and store trained parameters and weights, readable and writable by a suite of independently developed software.

Enter the Open Neural Network Exchange Format (ONNX).

The Vision

To understand the drastic need for interoperability with a standard like ONNX, we first must understand the ridiculous requirements we have for existing monolithic frameworks.

A casual user of a deep learning framework may think of it as a language for specifying a neural network. For example, I want 100 input neurons, three fully connected layers each with 50 ReLU outputs, and a softmax on the output. My framework of choice has a domain language to specify this (like Caffe) or bindings to a language like Python with a clear API.

However, the specification of the network architecture is only the tip of the iceberg. Once a network structure is defined, the framework still has a great deal of complex work to do to make it run on your CPU or GPU cluster.

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Now Available: April 2018 issue of Linux Journal

Carlie Fairchild — Mon, 02 Apr 2018 15:17:46 +0000

by Carlie Fairchild

Linux Journal's April issue takes a Deep Dive Into the Cloud. Articles in this issue include:

Vendor Lock-in and the Cloud
Cloud Computing Basics
Complexities of Cloud Billing
Multiprocessing in Python
Smart-Home Hacks
A Talk with OSI President Simon Phipps
Tips for Securing Your Cloud Environment
Introducing ONNX: the Open Neural Network Exchange Format
EU's New Copyright Laws Attack Open Source
Write an Adventure Game in the Terminal with nurses
Bash Project: Create Dynamic Wallpaper
FOSS Project Spotlight: Ravada
...and more!

And yes, Linux Journal continues boasting as many pages as most technical books, this month’s issue of Linux Journal coming in at a hefty 178.

Subscribers, you can download your April issue now.

Not a subscriber? It’s not too late. Subscribe today and receive instant access to this and all back issues since 2010.

Want to buy a single issue? Buy the April magazine or other single back issues in the LJ store.

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