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Show HN: Simple Deep Learning Tutorials using Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit

126 points by irsina 9y ago

malux85 9y ago
For the Microsoft shops out there, our Deep Learning platform SignalBox (https://SignalBox.ai https://SignalBox.ai) supports CNTK and we support deploying to Azure, if you’re interested please reach out! /shameless plug
smortaz 9y ago
From a sister group at msft: you can load & run the notebooks using https://notebooks.azure.com https://notebooks.azure.com. When you create a Library, select +New from GitHub and enter the above path. It’s free, but no gpu support :(.
- curiousDog 9y ago
  Do you have Spark support? I'd love a managed Spark notebook that runs on Azure which wouldn't require any setup/manageability on my end.
  - smortaz 9y ago
    Hi, not directly within the free Azure Notebooks service, however, we do have: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/hdinsight/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/hdinsight/ which is a paid service with its own Jupyter notebook support. You can authenticate yourself in Azure Notebooks and use any Azure service as well, but it's a bit more complicated. We hope to improve this in the future.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - curiousDog 9y ago
      Ah thanks, I've tried HDinsight in the past and it's a bit of a pain to set up and maintain. Also, I had to pay for the cluster reservation. I was hoping for a more pay as you go Server less service like what Databricks has.
      - smortaz 9y ago
        We've had plans to provide a paid version for a while (per the faq), and once we do, hopefully it'll be straightforward and friction free. Ideas, usage scenarios welcome (pls file your magic-wand wish list on github!)
- yodon 9y ago
  Very cool! Though you might want to encourage whomever manages that page to open it on their phone. There is something wrong with the column width calculation which makes the tiles unreadable.
  - smortaz 9y ago
    I believe we have a bug open on this. I'll check, if not, I'll file. Thanks!
- make3 9y ago
  ..they should offer for the user to pay for gpu access..
garysieling 9y ago
If you have this information, one thing that would be really helpful with this type of tutorial is to know how long it took to train the models when you tested them last (and what it cost).
meow_mix 9y ago
What the world really needs right now is another deep learning tutorial
- averagewall 9y ago
  Not warranted. From the article: "CNTK is new and it's hard to find easy-to-use code examples and tutorials for learning by doing!"
wodenokoto 9y ago
After looking at brainscript I'm more and more drawn to the idea of building the network outside the data wrangling environment. Do you have any experience with brainscript and can you comment on developing with it compared to python api?
- irsina 9y ago
  It looks really simple but I do not have any experience on that.
cabalamat 9y ago
On the install page https://github.com/astorfi/CNTK-World/tree/master/docs/tutorials/installation https://github.com/astorfi/CNTK-World/tree/master/docs/tutor... it would be nice if it says which version(s) of Ubuntu are supported.
- irsina 9y ago
  Thank you so much for your attention.
king_magic 9y ago
I’ve been doing a lot of work with CNTK lately (and for the most part I quite like it compared to TensorFlow), but there are two things in particular that need to be addressed before I think it can gain wider traction: support for batch normalization on CPUs (right now bn is GPU-only, which means a lot of Microsoft’s examples only run on Windows/Linux machines with GPUs, not something everyone has immediate access to always), and macOS support (even CPU-only support). I think those things are table stakes for any deep learning framework. That said, it’s great to see the author’s work here - CNTK documentation can be a bit hard to come by.
- irsina 9y ago
  Thanks for the kind words and directions.
mastry 9y ago
That installation tutorial is a far, far cry from installing Anaconda then running "conda install tensorflow-gpu". Microsoft has a simpler python-only installation process [1], but when I tried a Linux installation I encountered the same errors that other people are seeing [2]. I expected a Microsoft product at version 2.2 would have more polish than this. Hopefully they will improve the installation process soon. [1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cognitive-toolkit/Setup-CNTK-on-your-machine https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cognitive-toolkit/Setup-CNT... [2] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cognitive-toolkit/setup-linux-python?tabs=cntkpy22 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cognitive-toolkit/setup-lin...

126 points by irsina 9y ago

For the Microsoft shops out there, our Deep Learning platform SignalBox (https://SignalBox.ai https://SignalBox.ai) supports CNTK and we support deploying to Azure, if you’re interested please reach out! /shameless plug

smortaz 9y ago

From a sister group at msft: you can load & run the notebooks using https://notebooks.azure.com https://notebooks.azure.com. When you create a Library, select +New from GitHub and enter the above path. It’s free, but no gpu support :(.

curiousDog 9y ago
Do you have Spark support? I'd love a managed Spark notebook that runs on Azure which wouldn't require any setup/manageability on my end.
- smortaz 9y ago
  Hi, not directly within the free Azure Notebooks service, however, we do have: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/hdinsight/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/hdinsight/ which is a paid service with its own Jupyter notebook support. You can authenticate yourself in Azure Notebooks and use any Azure service as well, but it's a bit more complicated. We hope to improve this in the future.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - curiousDog 9y ago
    Ah thanks, I've tried HDinsight in the past and it's a bit of a pain to set up and maintain. Also, I had to pay for the cluster reservation. I was hoping for a more pay as you go Server less service like what Databricks has.
    - smortaz 9y ago
      We've had plans to provide a paid version for a while (per the faq), and once we do, hopefully it'll be straightforward and friction free. Ideas, usage scenarios welcome (pls file your magic-wand wish list on github!)
yodon 9y ago
Very cool! Though you might want to encourage whomever manages that page to open it on their phone. There is something wrong with the column width calculation which makes the tiles unreadable.
- smortaz 9y ago
  I believe we have a bug open on this. I'll check, if not, I'll file. Thanks!
make3 9y ago
..they should offer for the user to pay for gpu access..

garysieling 9y ago

If you have this information, one thing that would be really helpful with this type of tutorial is to know how long it took to train the models when you tested them last (and what it cost).

meow_mix 9y ago

What the world really needs right now is another deep learning tutorial

averagewall 9y ago
Not warranted. From the article: "CNTK is new and it's hard to find easy-to-use code examples and tutorials for learning by doing!"

wodenokoto 9y ago

After looking at brainscript I'm more and more drawn to the idea of building the network outside the data wrangling environment. Do you have any experience with brainscript and can you comment on developing with it compared to python api?

irsina 9y ago
It looks really simple but I do not have any experience on that.

cabalamat 9y ago

On the install page https://github.com/astorfi/CNTK-World/tree/master/docs/tutorials/installation https://github.com/astorfi/CNTK-World/tree/master/docs/tutor... it would be nice if it says which version(s) of Ubuntu are supported.

irsina 9y ago
Thank you so much for your attention.

king_magic 9y ago

I’ve been doing a lot of work with CNTK lately (and for the most part I quite like it compared to TensorFlow), but there are two things in particular that need to be addressed before I think it can gain wider traction: support for batch normalization on CPUs (right now bn is GPU-only, which means a lot of Microsoft’s examples only run on Windows/Linux machines with GPUs, not something everyone has immediate access to always), and macOS support (even CPU-only support). I think those things are table stakes for any deep learning framework. That said, it’s great to see the author’s work here - CNTK documentation can be a bit hard to come by.

irsina 9y ago
Thanks for the kind words and directions.

mastry 9y ago

That installation tutorial is a far, far cry from installing Anaconda then running "conda install tensorflow-gpu". Microsoft has a simpler python-only installation process [1], but when I tried a Linux installation I encountered the same errors that other people are seeing [2]. I expected a Microsoft product at version 2.2 would have more polish than this. Hopefully they will improve the installation process soon. [1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cognitive-toolkit/Setup-CNTK-on-your-machine https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cognitive-toolkit/Setup-CNT... [2] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cognitive-toolkit/setup-linux-python?tabs=cntkpy22 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cognitive-toolkit/setup-lin...