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[Note: this is a repost from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7927077 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7927077. The original set off the voting ring det

by ot 12y ago

[Note: this is a repost from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7927077 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7927077. The original set off the voting ring detector and was demoted] I came across about Torch in this FB comment [1] by Yann LeCun: I have moved to Torch7. My NYU lab uses Torch7, Facebook AI Research uses Torch7, DeepMind and other folks at Google use Torch7. Apparently it is used in many deep learning labs. I think that in Toronto they mostly used Matlab and Python, does anybody know if this is still true? [1] https://www.facebook.com/yann.lecun/posts/10152077631217143?comment_id=10152089275552143&offset=0&total_comments=6 https://www.facebook.com/yann.lecun/posts/10152077631217143?...

smhx 12y ago
I am one of the maintainers. From information first-hand, Torch is used by: - Facebook - Google DeepMind and slowly Google Brain is moving as well. - Certain people at IBM - NYU - IDIAP - LISA LAB (not exclusively, but some students started using it) - Purdue e-lab - Several smaller companies (10-100 companies) There will definitely be several commonly asked questions, and this is my personal perspective on them. Why torch/lua, why not python+?* No reason. Just because. Mostly because LuaJIT is awesome (with it's quirks) and LuaJIT is extremely portable. (we embed torch routinely in tiny devices, afaik not practically possible with python). Is Torch better than Theano/etc.etc.? Better and worse. Every framework has it’s oddities. I like the super-simple design and the compactness of traversing from high-level easy-to-use API to bare-metal C/assembly. Also, torch’s ecosystem was grown not with exclusively lab experiments in mind, with Yann’s strong robotics research, packages were developed with practicality in mind all the time. Custom chips are being developed for convnets (TeraDeep) and they use Torch. Where’s the doxx??? If there’s documentation, I’ve tried to make people aware of it, mostly by consolidating everything torch to this one page: https://github.com/torch/torch7/wiki/Cheatsheet https://github.com/torch/torch7/wiki/Cheatsheet What about Julia? I like Julia a lot, and it’s definitely cool, but the packages for NN and GPUs aren’t very strong, so advantages over Julia are simply code that’s already written. If there are any more questions, feel free to ask them here or just open an issue on the github package. Thanks for reading. Edit: Apologize for the formatting, not very good at hackernews
- pavanky 12y ago
  Hi, I am the lead engineer at ArrayFire[1]. Is there anyway I can get in touch with you ? [1]http://www.arrayfire.com/docs/index.htm http://www.arrayfire.com/docs/index.htm
  - psandersen 12y ago
    ArrayFire looks very interesting, as a novice a drop in enhancement of the nn (or nnx for dropout) package for torch would be very useful.
    - pavanky 12y ago
      We are getting there. In the mean time we have an example on how you can go about building one yourself. You can see it here: https://github.com/arrayfire/arrayfire_examples/blob/master/machine_learning/neural_network.cpp https://github.com/arrayfire/arrayfire_examples/blob/master/...
      - psandersen 12y ago
        Thanks for the response, currently I'm doing R&D with easier to use high level representations and if it proves fruitful will be looking at getting the most cost effective speedups in about 6 months. Whats the license for the free edition? I would be sticking to open source code until we secure capital, but would be very interested in your commercial services down the line.
  - ludamad 12y ago
    It may seem obvious, but I feel like the page you linked could use an occurrence of the word 'C++'. The code snippet was obvious to me, but just a thought.
    - pavanky 12y ago
      Thanks for the feedback! While the code snippet is from C++, we have language wrappers for Java, R and Fortran. We'll try to be more clear about this in our documentation.
mturmon 12y ago
That comment from LeCun is very interesting, because this means he moved from his own language, Lush, which he maintained for many years, to Torch7. And LeCun has very high standards for expressiveness and efficiency.
- smhx 12y ago
  Oh, dont get me started about Lush :), this is my personal opinion, but I tried to use lush for a bit, and I ran away as fast as I can. However, in retrospect, that's probably because it was the first functional programming language that I was introduced to. Also, torch has a great set of people building the ecosystem, lots of communication and collaboration online (github, forums, across labs) which lush lacked.
ganwar 12y ago
Toronto and Montreal are main Python oriented labs.

by ot 12y ago

smhx 12y ago

I am one of the maintainers. From information first-hand, Torch is used by: - Facebook - Google DeepMind and slowly Google Brain is moving as well. - Certain people at IBM - NYU - IDIAP - LISA LAB (not exclusively, but some students started using it) - Purdue e-lab - Several smaller companies (10-100 companies) There will definitely be several commonly asked questions, and this is my personal perspective on them. Why torch/lua, why not python+?* No reason. Just because. Mostly because LuaJIT is awesome (with it's quirks) and LuaJIT is extremely portable. (we embed torch routinely in tiny devices, afaik not practically possible with python). Is Torch better than Theano/etc.etc.? Better and worse. Every framework has it’s oddities. I like the super-simple design and the compactness of traversing from high-level easy-to-use API to bare-metal C/assembly. Also, torch’s ecosystem was grown not with exclusively lab experiments in mind, with Yann’s strong robotics research, packages were developed with practicality in mind all the time. Custom chips are being developed for convnets (TeraDeep) and they use Torch. Where’s the doxx??? If there’s documentation, I’ve tried to make people aware of it, mostly by consolidating everything torch to this one page: https://github.com/torch/torch7/wiki/Cheatsheet https://github.com/torch/torch7/wiki/Cheatsheet What about Julia? I like Julia a lot, and it’s definitely cool, but the packages for NN and GPUs aren’t very strong, so advantages over Julia are simply code that’s already written. If there are any more questions, feel free to ask them here or just open an issue on the github package. Thanks for reading. Edit: Apologize for the formatting, not very good at hackernews

pavanky 12y ago
Hi, I am the lead engineer at ArrayFire[1]. Is there anyway I can get in touch with you ? [1]http://www.arrayfire.com/docs/index.htm http://www.arrayfire.com/docs/index.htm
- psandersen 12y ago
  ArrayFire looks very interesting, as a novice a drop in enhancement of the nn (or nnx for dropout) package for torch would be very useful.
  - pavanky 12y ago
    We are getting there. In the mean time we have an example on how you can go about building one yourself. You can see it here: https://github.com/arrayfire/arrayfire_examples/blob/master/machine_learning/neural_network.cpp https://github.com/arrayfire/arrayfire_examples/blob/master/...
    - psandersen 12y ago
      Thanks for the response, currently I'm doing R&D with easier to use high level representations and if it proves fruitful will be looking at getting the most cost effective speedups in about 6 months. Whats the license for the free edition? I would be sticking to open source code until we secure capital, but would be very interested in your commercial services down the line.
- ludamad 12y ago
  It may seem obvious, but I feel like the page you linked could use an occurrence of the word 'C++'. The code snippet was obvious to me, but just a thought.
  - pavanky 12y ago
    Thanks for the feedback! While the code snippet is from C++, we have language wrappers for Java, R and Fortran. We'll try to be more clear about this in our documentation.

mturmon 12y ago

That comment from LeCun is very interesting, because this means he moved from his own language, Lush, which he maintained for many years, to Torch7. And LeCun has very high standards for expressiveness and efficiency.

smhx 12y ago
Oh, dont get me started about Lush :), this is my personal opinion, but I tried to use lush for a bit, and I ran away as fast as I can. However, in retrospect, that's probably because it was the first functional programming language that I was introduced to. Also, torch has a great set of people building the ecosystem, lots of communication and collaboration online (github, forums, across labs) which lush lacked.

ganwar 12y ago

Toronto and Montreal are main Python oriented labs.