L2

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l2 is a fast, Pytorch-style Tensor+Autograd library written in Rust

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About

From the project README ·

A Pytorch-style Tensor+Autograd library written in Rust

Installation • Contributing • Authors • License • Acknowledgements

Made by Bilal Khan • https://bilal.software

  • What is l2?
  • Quick start
  • Design choices
  • Contributing
  • Authors
  • License
  • Acknowledgements

What is l2?

l2 is named after the l2 or Euclidean distance, a popular distance function in deep learning

l2 is a Pytorch-style Tensor+Autograd library written in Rust. It contains a multidimensional array class, Tensor, with support for strided arrays, numpy-style array slicing, broadcasting, and most major math operations (including fast, BLAS-accelerated matrix multiplication!). On top of this, l2 has a built-in efficient graph-based autograd engine that keeps track of all operations performed on a tensor and topologically sorts and traverses the graph to compute the gradients.

I also made a more simplified C++ version of l2 last year, which you can take a look at here

Quick start

Add l2 = "1.0.3" to your Cargo.toml file and add the following to main.rs

Read the full README

Note: L2 will by default use Apple's acclerate BLAS library on macOS You can also change the BLAS library that you want to use yourself. Take a look at the blas-src crate for more information

use l2::tensor::*;

let x: Tensor = Tensor::normal(&[2, 4], 0.0, 1.0)?;
let y: Tensor = Tensor::normal(&[4, 1], 0.0, 1.0)?;

let z: Tensor = l2::matmul(&x, &y)?;

z.backward();

println!("{}", z);

Design choices

I made l2 to get better at using Rust and to learn more about how libraries like Pytorch and Tensorflow work behind the scenes, so don't expect this library to be production-ready :)

l2 is surprisingly fast especially since I didn't try very hard to optimize all the operators, it's usually only less than one order of magnitude slower than Pytorch in most of the benchmarks that I ran. l2 only supports a cpu backend at the moment since I'm not familiar enough with rust to start working with CUDA and cudnn. So far, l2 doesn't have any Pytorch-style abstractions like the Parameter, Layer, or Module classes. There might still be some bugs in the transpose operators and calling .backward() on tensors with more dimensions. I was interested in using Rust's Const Generics to run compile-time shape checks but I decided to leave it until some other time.

Contributing

This repository is still a work in progress, so if you find a bug, think there is something missing, or have any suggestions for new features, feel free to open an issue or a pull request. Feel free to use the library or code from it in your own projects, and if you feel that some code used in this project hasn't been properly accredited, please open an issue.

Authors

  • Bilal Khan

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the license file for details

Acknowledgements

The fast.ai deep learning from the foundations course (https://course.fast.ai/part2) teaches a lot about how to make your own deep learning library

Some of the resources that I found useful when working on this library include:

  • http://blog.ezyang.com/2019/05/pytorch-internals/
  • https://pytorch.org/tutorials/beginner/nn_tutorial.html
  • https://eisenjulian.github.io/deep-learning-in-100-lines/
  • https://medium.com/@florian.caesar/how-to-create-a-machine-learning-framework-from-scratch-in-491-steps-93428369a4eb
  • https://medium.com/@johan.mabille/how-we-wrote-xtensor-1-n-n-dimensional-containers-f79f9f4966a7
  • https://erikpartridge.com/2019-03/rust-ml-simd-blas-lapack
  • https://medium.com/@GolDDranks/things-rust-doesnt-let-you-do-draft-f596a3c740a5
  • https://datascience.stackexchange.com/questions/20139/gradients-for-bias-terms-in-backpropagation
  • https://cs231n.github.io/optimization-2/
  • https://cs231n.github.io/neural-networks-case-study/#grad
  • https://stackoverflow.com/questions/38082835/backpropagation-in-gradient-descent-for-neural-networks-vs-linear-regression
  • https://medium.com/@karpathy/yes-you-should-understand-backprop-e2f06eab496b
  • https://stackoverflow.com/questions/38082835/backpropagation-in-gradient-descent-for-neural-networks-vs-linear-regression
  • https://github.com/karpathy/micrograd
  • https://rufflewind.com/2016-12-30/reverse-mode-automatic-differentiation
    • https://github.com/ibab/rust-ad
    • https://github.com/Rufflewind/revad/blob/eb3978b3ccdfa8189f3ff59d1ecee71f51c33fd7/revad.py
    • https://github.com/srirambandi/ai
  • https://discuss.pytorch.org/t/is-pytorch-autograd-tape-based/13992/3
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/8ep130/d_how_does_autograd_work/
  • https://github.com/mattjj/autodidact
  • https://github.com/karpathy/recurrentjs
  • https://github.com/karpathy/randomfun
  • https://medium.com/@ralphmao95/simple-autograd-implementation-understand-automatic-differentiation-hand-by-hand-9e86f6d703ab
  • https://evcu.github.io/ml/autograd/
  • https://blog.paperspace.com/pytorch-101-understanding-graphs-and-automatic-differentiation/
  • https://github.com/maciejkula/wyrm
  • https://medium.com/@maciejkula/building-an-autodifferentiation-library-9ccf32c7a658
  • https://github.com/evcu/numpy_autograd/blob/master/my_autograd.py#L147
  • https://github.com/evcu/numpy_autograd/blob/master/Autograd.ipynb
  • https://cs231n.github.io/optimization-2/
  • https://github.com/explosion/thinc
  • https://github.com/joelgrus/joelnet
  • https://github.com/QuantStack/xtensor
  • https://github.com/ThinkingTransistor/Sigma
  • https://github.com/mratsim/Arraymancer
  • https://github.com/siekmanj/sieknet
  • https://github.com/siekmanj/sieknet_2.0
  • https://github.com/Daniel-Liu-c0deb0t/Java-Machine-Learning
  • https://github.com/karpathy/micrograd

This README is based on:

  • https://github.com/bilal2vec/pytorch_zoo
  • https://github.com/bilal2vec/grover
  • https://github.com/rish-16/gpt2client
  • https://github.com/mxbi/mlcrate
  • https://github.com/athityakumar/colorls
  • https://github.com/amitmerchant1990/electron-markdownify

I used carbon.now.sh with the "Shades of Purple" theme for the screenshot at the beginning of this README

This project contains ~4300 lines of code

License
MIT
Crate facts
Not measured
  • Runs on, Native code and Python bindings read crates on crates.io. This entry lists no crate.

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Order: strongest tier first, then most downloads, then name, with unmeasured values last. A library counts downloads over 30 days. An app counts binary downloads per release. An app with none counts its crate downloads over 30 days. ML Rust runs this catalogue, so its closest project always gets a row.

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Why ListedNo archive, New or Featured rule places it, so it is Listed.

What it lacks for Featured

What else the check found

  • The last activity is on 19 Feb 2022, 1724 days ago. That reaches the 365 days the rules expect, so the project is dormant. Dormancy rule

Not measured: Unpatched vulnerabilities past the grace window, First release.

Check notes

  • Repology has no project l2

Exact rules: Listed, Featured app. The check on applied thresholds version 9.

Every rule outcome, as the check records it
  • expected-interval: app: E = 365 days
  • dormancy: last activity 2022-02-19, 1724 days ago, E = 365: dormant
  • featured: not featured: dormant and not stable
  • listed: listed: no archive, new or featured rule applies

Measurements and sources

Each signal row shows the raw value, its source and the fetch date. The Sources list gathers every distinct source on this page. Movement needs more history.

Sources4 sources
Adoption0 binary downloads per release4 not measured
Adoption measurements
SignalValueSourceFetchedCounts
Active dependentsNot measuredYes
New dependents (365 days)Not measuredYes
Peak active dependentsNot measuredYes
Active dependents as a share of the peakNot measuredYes
Binary downloads per release0GitHub releasesYes
MaintenanceLatest human commit: 4 years ago7 not measured
Maintenance measurements
SignalValueSourceFetchedCounts
Latest human commit2022-02-19GitHub repositoryYes
Latest release2019-09-04GitHub releasesYes
First releaseNot measuredYes
Latest versionNot measuredYes
Days the oldest outside issue waits for a reply0GitHub repositoryYes
Maintainer replies over 365 days0GitHub repositoryYes
Repository archivedfalseGitHub repositoryYes
Repository gonefalseGitHub repositoryYes
Release commit or manifest in the repoNot measuredYes
Published docsNot measuredYes
Latest release fails cargo checkNot measuredYes
Build check dateNot measuredYes
Build check toolchainNot measuredYes
SecurityNot measured
Security measurements
SignalValueSourceFetchedCounts
Unpatched vulnerabilities past the grace windowNot measuredYes
RustSec unmaintained advisoryNot measuredYes
Deprecation noticeNot measuredYes
Deprecated requirementNot measuredYes
Distribution0 binary downloads over the last 3 releases10 not measured
Distribution measurements
SignalValueSourceFetchedCounts
ReleasesNot measuredYes
Downloads over 30 daysNot measuredYes
Binary downloads over the last 3 releases0GitHub releasesYes
Homebrew installs on request over 365 daysNot measuredYes
Repology repository familiesNot measuredYes
Docker pull growth over 90 daysNot measuredYes
Docker pulls at the growth baselineNot measuredYes
Every version a prereleaseNot measuredYes
Every version 0.0.xNot measuredYes
Every version yankedNot measuredYes
Crate deleted from crates.ioNot measuredYes
Repository197 stars, 19 forks, 1 contributors, 165 commits. Stars alone never qualify a project.1 not measured
Repository measurements
SignalValueSourceFetchedCounts
GitHub stars197GitHub repositoryYes — one part of the repository route
GitHub forks19GitHub repositoryYes — one part of the repository route
Contributors with a GitHub account1GitHub contributorsYes — one part of the repository route
Commits on the default branch165GitHub repositoryNo
Repository's main crate left out of the entryNot measuredYes
Facts that never count
Facts that never count measurements
SignalValueSourceFetchedCounts
LicenseMITGitHub repositoryNo
Runs on, from listed crates and their direct dependenciesNot measuredNo
What shows each backendNot measuredNo
Native code, from listed crates and their dependenciesNot measuredNo
Python bindings, from direct dependencies of listed cratesNot measuredNo
Crates that depend on a listed crate directlyNot measuredNo

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