tf overview

Tensorflow is a computer software, namely, software for implementing a computer programming language and computer software development tool for use in the fields of artificial intelligence, deep learning, high performance computing, distributed computing, virtualization and machine learning; computer software libraries for use in general purpose computation, manipulation of collections of data, data transformation, input/output, communications, graphics display, modeling and testing. Well that explanation was long and pulled from the USPAT trademark website.

So what is TensorFlow in laymans terms? A software that can distinguish cats and dogs from pictures or estimate how many pigeons will land on a tree at any given time. According to Google TensorFlow is a second generation deep learning algorithm.

● 1st generation: DistBelief [Dean et al., NIPS 2012]
● 2nd generation: TensorFlow (published Nov 2015)

TensorFlow itself is written in C++ and currently has programming APIs for C++ and Python. The TF creators hope that the global community provides more APIs for a number of programming and scripting languages (JAVA, C#, R and others). TF is currently neither the fastest nor the most accurate algorithm or framework, but potentially can be very fast and scale very well with multiple GPUs (graphic cards).

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Links

• Deep Learning - Large-Scale Deep Learning for Intelligent Computer Systems by Jeff Dean