
TensorFlow: Machine Learning on Heterogeneous Distributed Systems (2015) [pdf] - jxub
https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//pubs/archive/45166.pdf
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chewxy
As the primary author of Gorgonia[0], thank you for this. I've never read
this. It's a fascinating read about the thought processes that go into
creating TensorFlow.

One particularly interesting thing is that it looks like Tensorflow started
earlier than I thought (I've always thought Gorgonia predated Tensorflow (I
started a few months before giving this talk[1], but only announced it one
year later[2])).

3 years later, TensorFlow is super feature packed, and I'm still trying to
drive adoption for my lib. Oh well.

[0]
[https://github.com/gorgonia/gorgonia](https://github.com/gorgonia/gorgonia)

[1] [https://speakerdeck.com/chewxy/deep-learning-in-go-or-
shenna...](https://speakerdeck.com/chewxy/deep-learning-in-go-or-shennanigans-
with-matrices)

[2] [https://speakerdeck.com/chewxy/gorgonia-primitives-for-
build...](https://speakerdeck.com/chewxy/gorgonia-primitives-for-building-
neural-networks-in-go)

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sja
I remember this guy! I put together some notes and annotations for it when it
came out. Some people found them useful back then- I'll leave them here in
case other people can make use of them.

[https://github.com/samjabrahams/tensorflow-white-paper-
notes](https://github.com/samjabrahams/tensorflow-white-paper-notes)

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yablak
One of the authors here. Working on TensorFlow has been quite a trip!

Here's a followup paper submitted to Usenix:

[https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/osdi16/osdi16...](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/osdi16/osdi16-abadi.pdf)

And here's a very recent publication detailing just the flow control aspects
(conditionals, while loops):

[https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3190551](https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3190551)

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godelmachine
I just had a quick glance through the paper and felt they didn't worry too
much about explaining the hardware architecture.

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ucaetano
Are you mixing this up with TPUs? Tensorflow is HW independent, as it is just
a SW library.

~~~
godelmachine
I think you are right. Sorry, my bad! I remember the TPU paper Google had
released last year (2017) circa March/ April, on performance evaluation of
TPU's. Got a bit messed up.

