Microsoft, Amazon announce deep learning interface Gluon that is accessible to all developers
Amazon Web Services and Microsoft have together developed a new open source deep learning library called Gluon that can be accessible to all developers. Using the interface, developers of all skill levels can build neural networks using simple, concise code, without sacrificing performance. Gluon will help developers build machine learning models using a simple Python API and a range of pre-built, optimized neural network components. “We created the Gluon interface so building neural networks and training models can be as easy as building an app,” said Swami Sivasubramanian, VP of Amazon AI. Gluon currently works with Apache MXNet and will support Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit (CNTK) in an upcoming release.
Google, IBM launch open source API Grafeas for governing software supply chains as “central source of truth”
IBM and Google have announced the launch of an open source initiative called Grafeas which offers developers a uniform way of auditing and governing their software supply chains. The software supply chain has several stages such as code, build, test, deploy and operate. At each stage, different tools generate metadata about various software components. Grafeas provides an open API that captures and aggregates this metadata. So using the API developers can easily track when and where the code was changed and who changed it, whether the code successfully passed security scan, and what type of vulnerabilities were found if it failed the test. As part of Grafeas, Google is also introducing Kritis which helps developers create Kubernetes governance policies based on the metadata stored in Grafeas. IBM said it will offer Grafeas and Kritis as part of the IBM Container Service on IBM Cloud. Grafeas and Kritis are Greek words which mean “scribe” and “judge” respectively.
Other Data Science News
Box announces Box Skills to manage growing multimedia content with artificial intelligence
To manage the growing amount of multimedia content, Box has launched a new artificial intelligence toolkit called Box Skills. The company announced that its Box Skills framework will integrate the best AI and machine learning tools directly into the content on Box in a secured environment. Box Skills provides customers built-in flexibility to use algorithms from various companies, and mix and match intelligent machine learning tools from Google, IBM, and Microsoft. Breaking the announcement at its BoxWorks conference, Box previewed three specific skills it will initially offer in public beta: Audio intelligence, using technology from IBM Watson; video intelligence powered by Microsoft Cognitive Services; and image intelligence, using Google Cloud Platform. Box Skills will be available in beta in early 2018.
Tensorflow receives hardware support from NVidia and Movidius
TensorFlow now has new hardware support from NVidia and Movidius. TensorFlow will now run on NVidia’s Jetson TX2 and Intel’s Movidius chip. The Movidius Neural Compute Stick Software Development Kit (NC SDK) now supports TensorFlow. TensorRT 3 is part of the NVidia Deep Learning SDK; TensorRT includes the TensorRT Optimizer and runtime. DIGITS 6 also supports TensorFlow (DIGITS expands as NVIDIA Deep Learning GPU Training System).
Vora 2.0 released, SAP partners can now deploy Vora on multiple cloud systems
SAP has launched a new edition of Vora, its big data analytics software. The new release, Vora 2.0, offers SAP partners multi-cloud deployment options. It uses container architecture and leverages open source Kubernetes platform for deployment, thus simplifying the overall deployment and cluster management on public cloud. The product is thus cloud-ready, and more hybrid-ready.