Feedback desired for neural networks library

From: Sergei Marchenko (serge_v_m_at_[hidden])
Date: 2020-12-31 00:45:14

Hi everyone,

I have a template-based library with several common types of layers which can be assembled into various neural networks: https://github.com/svm-git/NeuralNet, and I would love to get community feedback on the overall design, any issues or missing features, and how interesting a library like that would be in general.

I've been watching the trends and research reports in the AI/ML space, and I feel that the recent announcements of the successful models for image classification, computer vision or natural language processing, push the focus towards very complex and computationally intensive networks. However, I think that the idea behind multi-layer networks is very powerful, and is applicable in many domains, where even a small and lightweight model can be used successfully. I also think that if developers have an access to a library of building blocks that allows them to train and run NN anywhere a C++ code can run, it may encourage a lot of good applications.

In the current state, the library is fairly small and should be easy to review. It was built with two main goals in mind:

  *   Provide a collection of building blocks that share a common interface which allows plug'n'play construction of more complex NNs.
  *   Compile-time verification of the internal consistency of the network. I.e. if a layer's output size does not match the next layer's input, it is caught at the very early stage.

Once it seems like there is some consensus on the core design and usefulness of such library, I am willing to do the work necessary to make the library consistent with Boost requirements for naming convention, folder structure, unit tests etc. The library relies on the C++ 11 language features and has a dependency on just a few STL components, so I think it should be straightforward to merge into Boost.

Best regards,
Sergei Marchenko.