8 ms·

Careful, folks. S4TF is pretty much dead on arrival. It was pushed aggressively by Chris Lattner (for obvious reasons) but he left Google a while ago and since

Careful, folks. S4TF is pretty much dead on arrival. It was pushed aggressively by Chris Lattner (for obvious reasons) but he left Google a while ago and since then most internal users lost interest. There's nothing in Swift that's inherently suitable for ML and building the ecosystem is a ton of work; without all the political pushing, it went nowhere and is close to a "semi-abandoned research project" phase.

ddbb33 6y ago
Can you backup your claims?
- UrSuchAGenius 6y ago
  This website has been cached already
- pjmlp 6y ago
  I guess that the fact that Tensorflow 2020 conference had zero references to it, including on the related blog posts says it all.
- Razengan 6y ago
  Newly created account claims something without proof and comments asking for such seem to be getting buried.
  - MiroF 6y ago
    Yes, or a Googler who doesn’t want to be seen publicly attacking a Google project
    - Razengan 6y ago
      Yes, or someone with an agenda against Swift/TF.
rtorr 6y ago
“Stillborn” is a pretty awful term to use for software.
- throw6606 6y ago
  Mea culpa. Reworded.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  Why is that? It conveys the DOA meaning pretty well.
  - MiroF 6y ago
    Generally, your metaphors should not rely on comparison to a pretty traumatic event that has happened to quite a few people, many of whom might be around you without you knowing.
    - lehi 6y ago
      I know anorexics for whom any mention of food can be a trigger. Should metaphors involving consumption be verboten in public discourse because they might be read by someone with an eating disorder?
    - layoutIfNeeded 6y ago
      Sure. I guess then you shouldn’t even use the word “dead”, as plenty of people have lost close relatives which is a pretty traumatic event.
      - MiroF 6y ago
        Just letting you know the reality that a lot of people view "stillborn" events as particularly traumatic. I'm not going to spend a lot of time arguing about this because it's a pretty simple point. It's up to you to choose what kind of person you want to be, I don't have control over what you say.
      - deadmutex 6y ago
bartvk 6y ago
> since then most internal users lost interest Why do you say so?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
MiroF 6y ago
> There's nothing in Swift that's inherently suitable for ML The type system?
- mkolodny 6y ago
  Speed, too. For PyTorch to train models and run inference quickly, your Python code gets translated to C++/CUDA. Part of the idea with S4TF is to be able to write ML code in a single, fast language.
  - MiroF 6y ago
    I am skeptical that there are no calls to underlying C or CUDA libraries occurring. Swift doesn’t naively beat BLAS
  - socialdemocrat 6y ago
    You can already do that in Julia and unlike Swift that is a language with lots of scientific and machine learning libraries. I like Swift but looking at the code examples I got to say preparing data and setting up a model is 10x easier in Julia.
  - dklend122 6y ago
    Well, it's not happening in swift yet. S4TF still requires either c cuda kernels or XLA. Julia on the other hand has JIT GPU codegen and its CPU codegen has been benchmarked to beat openblas
    - MiroF 6y ago
      > CPU codegen has been benchmarked to beat openblas Source on this claim?
      - ddragon 6y ago
        He probably means Tullio.jl (which also seems to integrate with Julia's source to source differentiation library Zygote.jl, the main competitor to Swift for Tensorflow): https://discourse.julialang.org/t/realistically-how-close-is-gaius-jl-to-becoming-a-full-replacement-for-blas-in-julia/42780/5 https://discourse.julialang.org/t/realistically-how-close-is... https://github.com/mcabbott/Tullio.jl https://github.com/mcabbott/Tullio.jl Regardless if it can consistently beat Fortran/BLAS in every area, in general JIT languages have more opportunities for optimizations than AoT languages, so it's interesting to see what comes out of a language that focuses on leveraging this to get the most performance.
belval 6y ago
If true, it does not surprise me. While there is a lot of language war going on in the ML ecosystem, I never really heard anyone using, planning to use or waiting for swift for TensorFlow. It might be a nice language (never used it), but there are other contenders with more engineers/scientists support like Rust and Julia, for which the advantages were clearer. Finally, the whole ordeal got a very bad look from having its main proponent being the creator of Swift instead of the actual community pushing for it.
- ksec 6y ago
  Precisely because Chris Latter had the idea of replacing everything from C to Javascript with Swift. I didn't like that idea then, I still dont like it now. But the idea in itself is very Apple (ish).

ddbb33 6y ago

Can you backup your claims?

UrSuchAGenius 6y ago
This website has been cached already
pjmlp 6y ago
I guess that the fact that Tensorflow 2020 conference had zero references to it, including on the related blog posts says it all.
Razengan 6y ago
Newly created account claims something without proof and comments asking for such seem to be getting buried.
- MiroF 6y ago
  Yes, or a Googler who doesn’t want to be seen publicly attacking a Google project
  - Razengan 6y ago
    Yes, or someone with an agenda against Swift/TF.

rtorr 6y ago

“Stillborn” is a pretty awful term to use for software.

throw6606 6y ago
Mea culpa. Reworded.
StavrosK 6y ago
Why is that? It conveys the DOA meaning pretty well.
- MiroF 6y ago
  Generally, your metaphors should not rely on comparison to a pretty traumatic event that has happened to quite a few people, many of whom might be around you without you knowing.
  - lehi 6y ago
    I know anorexics for whom any mention of food can be a trigger. Should metaphors involving consumption be verboten in public discourse because they might be read by someone with an eating disorder?
  - layoutIfNeeded 6y ago
    Sure. I guess then you shouldn’t even use the word “dead”, as plenty of people have lost close relatives which is a pretty traumatic event.
    - MiroF 6y ago
      Just letting you know the reality that a lot of people view "stillborn" events as particularly traumatic. I'm not going to spend a lot of time arguing about this because it's a pretty simple point. It's up to you to choose what kind of person you want to be, I don't have control over what you say.
    - deadmutex 6y ago

bartvk 6y ago

> since then most internal users lost interest Why do you say so?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

MiroF 6y ago

> There's nothing in Swift that's inherently suitable for ML The type system?

mkolodny 6y ago
Speed, too. For PyTorch to train models and run inference quickly, your Python code gets translated to C++/CUDA. Part of the idea with S4TF is to be able to write ML code in a single, fast language.
- MiroF 6y ago
  I am skeptical that there are no calls to underlying C or CUDA libraries occurring. Swift doesn’t naively beat BLAS
- socialdemocrat 6y ago
  You can already do that in Julia and unlike Swift that is a language with lots of scientific and machine learning libraries. I like Swift but looking at the code examples I got to say preparing data and setting up a model is 10x easier in Julia.
- dklend122 6y ago
  Well, it's not happening in swift yet. S4TF still requires either c cuda kernels or XLA. Julia on the other hand has JIT GPU codegen and its CPU codegen has been benchmarked to beat openblas
  - MiroF 6y ago
    > CPU codegen has been benchmarked to beat openblas Source on this claim?
    - ddragon 6y ago
      He probably means Tullio.jl (which also seems to integrate with Julia's source to source differentiation library Zygote.jl, the main competitor to Swift for Tensorflow): https://discourse.julialang.org/t/realistically-how-close-is-gaius-jl-to-becoming-a-full-replacement-for-blas-in-julia/42780/5 https://discourse.julialang.org/t/realistically-how-close-is... https://github.com/mcabbott/Tullio.jl https://github.com/mcabbott/Tullio.jl Regardless if it can consistently beat Fortran/BLAS in every area, in general JIT languages have more opportunities for optimizations than AoT languages, so it's interesting to see what comes out of a language that focuses on leveraging this to get the most performance.

belval 6y ago

If true, it does not surprise me. While there is a lot of language war going on in the ML ecosystem, I never really heard anyone using, planning to use or waiting for swift for TensorFlow. It might be a nice language (never used it), but there are other contenders with more engineers/scientists support like Rust and Julia, for which the advantages were clearer. Finally, the whole ordeal got a very bad look from having its main proponent being the creator of Swift instead of the actual community pushing for it.

ksec 6y ago
Precisely because Chris Latter had the idea of replacing everything from C to Javascript with Swift. I didn't like that idea then, I still dont like it now. But the idea in itself is very Apple (ish).