Alternative Computational Backends

Development
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Hey, I am Sharan RY, a sophomore majoring in Mathematics and Computer Science at BITS Pilani, India. I recently came across PyMC3. I was going through the wish-list and found some of the projects really interesting. Especially the one exploring alternative computational back-ends as I am familiar with TensorFlow and have ventured into PyTorch. I am trying familiarize myself with PyMC3 so I can make some meaningful contribution to this project.

Have there been any new developments related to alternative backend? I am asking this because I found discussions regarding PyMC4 backend.

Is this a potential project for GSoC 2018?

Any advice as to how to go about this will be very helpful.

TIA

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There is currently no official decision regarding new backend. It might be a bit too big for a GSoC 2018 project, but we will certainly plan some backend related projects.

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Hey thanks for replying,

Just one small question.
When you say there will be some backend projects planned, do you mean using tensorflow or pytorch OR theano?

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I mean project related to choosing a new backends. It could be experiment on either tensorflow, pytorch, mxnet etc, or implementing a few things in all of them to compare.

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Also for some context, that wish list @sharan linked was made before we found out Theano development was stopping. You can see https://discourse.pymc.io/c/pymc4 for more discussion about the future of this project, and https://www.numfocus.org/blog/theano-and-the-future-of-pymc/ for a summary.

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