The Linux Foundation launches LF Deep Learning Foundation

The Linux Foundation has launched the LF Deep Learning Foundation, an umbrella organization that will support and sustain open source innovation in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning while striving to make these critical new technologies available to developers and data scientists everywhere.

Founding members of LF Deep Learning include Amdocs, AT&T, B.Yond, Baidu, Huawei, Nokia, Tech Mahindra, Tencent, Univa, and ZTE. With LF Deep Learning, members are working to create a neutral space where makers and sustainers of tools and infrastructure can interact and harmonize their efforts and accelerate the broad adoption of deep learning technologies.

“We are excited to offer a deep learning foundation that can drive long-term strategy and support for a host of projects in the AI, machine learning, and deep learning ecosystems,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of The Linux Foundation. “With LF Deep Learning, we are launching the Acumos AI Project, a comprehensive platform for AI model discovery, development and sharing. In addition, we are pleased to announce that Baidu and Tencent each intend to contribute projects to LF Deep Learning. LF Deep Learning enables the open source community to support entire ecosystems of projects in these spaces, and we invite the open source community to join us in this effort.”

As part of the LF Deep Learning launch, The Linux Foundation announced the Acumos AI Project, a platform for the development, discovery, and sharing of AI models and AI workflows. Initial code for the Acumos AI Project has been contributed by AT&T and Tech Mahindra.

The project strives to make the power of AI accessible to all by making it easy to create, share, discover, and apply machine learning, deep learning, and analytics models. The Linux Foundation will host the Acumos AI platform and the Acumos Marketplace moving forward with the goal of nurturing an active, large ecosystem around the project to sustain it over the long term. Code is available for download as of today.

In addition to the Acumos AI Project, LF Deep Learning anticipates future project contributions from Baidu and Tencent, among others. Baidu’s EDL project enhances Kubernetes with the feature of elastic scheduling and uses PaddlePaddle’s fault-tolerable feature to significantly improve the overall utilization of Kubernetes clusters. Tencent’s Angel project, a high-performance distributed machine-learning platform jointly developed by Tencent and Peking University, is tuned for big data/models. It is capable of supporting over a billion parameters.