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Abstractdifferentiation.jl: Backend-Agnostic Differentiable Programming in Julia (arxiv.org)
2 points by ChrisRackauckas on Sep 28, 2021 | hide | past | pdf | discuss on HN

In plain words: A Julia package that builds one command set for any automatic differentiation tool, so programmers can swap or combine tools without learning each tool's interface. Instead of hand-writing helper code, developers define one or two operations, and users get Jacobians, Hessians, and lazy products.

Abstract · AbstractDifferentiation.jl: Backend-Agnostic Differentiable Programming in Julia

No single Automatic Differentiation (AD) system is the optimal choice for all problems. This means informed selection of an AD system and combinations can be a problem-specific variable that can greatly impact performance. In the Julia programming language, the major AD systems target the same input and thus in theory can compose. Hitherto, switching between AD packages in the Julia Language required end-users to familiarize themselves with the user-facing API of the respective packages. Furthermore, implementing a new, usable AD package required AD package developers to write boilerplate code to define convenience API functions for end-users. As a response to these issues, we present AbstractDifferentiation.jl for the automatized generation of an extensive, unified, user-facing API for any AD package. By splitting the complexity between AD users and AD developers, AD package developers only need to implement one or two primitive definitions to support various utilities for AD users like Jacobians, Hessians and lazy product operators from native primitives such as pullbacks or pushforwards, thus removing tedious -- but so far inevitable -- boilerplate code, and enabling the easy switching and composing between AD implementations for end-users.

Frank Schäfer, Mohamed Tarek, Lyndon White, Chris Rackauckas
arXiv:2109.12449 · cs.MS, cs.LG, cs.SE · submitted Sep 25, 2021 · updated Feb 4, 2022
abstract · pdf · html · 3 figures, 2 tables 15 pages

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Also discussed: Oct 2021 (2 points, 2 comments)