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TensorFlow 2.0 Alpha Released
Today the alpha 2.0 version of the popular open source machine learning platform TensorFlow was released on Github.
According to the official announcement of the release, the focus of TensorFlow 2.0 is on ease of use via new APIs and other features to make it much simpler for both beginners and experienced machine learning experts to use TensorFlow in their projects.
The creators have also previously commented about their desire to make TensorFlow "more effective" with this release, via changes like improved Python runtime integration, more consistency between the various APIs offered and the removal of some redundant APIs.
A detailed list of all the modules, classes and functions in TensorFlow 2.0 can be found here.
Two of the new features particularly promoted in the announcement are eager execution and @tf.function (and how they work together):
"One of the biggest changes is that TensorFlow is eager-first, which means ops are run immediately upon calling them. In TensorFlow 1.x, you might be familiar with first constructing a graph and then executing pieces of the graph via tf.Session.run(). TensorFlow 2.0 radically simplifies TensorFlow usage — the same great ops, now much easier to understand and use....
TensorFlow 2.0 uses Keras as a core developer experience. With 2.0, you can use Keras as you know it, building your models with the Sequential API, and then using compile and fit. All of these familiar tf.keras examples from tensorflow.org work out of the box in 2.0.
The announcement notes that while TensorFlow 2.0 is designed to be used with the Python-based open source deep learning library Keras, it's not required.
The company is offering "Getting Started for Beginners" and "Getting Started for Experts" tutorials for 2.0.
Being an alpha release, this current version of 2.0 is considered to be in "test drive" mode for developers. Still the creators have published a migration guide for transitioning TensorFlow 1code to TensorFlow 2 here.
About the Author
Becky Nagel is the former editorial director and director of Web for 1105 Media's Converge 360 group, and she now serves as vice president of AI for company, specializing in developing media, events and training for companies around AI and generative AI technology. She's the author of "ChatGPT Prompt 101 Guide for Business Users" and other popular AI resources with a real-world business perspective. She regularly speaks, writes and develops content around AI, generative AI and other business tech. Find her on X/Twitter @beckynagel.