(Updated) ONNX: Open Neural Network Exchange Format

I was just exposed to this.   I will post an introductory presentation on this here when it shortly becomes available.   (Updated) Great idea.   Their site has lots more:

Slides
Recording

Open Neural Network Exchange Format
The New Open Ecosystem for Interchangeable AI Models

What is ONNX?

ONNX is a open format to represent deep learning models. With ONNX, AI developers can more easily move models between state-of-the-art tools and choose the combination that is best for them. ONNX is developed and supported by a community of partners

ONNX is a community project created by Facebook and Microsoft. We believe there is a need for greater interoperability in the AI tools community. Many people are working on great tools, but developers are often locked in to one framework or ecosystem. ONNX is the first step in enabling more of these tools to work together by allowing them to share models. Our goal is to make it possible for developers to use the right combinations of tools for their project. We want everyone to be able to take AI from research to reality as quickly as possible without artificial friction from toolchains. We hope you'll join us in this mission!

Support for ONNX added to Sony's Neural Network Libraries
Sony’s Neural Network Libraries now supports ONNX, furthering interoperability between the open source deep learning framework and other ML tools. Neural Network Libraries is a deep learning framework that is intended to be used for research, development and production, with the aim of having it running everywhere: desktop PCs, HPC clusters, embedded devices and production servers. It’s used in various products like the Sony Aibo robot, Sony’s Real Estate Price Estimate Engine, and Xperia Ear.   ... " 

Open AI Framework by Microsoft and Facebook

From the Facebook research blog.  A further indication of the progress in standardizing how such systems should be built and maintained.   Would be useful to now compare this to work by Google in TensorFlow.   Is it comparable?

Facebook and Microsoft introduce new open ecosystem for interchangeable AI frameworks

By: Joaquin Quinonero Candela

Facebook and Microsoft are today introducing Open Neural Network Exchange (ONNX) format, a standard for representing deep learning models that enables models to be transferred between frameworks. ONNX is the first step toward an open ecosystem where AI developers can easily move between state-of-the-art tools and choose the combination that is best for them.

When developing learning models, engineers and researchers have many AI frameworks to choose from. At the outset of a project, developers have to choose features and commit to a framework. Many times, the features chosen when experimenting during research and development are different than the features desired for shipping to production. Many organizations are left without a good way to bridge the gap between these operating modes and have resorted to a range of creative workarounds to cope, such as requiring researchers work in the production system or translating models by hand.

We developed ONNX together with Microsoft to bridge this gap and to empower AI developers to choose the framework that fits the current stage of their project and easily switch between frameworks as the project evolves. Caffe2, PyTorch, and Cognitive Toolkit will all be releasing support for ONNX in September, which will allow models trained in one of these frameworks to be exported to another for inference. We invite the community to join the effort and support ONNX in their ecosystem. Enabling interoperability between different frameworks and streamlining the path from research to production will help increase the speed of innovation in the AI community. .... "