As an alternative to Caffe framework, Torch 7, which is maintained by Facebook Research provides a more flexible framework for machine learning algorithms, especially for popular Deep Learning. Difference from the Caffe that is developed by C++ & CUDA (see here for source codes) and wrapped with multiple script language such as python and matlab, Torch 7 is developed using C & CUDA (see here for source code) under the hood while the interface is provided through LuaJIT, an easy and efficient script language. In this post, I install the Torch 7 framework on my Ubuntu 14.04 laptop and run the basic test programs on it, using only CPU.
To find out what is Lua, you can refer this article (http://cellux.github.io/articles/introduction-to-luajit-part-1/)
Torch 7:
Website:
http://torch.ch/
Github:
https://github.com/torch/torch7
Installation Instruction:
http://torch.ch/docs/getting-started.html#_
According to this instruction:
# in a terminal, run the commands curl -sk https://raw.githubusercontent.com/torch/ezinstall/master/install-deps | bash
The first line is to install dependencies that are required for Torch 7,
Go into this bash file (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/torch/ezinstall/master/install-deps), you can see that the dependencies are (part of it them listed):
OpenBLAS: an optimized BLAS library, BLAS, called Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms, provides standard building blocks for performing basic vector and matrix operations.
gcc/g++, cmake, git, gnuplot, python, etc.
This will take several minutes (mine for 20 mins) according to your computer.
git clone https://github.com/torch/distro.git ~/torch --recursive
cd ~/torch; ./install.sh
Second and third lines install LuaJIT, LuaRocks, and use LuaRocks to install Torch and other packages. You can see some of the packages in their github (https://github.com/torch/distro). Torch is installed on your computer under the path: "~/torch/".
This will take several minutes (mine for ~2 min clone from git and ~15 min to install)
Nicely Done!
After several minutes installation, you can just type:
"th" in terminal to run torch.
Note that if it shows "th: command not found", please refresh the bashrc file by command:
"source ~/.bashrc"
Then command "th" will give you this:
Test Torch 7:
Install torch/demos from github by command:
"git clone https://github.com/torch/demos"
Go into the demos folder, then just run one of the demos:
"th demos/train-on-cifar/train-on-cifar.lua"
Done! You will see the demo runs to train different models on the CIFAR dataset. The screenshot is like this:
