One key purpose of PAI is to support the highly diversified requirements from academia and industry. PAI is completely open: it is under the MIT license. PAI is architected in a modular way: different module can be plugged in as appropriate. This makes PAI particularly attractive to evaluate various research ideas, which include but not limited to the following components:
- Scheduling mechanism for deep learning workload
- Deep neural network application that requires evaluation under realistic platform environment
- New deep learning framework
- AutoML
- Compiler technique for AI
- High performance networking for AI
- Profiling tool, including network, platform, and AI job profiling
- AI Benchmark suite
- New hardware for AI, including FPGA, ASIC, Neural Processor
- AI Storage support
- AI platform management
PAI operates in an open model. It is initially designed and developed by Microsoft Research (MSR) and Microsoft Search Technology Center (STC) platform team. We are glad to have Peking University, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Zhejiang University, and University of Science and Technology of China join us to develop the platform jointly. Contributions from academia and industry are all highly welcome.