Differentiable Programming
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Differentiable Programming
Differentiable programming is a programming paradigm in which a numeric computer program can be differentiated throughout via automatic differentiation. This allows for gradient-based optimization of parameters in the program, often via gradient descent, as well as other learning approaches that are based on higher order derivative information. Differentiable programming has found use in a wide variety of areas, particularly scientific computing and artificial intelligence. One of the early proposals to adopt such a framework in a systematic fashion to improve upon learning algorithms was made by the Advanced Concepts Team at the European Space Agency in early 2016. Approaches Most differentiable programming frameworks work by constructing a graph containing the control flow and data structures in the program. Attempts generally fall into two groups: * Static, compiled graph-based approaches such as TensorFlow,TensorFlow 1 uses the static graph approach, whereas TensorFlow 2 ...
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Programming Paradigm
Programming paradigms are a way to classify programming languages based on their features. Languages can be classified into multiple paradigms. Some paradigms are concerned mainly with implications for the execution model of the language, such as allowing side effects, or whether the sequence of operations is defined by the execution model. Other paradigms are concerned mainly with the way that code is organized, such as grouping a code into units along with the state that is modified by the code. Yet others are concerned mainly with the style of syntax and grammar. Common programming paradigms include: * imperative in which the programmer instructs the machine how to change its state, ** procedural which groups instructions into procedures, ** object-oriented which groups instructions with the part of the state they operate on, * declarative in which the programmer merely declares properties of the desired result, but not how to compute it ** functional in which the de ...
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Operator Overloading
In computer programming, operator overloading, sometimes termed ''operator ad hoc polymorphism'', is a specific case of polymorphism, where different operators have different implementations depending on their arguments. Operator overloading is generally defined by a programming language, a programmer, or both. Rationale Operator overloading is syntactic sugar, and is used because it allows programming using notation nearer to the target domain and allows user-defined types a similar level of syntactic support as types built into a language. It is common, for example, in scientific computing, where it allows computing representations of mathematical objects to be manipulated with the same syntax as on paper. Operator overloading does not change the expressive power of a language (with functions), as it can be emulated using function calls. For example, consider variables , and of some user-defined type, such as matrices: In a language that supports operator overloading, ...
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Differentiable Function
In mathematics, a differentiable function of one real variable is a function whose derivative exists at each point in its domain. In other words, the graph of a differentiable function has a non-vertical tangent line at each interior point in its domain. A differentiable function is smooth (the function is locally well approximated as a linear function at each interior point) and does not contain any break, angle, or cusp. If is an interior point in the domain of a function , then is said to be ''differentiable at'' if the derivative f'(x_0) exists. In other words, the graph of has a non-vertical tangent line at the point . is said to be differentiable on if it is differentiable at every point of . is said to be ''continuously differentiable'' if its derivative is also a continuous function over the domain of the function f. Generally speaking, is said to be of class if its first k derivatives f^(x), f^(x), \ldots, f^(x) exist and are continuous over the domain of the func ...
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Probabilistic Programming
Probabilistic programming (PP) is a programming paradigm in which probabilistic models are specified and inference for these models is performed automatically. It represents an attempt to unify probabilistic modeling and traditional general purpose programming in order to make the former easier and more widely applicable.Pfeffer, Avrom (2014), ''Practical Probabilistic Programming'', Manning Publications. p.28. It can be used to create systems that help make decisions in the face of uncertainty. Programming languages used for probabilistic programming are referred to as "probabilistic programming languages" (PPLs). Applications Probabilistic reasoning has been used for a wide variety of tasks such as predicting stock prices, recommending movies, diagnosing computers, detecting cyber intrusions and image detection. However, until recently (partially due to limited computing power), probabilistic programming was limited in scope, and most inference algorithms had to be written ...
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Image Processing
An image is a visual representation of something. It can be two-dimensional, three-dimensional, or somehow otherwise feed into the visual system to convey information. An image can be an artifact, such as a photograph or other two-dimensional picture, that resembles a subject. In the context of signal processing, an image is a distributed amplitude of color(s). In optics, the term “image” may refer specifically to a 2D image. An image does not have to use the entire visual system to be a visual representation. A popular example of this is of a greyscale image, which uses the visual system's sensitivity to brightness across all wavelengths, without taking into account different colors. A black and white visual representation of something is still an image, even though it does not make full use of the visual system's capabilities. Images are typically still, but in some cases can be moving or animated. Characteristics Images may be two or three-dimensional, such as a pho ...
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Ray Tracing (graphics)
In 3D computer graphics, ray tracing is a technique for modeling light transport for use in a wide variety of rendering algorithms for generating digital images. On a spectrum of computational cost and visual fidelity, ray tracing-based rendering techniques, such as ray casting, recursive ray tracing, distribution ray tracing, photon mapping and path tracing, are generally slower and higher fidelity than scanline rendering methods. Thus, ray tracing was first deployed in applications where taking a relatively long time to render could be tolerated, such as in still computer-generated images, and film and television visual effects (VFX), but was less suited to real-time applications such as video games, where speed is critical in rendering each frame. Since 2018, however, hardware acceleration for real-time ray tracing has become standard on new commercial graphics cards, and graphics APIs have followed suit, allowing developers to use hybrid ray tracing and rasterization- ...
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Density Functional Theory
Density-functional theory (DFT) is a computational quantum mechanical modelling method used in physics, chemistry and materials science to investigate the electronic structure (or nuclear structure) (principally the ground state) of many-body systems, in particular atoms, molecules, and the condensed phases. Using this theory, the properties of a many-electron system can be determined by using functionals, i.e. functions of another function. In the case of DFT, these are functionals of the spatially dependent electron density. DFT is among the most popular and versatile methods available in condensed-matter physics, computational physics, and computational chemistry. DFT has been very popular for calculations in solid-state physics since the 1970s. However, DFT was not considered accurate enough for calculations in quantum chemistry until the 1990s, when the approximations used in the theory were greatly refined to better model the exchange and correlation interactions ...
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Robotics
Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrates fields of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, information engineering, mechatronics, electronics, bioengineering, computer engineering, control engineering, software engineering, mathematics, etc. Robotics develops machines that can substitute for humans and replicate human actions. Robots can be used in many situations for many purposes, but today many are used in dangerous environments (including inspection of radioactive materials, bomb detection and deactivation), manufacturing processes, or where humans cannot survive (e.g. in space, underwater, in high heat, and clean up and containment of hazardous materials and radiation). Robots can take any form, but some are made to resemble humans in appearance. This is claim ...
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Physics Engines
A physics engine is computer software that provides an approximate simulation of certain physical systems, such as rigid body dynamics (including collision detection), soft body dynamics, and fluid dynamics, of use in the domains of computer graphics, video games and film ( CGI). Their main uses are in video games (typically as middleware), in which case the simulations are in real-time. The term is sometimes used more generally to describe any software system for simulating physical phenomena, such as high-performance scientific simulation. Description There are generally two classes of physics engines: real-time and high-precision. High-precision physics engines require more processing power to calculate very precise physics and are usually used by scientists and computer animated movies. Real-time physics engines—as used in video games and other forms of interactive computing—use simplified calculations and decreased accuracy to compute in time for the game to respond ...
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Deep Learning
Deep learning (also known as deep structured learning) is part of a broader family of machine learning methods based on artificial neural networks with representation learning. Learning can be supervised, semi-supervised or unsupervised. Deep-learning architectures such as deep neural networks, deep belief networks, deep reinforcement learning, recurrent neural networks, convolutional neural networks and Transformers have been applied to fields including computer vision, speech recognition, natural language processing, machine translation, bioinformatics, drug design, medical image analysis, Climatology, climate science, material inspection and board game programs, where they have produced results comparable to and in some cases surpassing human expert performance. Artificial neural networks (ANNs) were inspired by information processing and distributed communication nodes in biological systems. ANNs have various differences from biological brains. Specifically, artificial ...
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Intermediate Representation
An intermediate representation (IR) is the data structure or code used internally by a compiler or virtual machine to represent source code. An IR is designed to be conducive to further processing, such as optimization and translation. A "good" IR must be ''accurate'' – capable of representing the source code without loss of information – and ''independent'' of any particular source or target language. An IR may take one of several forms: an in-memory data structure, or a special tuple- or stack-based code readable by the program. In the latter case it is also called an ''intermediate language''. A canonical example is found in most modern compilers. For example, the CPython interpreter transforms the linear human-readable text representing a program into an intermediate graph structure that allows flow analysis and re-arrangement before execution. Use of an intermediate representation such as this allows compiler systems like the GNU Compiler Collection and LLVM to be use ...
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Julia (programming Language)
Julia is a high-level, dynamic programming language. Its features are well suited for numerical analysis and computational science. Distinctive aspects of Julia's design include a type system with parametric polymorphism in a dynamic programming language; with multiple dispatch as its core programming paradigm. Julia supports concurrent, (composable) parallel and distributed computing (with or without using MPI or the built-in corresponding to "OpenMP-style" threads), and direct calling of C and Fortran libraries without glue code. Julia uses a just-in-time (JIT) compiler that is referred to as "just- ahead-of-time" (JAOT) in the Julia community, as Julia compiles all code (by default) to machine code before running it. Julia is garbage-collected, uses eager evaluation, and includes efficient libraries for floating-point calculations, linear algebra, random number generation, and regular expression matching. Many libraries are available, including some (e.g., for fast Fo ...
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