In a recent feed, we discussed the latest version of the IBM PowerAI. Now, IBM is announcing a few new feats of the package, which sound exciting and will make life easier for its all users. The big news is that with the new PowerAI 1.6.0 version, IBM is moving completely to the conda environment.
What does Conda bring to the users?
Natural package dependency resolutions – with conda, the full featured packaging solution, and the dependencies are determined and installed at package installation time. By building the conda packages with a toolchain that is independent of the operating system, it allows OS independent packages. The result in a single set of conda packages for everywhere. There are no more separate .rpm or .deb packages, targeted at the different distros.
Open and continuous delivery – the delivery model is simplified and amplified through PowerAI official online conda channel. This consolidates fixes, updates, and “ship when ready” additions at one place, which are exciting new capabilities for PowerAI.
Simplified installation and system management – another exciting change in PowerAI 1.6.0 is that NVIDIA’s CUDA, cuDNN, and NCCL are provided as conda packages and no longer need to be installed system-wide. Note that the NVIDIA device driver itself is not included and will still need to be installed separately.
Meta package control – strengthening the controls for the package set. PowerAI 1.6.0 introduces powerai and powerai-release meta packages. For instance, it is possible to install the 1.6.0 package versions even when newer packages are introduced in the future.
In overall, with PowerAI 1.6.0, IBM aims to reduce the system management burden, increase flexibility and as a result, the velocity of its clients’ development pipelines.
We’re excited about these changes and hope you to choose L3C as your AI Infrastructure provider in the fascinating journey in the world of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence.