Image Classification, Deep Learning and Convolutional Neural Networks : A Comparative Study of Machine Learning Frameworks

Abstract: The use of machine learning and specifically neural networks is a growing trend in software development, and has grown immensely in the last couple of years in the light of an increasing need to handle big data and large information flows. Machine learning has a broad area of application, such as human-computer interaction, predicting stock prices, real-time translation, and self driving vehicles. Large companies such as Microsoft and Google have already implemented machine learning in some of their commercial products such as their search engines, and their intelligent personal assistants Cortana and Google Assistant. The main goal of this project was to evaluate the two deep learning frameworks Google TensorFlow and Microsoft CNTK, primarily based on their performance in the training time of neural networks. We chose to use the third-party API Keras instead of TensorFlow's own API when working with TensorFlow. CNTK was found to perform better in regards of training time compared to TensorFlow with Keras as frontend. Even though CNTK performed better on the benchmarking tests, we found Keras with TensorFlow as backend to be much easier and more intuitive to work with. In addition, CNTKs underlying implementation of the machine learning algorithms and functions differ from that of the literature and of other frameworks. Therefore, if we had to choose a framework to continue working in, we would choose Keras with TensorFlow as backend, even though the performance is less compared to CNTK.