TensorFlow* Optimizations on Modern Intel Architecture

TensorFlow* is a leading deep learning and machine learning framework, which makes it important for Intel and Google to ensure that it is able to extract maximum performance from Intel's hardware offering. This paper introduces the Artificial Intelligence (AI) community to TensorFlow optimizations on Intel Xeon and Intel Xeon Phi processor-based platforms. These optimizations are the fruit of a close collaboration between Intel and Google engineers announced last year by Intel's Diane Bryant and Google's Diane Green at the first Intel AI Day. We describe the various performance challenges that we encountered during this optimization exercise and the solutions adopted. We also report out performance improvements on a sample of common neural networks models.