Alibaba Cloud opens source code for machine-learning platform Alink · TechNode

Alibaba Cloud, a subsidiary of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, has opened to the public its source code for an in-house machine-learning platform that it used to drive product recommendations during this year's Singles Day shopping festival. Why it matters: Alibaba has sharpened its focus on open-source software since 2011. The company's cloud division is a member of the Linux Foundation and is active in a number of open-source communities including the Apache Software Foundation. Details: Dubbed Alink, the platform offers a range of algorithm libraries that allow for processing live data as well as batched datasets, Alibaba Cloud said in a statement on Thursday. "The difference between Alink and the pure AI platforms like Tensorflow and PyTorch is that those focus more on the algorithms and the design of the models. But today, for machine learning models to train effectively, we need to have a high-quality connection to the big data. Alink provides us with a seamless connection between the AI algorithms and the big data distributed systems."