jax VS Cython

Compare jax vs Cython and see what are their differences.

jax

Composable transformations of Python+NumPy programs: differentiate, vectorize, JIT to GPU/TPU, and more (by google)
Jax
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jax Cython
82 79
27,842 8,891
3.6% 1.7%
10.0 9.8
7 days ago 6 days ago
Python Python
Apache License 2.0 Apache License 2.0
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

jax

Posts with mentions or reviews of jax. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-03-22.
  • The Elements of Differentiable Programming
    5 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 22 Mar 2024
    The dual numbers exist just as surely as the real numbers and have been used well over 100 years

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_number

    Pytorch has had them for many years.

    https://pytorch.org/docs/stable/generated/torch.autograd.for...

    JAX implements them and uses them exactly as stated in this thread.

    https://github.com/google/jax/discussions/10157#discussionco...

    As you so eloquently stated, "you shouldn't be proclaiming things you don't actually know on a public forum," and doubly so when your claimed "corrections" are so demonstrably and totally incorrect.

  • Julia GPU-based ODE solver 20x-100x faster than those in Jax and PyTorch
    6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 23 Dec 2023
    On your last point, as long as you jit the topmost level, it doesn't matter whether or not you have inner jitted functions. The end result should be the same.

    Source: https://github.com/google/jax/discussions/5199#discussioncom...

  • Apple releases MLX for Apple Silicon
    4 projects | /r/LocalLLaMA | 8 Dec 2023
    The design of MLX is inspired by frameworks like NumPy, PyTorch, Jax, and ArrayFire.
  • MLPerf training tests put Nvidia ahead, Intel close, and Google well behind
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 14 Nov 2023
    I'm still not totally sure what the issue is. Jax uses program transformations to compile programs to run on a variety of hardware, for example, using XLA for TPUs. It can also run cuda ops for Nvidia gpus without issue: https://jax.readthedocs.io/en/latest/installation.html

    There is also support for custom cpp and cuda ops if that's what is needed: https://jax.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Custom_Operation_for_GP...

    I haven't worked with float4, but can imagine that new numerical types would require some special handling. But I assume that's the case for any ml environment.

    But really you probably mean fixed point 4bit integer types? Looks like that has had at least some work done in Jax: https://github.com/google/jax/issues/8566

  • MatX: Efficient C++17 GPU numerical computing library with Python-like syntax
    5 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 3 Oct 2023
    >

    Are they even comparing apples to apples to claim that they see these improvements over NumPy?

    > While the code complexity and length are roughly the same, the MatX version shows a 2100x over the Numpy version, and over 4x faster than the CuPy version on the same GPU.

    NumPy doesn't use GPU by default unless you use something like Jax [1] to compile NumPy code to run on GPUs. I think more honest comparison will mainly compare MatX running on same CPU like NumPy as focus the GPU comparison against CuPy.

    [1] https://github.com/google/jax

  • JAX – NumPy on the CPU, GPU, and TPU, with great automatic differentiation
    12 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 28 Sep 2023
    Actually that never changed. The README has always had an example of differentiating through native Python control flow:

    https://github.com/google/jax/commit/948a8db0adf233f333f3e5f...

    The constraints on control flow expressions come from jax.jit (because Python control flow can't be staged out) and jax.vmap (because we can't take multiple branches of Python control flow, which we might need to do for different batch elements). But autodiff of Python-native control flow works fine!

  • Julia and Mojo (Modular) Mandelbrot Benchmark
    10 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 8 Sep 2023
    For a similar "benchmark" (also Mandelbrot) but took place in Jax repo discussion: https://github.com/google/jax/discussions/11078#discussionco...
  • Functional Programming 1
    3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 16 Aug 2023
    2. https://github.com/fantasyland/fantasy-land (A bit heavy on jargon)

    Note there is a python version of Ramda available on pypi and there’s a lot of FP tidbits inside JAX:

    3. https://pypi.org/project/ramda/ (Worth making your own version if you want to learn, though)

    4. For nested data, JAX tree_util is epic: https://jax.readthedocs.io/en/latest/jax.tree_util.html and also their curry implementation is funny: https://github.com/google/jax/blob/4ac2bdc2b1d71ec0010412a32...

    Anyway don’t put FP on a pedestal, main thing is to focus on the core principles of avoiding external mutation and making helper functions. Doesn’t always work because some languages like Rust don’t have legit support for currying (afaik in 2023 August), but in those cases you can hack it with builder methods to an extent.

    Finally, if you want to understand the middle of the midwit meme, check out this wiki article and connect the free monoid to the Kleene star (0 or more copies of your pattern) and Kleene plus (1 or more copies of your pattern). Those are also in regex so it can help you remember the regex symbols. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_monoid?wprov=sfti1

    The simplest example might be {0}^* in which case

    0: “” // because we use *

  • Best Way to Learn JAX
    1 project | /r/learnmachinelearning | 13 May 2023
    Hello! I'm trying to learn JAX over the next couple of weeks. Ideally, I want to be comfortable with using it for projects after about 3 weeks to a month, although I understand that may not be realistic. I currently have experience with PyTorch and TensorFlow. How should I go about learning JAX? Is there a specific YouTube tutorial or online course I should use, or should I just use the tutorial on https://jax.readthedocs.io/? Any information, advice, or experience you can share would be much appreciated!
  • Codon: Python Compiler
    9 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 8 May 2023

Cython

Posts with mentions or reviews of Cython. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-04-10.
  • Ask HN: C/C++ developer wanting to learn efficient Python
    4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 10 Apr 2024
  • Ask HN: Is there a way to use Python statically typed or with any type-checking?
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 6 Aug 2023
  • Cython 3.0
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 17 Jul 2023
  • How to make a c++ python extension?
    1 project | /r/learnpython | 12 Jun 2023
    The approach that I favour is to use Cython. The nice thing with this approach is that your code is still written as (almost) Python, but so long as you define all required types correctly it will automatically create the C extension for you. Early versions of Cython required using Cython specific typing (Python didn't have type hints when Cython was created), but it can now use Python's type hints.
  • Never again
    4 projects | /r/ProgrammerHumor | 21 May 2023
    and again, everything that was released after using an older version of cython.
  • Codon: Python Compiler
    9 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 8 May 2023
    Just for reference,

    * Nuitka[0] "is a Python compiler written in Python. It's fully compatible with Python 2.6, 2.7, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6, 3.7, 3.8, 3.9, 3.10, and 3.11."

    * Pypy[1] "is a replacement for CPython" with builtin optimizations such as on the fly JIT compiles.

    * Cython[2] "is an optimising static compiler for both the Python programming language and the extended Cython programming language... makes writing C extensions for Python as easy as Python itself."

    * Numba[3] "is an open source JIT compiler that translates a subset of Python and NumPy code into fast machine code."

    * Pyston[4] "is a performance-optimizing JIT for Python, and is drop-in compatible with ... CPython 3.8.12"

    [0] https://github.com/Nuitka/Nuitka

    [1] https://www.pypy.org/

    [2] https://cython.org/

    [3] https://numba.pydata.org/

    [4] https://github.com/pyston/pyston

  • Slow Rust Compiler is a Feature, not a Bug.
    1 project | /r/rustjerk | 28 Apr 2023
  • Any faster Python alternatives?
    6 projects | /r/learnprogramming | 12 Apr 2023
    Profile and optimize the hotspots with cython (or whatever the cool kids are using these days... It's been a while.)
  • What exactly is 'JIT'?
    1 project | /r/ProgrammingLanguages | 10 Apr 2023
    JIT essentially means generating machine code for the language on the fly, either during loading of the interpreter (method JIT), or by profiling and optimizing hotspots (tracing JIT). The language itself can be statically or dynamically typed. You could also compile a dynamic language ahead of time, for example, cython.
  • Python executable makers
    2 projects | /r/Python | 26 Mar 2023
    Cython - - embed demo

What are some alternatives?

When comparing jax and Cython you can also consider the following projects:

Numba - NumPy aware dynamic Python compiler using LLVM

SWIG - SWIG is a software development tool that connects programs written in C and C++ with a variety of high-level programming languages.

functorch - functorch is JAX-like composable function transforms for PyTorch.

PyPy

julia - The Julia Programming Language

mypyc - Compile type annotated Python to fast C extensions

Pytorch - Tensors and Dynamic neural networks in Python with strong GPU acceleration

Pyston - A faster and highly-compatible implementation of the Python programming language.

jax-windows-builder - A community supported Windows build for jax.

Stackless Python

mesh-transformer-jax - Model parallel transformers in JAX and Haiku

Pyjion