forgeNN 2.0.0a1

A From Scratch Neural Network Framework with Educational Purposes

forgeNN

Table of Contents

• Installation
• Overview
• Performance vs PyTorch
• Quick Start
• Architecture
• Performance
• Complete Example
• Roadmap
• Contributing
• Acknowledgments

Installation

pip install forgeNN

Optional extras:

# ONNX helpers (scaffold)
pip install "forgeNN[onnx]"

# CUDA backend (scaffold; requires compatible GPU/driver)
pip install "forgeNN[cuda]"

Overview

forgeNN is a modern neural network framework with a lean v2 API focused on a clean Sequential model, fast NumPy autograd Tensor, and a Keras-like compile/fit workflow.

Key Features

• Fast NumPy core: Vectorized operations with fused, stable math
• Dynamic Computation Graphs: Automatic differentiation with gradient tracking
• Complete Neural Networks: From simple neurons to complex architectures
• Production Loss Functions: Cross-entropy, MSE with numerical stability
• Scaffolded Integrations: Runtime device API for future CUDA; ONNX export/import stubs

Performance vs PyTorch

forgeNN is 3.52x faster than PyTorch on small models!

Metric	PyTorch	forgeNN	Advantage
Training Time (MNIST)	64.72s	30.84s	2.10x faster
Test Accuracy	97.30%	97.37%	+0.07% better
Small Models (<109k params)	Baseline	3.52x faster	Massive speedup

📊 Comparison and detailed docs are being refreshed for v2; see examples/ for runnable demos.

Quick Start

Keras-like Training (compile/fit)

model = fnn.Sequential([
    fnn.Input((20,)),        # optional Input layer seeds summary & shapes
    fnn.Dense(64) @ 'relu',
    fnn.Dense(32) @ 'relu',
    fnn.Dense(3)  @ 'linear'
])

# Optionally inspect architecture
model.summary()              # or model.summary((20,)) if no Input layer
opt = fnn.Adam(lr=1e-3)      # or other optimizers (adamw, sgd, etc)
compiled = fnn.compile(model,
                    optimizer=opt,
                    loss='cross_entropy',
                    metrics=['accuracy'])
compiled.fit(X, y, epochs=10, batch_size=64)
loss, metrics = compiled.evaluate(X, y)

# Tip: `mse` auto-detects 1D integer class labels for (N,C) logits and one-hot encodes internally.
# model.summary() can be called any time after construction if an Input layer or input_shape is provided.

Architecture

• Main API: forgeNN.Tensor, forgeNN.Sequential, forgeNN.compile, optimizers (SGD, Adam, AdamW)

Performance

Implementation	Speed	MNIST Accuracy
Sequential (compile/fit)	40,000+ samples/sec	95%+ in ~1s

Highlights:

• 100x+ speedup over scalar implementations
• Production-ready performance with educational clarity
• Memory efficient vectorized operations
• Smarter Losses: mse auto one-hot & reshape logic; fused stable cross-entropy

Complete Example

See examples/ for full fledged demos

Links

• PyPI Package: https://pypi.org/project/forgeNN/
• Documentation: v2 guides coming soon; examples in examples/
• Issues: GitHub Issues for bug reports and feature requests

Roadmap

Before 2026 (2025 Remaining Milestones – ordered)

1. Adam / AdamW 🗹 (Completed in v1.3.0)
2. Dropout + LayerNorm 🗹 (Completed in v1.3.0)
3. Model saving & loading (state dict + .npz) ☐
4. Conv1D → Conv2D (naive) ☐
5. Add missing tensor ops to fully support examples ☐
6. Tiny Transformer example (encoder-only) ☐
7. ONNX export (Sequential/Dense/Flatten/activations) 🗹 (Completed in v2.0.0)
8. ONNX import (subset) 🗹 (Completed in v2.0.0)
9. Basic CUDA backend (Tensor device abstraction) ☐
10. Documentation: serialization guide, ONNX guide, Transformer walkthrough ☐
11. Parameter registry refinement ☐
12. CUDA / GPU backend prototype (Tensor device abstraction) ☐

Q1 2026 (Early 2026 Targets)

• Formal architecture & design documents (graph execution, autograd internals)
• Expanded documentation site (narrative design + performance notes)

Items above may be reprioritized based on user feedback; design docs explicitly deferred to early 2026.

Contributing

I am not currently accepting contributions, but I'm always open to suggestions and feedback!

Acknowledgments

• Inspired by educational automatic differentiation tutorials (micrograd)
• Built for both learning and production use
• Optimized with modern NumPy practices
• Available on PyPI: pip install forgeNN

---