Skip to main content

Distributed AI inference framework for PySpark

Project description

spark-ai

Distributed AI inference for PySpark DataFrames.

Tests Python 3.10+ License

spark-ai brings model-powered text processing directly into Spark transformations using a simple API.

It is designed for portability and works anywhere Spark runs: local development, EMR, Dataproc, Kubernetes, or on-prem clusters.

Features

  • Spark-native sentiment analysis API
  • Vectorized execution with pandas_udf for better throughput than row-wise Python UDFs
  • Hugging Face Transformers backend
  • Null-safe text handling for production pipelines
  • Clean package structure for extension with additional AI tasks/backends

Installation

pip install spark-ai

Requirements

  • Python 3.10+
  • Apache Spark 3.5+
  • Java runtime compatible with your Spark distribution

Core dependencies are installed automatically:

  • pyspark
  • pandas
  • pyarrow
  • transformers
  • torch

Quick Start

from pyspark.sql import SparkSession
from spark_ai import AI

spark = (
    SparkSession.builder
    .appName("spark-ai-demo")
    .config("spark.sql.execution.arrow.pyspark.enabled", "true")
    .getOrCreate()
)

df = spark.createDataFrame(
    [
        ("I love this product!",),
        ("This is the worst experience ever.",),
    ],
    ["review"],
)

ai = AI()
result = df.withColumn("sentiment", ai.sentiment("review"))
result.show(truncate=False)

Expected sentiment labels are typically POSITIVE / NEGATIVE (model-dependent).

API

AI

Primary interface for DataFrame AI transformations.

AI.sentiment(column_name: str)

Applies sentiment analysis to a text column and returns a Spark Column.

result = df.withColumn("sentiment", ai.sentiment("review"))

Performance Notes

spark-ai uses a vectorized Pandas UDF and batched Hugging Face inference internally.

For best performance in production:

  • Enable Arrow:
    • spark.sql.execution.arrow.pyspark.enabled=true
  • Tune Spark partitions to match your cluster resources
  • Tune batch_size for your hardware, or enable auto_tune_batch_size=True
  • Run benchmarks on representative text lengths and data sizes

Model-loading behavior:

  • Spark may run multiple Python workers per executor
  • Each Python worker keeps its own singleton model instance
  • That means model reuse is per worker process, not globally shared across all workers

You can use the included benchmark script:

python examples/benchmark_sentiment.py

Example benchmark output:

rows=20000
partitions=8
elapsed_seconds=6.383
rows_per_second=3133.1

Logging and Runtime Warnings

Common Spark startup warnings like:

  • NativeCodeLoader: Unable to load native-hadoop library...
  • JDK incubator module notices

are typically informational in local environments and do not indicate a failure.

Development

Clone and install in editable mode:

pip install -e ".[dev]"

Run tests:

pytest -q

Project Structure

src/spark_ai/
  ai.py                  # Public API
  config.py              # Central configuration
  udf/sentiment_udf.py   # Vectorized Spark UDF
  backends/              # Inference backend implementations
tests/unit/              # Unit tests
examples/                # Usage and benchmark scripts

Project details


Download files

Download the file for your platform. If you're not sure which to choose, learn more about installing packages.

Source Distribution

spark_infer_ai-0.1.1.tar.gz (11.9 kB view details)

Uploaded Source

Built Distribution

If you're not sure about the file name format, learn more about wheel file names.

spark_infer_ai-0.1.1-py3-none-any.whl (12.2 kB view details)

Uploaded Python 3

File details

Details for the file spark_infer_ai-0.1.1.tar.gz.

File metadata

  • Download URL: spark_infer_ai-0.1.1.tar.gz
  • Upload date:
  • Size: 11.9 kB
  • Tags: Source
  • Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? No
  • Uploaded via: twine/6.2.0 CPython/3.14.0

File hashes

Hashes for spark_infer_ai-0.1.1.tar.gz
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 8103481178e3b9242603564e6bce86bde43ea305f8a6f3431bfa44d5c20ca6f0
MD5 24ba044c67ccabc81d75277366d796f3
BLAKE2b-256 3664d9f62e3d1e67baeab6ba1c0e63a8873e8afb929642046b07a057ae47df53

See more details on using hashes here.

File details

Details for the file spark_infer_ai-0.1.1-py3-none-any.whl.

File metadata

  • Download URL: spark_infer_ai-0.1.1-py3-none-any.whl
  • Upload date:
  • Size: 12.2 kB
  • Tags: Python 3
  • Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? No
  • Uploaded via: twine/6.2.0 CPython/3.14.0

File hashes

Hashes for spark_infer_ai-0.1.1-py3-none-any.whl
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 11b46e243d2767576714e9a8f43a514662b2d6d24c22894f3a66428da4688e45
MD5 b54324204e5008d8c9ca64605946a218
BLAKE2b-256 9c09576a0597ec6a22b1bb276a61baf2cc090443e82e13ce263c277d5c58b29c

See more details on using hashes here.

Supported by

AWS Cloud computing and Security Sponsor Datadog Monitoring Depot Continuous Integration Fastly CDN Google Download Analytics Pingdom Monitoring Sentry Error logging StatusPage Status page