tensorstudio 1.6.0

TensorStudio is a compact C++ tensor and autograd engine with a Python API for learning, experimentation, and lightweight ML workloads.

TensorStudio

TensorStudio is a compact C++ tensor and autograd engine with a Python API for learning, experimentation, and lightweight ML workloads.

TensorStudio 1.6.0 is a CPU-only stable API foundation with native C++ threading, storage reuse, SIMD-friendly typed kernels, and optional CBLAS/Accelerate matrix multiplication when available. It is eager-only, intentionally compact, and not a replacement for mature ML frameworks.

Install

From PyPI:

python -m pip install tensorstudio

From a source checkout:

python -m pip install -U pip
python -m pip install -e ".[dev]"

Install optional extras for ONNX export and Pillow-backed image inputs:

python -m pip install "tensorstudio[onnx,vision]"

Build source and wheel distributions:

python -m build
python -m twine check dist/*

End users should install wheels and should not need CMake. Source builds require a C++20 compiler because the native extension is implemented in C++.

Platform Setup

Windows is the primary release target. Use Python from python.org and install Microsoft C++ Build Tools or Visual Studio with the Desktop development with C++ workload before building from source:

python -m pip install -U pip
python -m pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest -q

Linux source builds need GCC or Clang, CMake, and Python development headers:

python -m pip install -U pip
python -m pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest -q

macOS source builds need Xcode Command Line Tools:

xcode-select --install
python -m pip install -U pip
python -m pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest -q

Quickstart

import tensorstudio as ts

x = ts.tensor([[1.0, 2.0], [3.0, 4.0]])
y = ts.ones((2, 2))

print((x + y).tolist())
print((x @ y).numpy())
print(x.reshape((4,)).tolist())
print(x[0, :].tolist())
print(x.unsqueeze(0).permute(1, 2, 0).shape)

Tensor API

TensorStudio supports CPU tensors with float32, float64, int32, int64, and bool dtypes.

import tensorstudio as ts

ts.manual_seed(7)

a = ts.zeros((2, 3))
b = ts.rand((2, 3))
c = ts.eye(3)
d = ts.linspace(0.0, 1.0, 5)

print(a.shape, a.strides, a.device, a.is_contiguous)
print((b.clamp(0.2, 0.8) + 1).mean().item())
print(b.sum(axis=1).tolist())
print(ts.concat([b, b], axis=0).shape, b.astype("float64").dtype)
print(c.tolist(), d.tolist())
print(ts.zeros_like(b).shape, ts.randn_like(b, seed=11).dtype)

Arithmetic promotion is explicit and inspectable:

print(ts.promote_types("int32", "float32"))        # float32
print(ts.result_type("int64", "int32", op="div")) # float32
print(ts.result_type("int64", "float32", op="gt")) # bool

Advanced Math

Native C++ elementwise math includes trigonometric functions and numerically useful helpers with autograd support:

import tensorstudio as ts

x = ts.tensor([0.1, 0.2, 0.3], requires_grad=True)
y = ts.sin(x) + x.cos() + x.log1p() + x.rsqrt()
loss = y.mean()
loss.backward()

print(loss.item())
print(x.grad.tolist())

Higher-level helpers live in tensorstudio.math:

values = ts.tensor([[1.0, 2.0], [3.0, 4.0]])

print(ts.math.variance(values).item())
print(ts.math.std(values, axis=0).tolist())
print(ts.math.norm(values, ord=2).item())

Autograd

import tensorstudio as ts

x = ts.tensor([1.0, 2.0, 3.0], requires_grad=True)
loss = (x * x).mean()
loss.backward()

print(x.grad.tolist())

Use no_grad() when you want eager computation without recording a graph:

with ts.no_grad():
    y = x * 2

Neural Networks

import tensorstudio as ts
from tensorstudio import nn, optim

ts.manual_seed(0)

model = nn.Sequential(nn.Linear(1, 8), nn.Tanh(), nn.Linear(8, 1))
optimizer = optim.SGD(model.parameters(), lr=0.05, momentum=0.9)
scheduler = optim.StepLR(optimizer, step_size=50, gamma=0.5)
criterion = nn.MSELoss()

x = ts.tensor([[0.0], [1.0], [2.0], [3.0]])
y = ts.tensor([[1.0], [3.0], [5.0], [7.0]])

for _ in range(100):
    optimizer.zero_grad()
    loss = criterion(model(x), y)
    loss.backward()
    optim.clip_grad_norm_(model.parameters(), max_norm=10.0)
    optimizer.step()
    scheduler.step()

print(loss.item())
print(model.state_dict().keys())
print(model.parameter_count())

Vision

TensorStudio includes a practical computer-vision namespace for local image classification workflows: Pillow-backed image IO, transform pipelines, deterministic augmentations, ImageFolder datasets, metrics, image grids, bounding-box drawing, and compact CNN classifiers running through native Conv2d/pooling kernels.

import numpy as np
import tensorstudio as ts
from tensorstudio import nn, optim

transform = ts.vision.Compose(
    [
        ts.vision.Resize((8, 8)),
        ts.vision.ToTensor(),
        ts.vision.Normalize(0.5, 0.5),
    ]
)
image = np.zeros((8, 8, 3), dtype=np.uint8)
x = transform(image).reshape((1, 3, 8, 8))

model = ts.vision.ImageClassifier((3, 8, 8), num_classes=2, channels=(4,))
target = ts.tensor([1], dtype="int64")
optimizer = optim.SGD(model.parameters(), lr=0.01)

optimizer.zero_grad()
loss = nn.CrossEntropyLoss()(model(x), target)
loss.backward()
optimizer.step()
print(ts.vision.accuracy(model(x), target))

DataLoader

import tensorstudio as ts
from tensorstudio.data import DataLoader, TensorDataset

dataset = TensorDataset(ts.arange(6).reshape((6, 1)), ts.arange(6))
loader = DataLoader(dataset, batch_size=2, shuffle=True, seed=42)

for features, targets in loader:
    print(features.shape, targets.shape)

The v1 DataLoader is intentionally single-process so it works cleanly on Windows without multiprocessing setup.

Projects And Training

tensorstudio.project provides project folders, JSON config, reusable trainers, safe NPZ weight files, and trusted full checkpoints:

import tensorstudio as ts
from tensorstudio import nn, optim
from tensorstudio.data import DataLoader, TensorDataset
from tensorstudio.project import Project, ProjectConfig, Trainer, save_state_dict

x = ts.tensor([[0.0], [1.0], [2.0], [3.0]])
y = ts.tensor([[1.0], [3.0], [5.0], [7.0]])

model = nn.Linear(1, 1)
loader = DataLoader(TensorDataset(x, y), batch_size=2)
trainer = Trainer(model, optim.SGD(model.parameters(), lr=0.05), nn.MSELoss())
project = Project("runs/linear", ProjectConfig(name="linear-regression", seed=7))

history = trainer.fit(loader, epochs=50)
save_state_dict(model, project.checkpoint_path("weights"))
print(history.last)

Performance

TensorStudio is optimized for small-to-medium CPU eager workloads, but performance is still experimental. Benchmarks live in benchmarks/ and can be run locally:

python benchmark_all.py
python benchmarks/benchmark_report.py

benchmark_all.py writes benchmarks/results.md and includes explicit win columns for NumPy, TensorFlow, PyTorch, and JAX when those libraries are available locally.

Useful runtime diagnostics:

import tensorstudio as ts

print(ts.performance_info())
ts.set_num_threads(4)

Run the loose local regression thresholds with:

python benchmark_all.py --check-thresholds

On one Windows CPython 3.10 development run reporting 1.6.0, with TensorStudio threads enabled, storage pooling enabled, SSE2 autovectorization reported, and no BLAS provider found, TensorStudio beat NumPy on 7 local benchmark cases and lost on 96 NumPy-comparable cases. JAX CPU dispatch was available on that machine; TensorStudio won 39 local cases and lost 59. The strongest local wins were the simple NumPy convolution/pooling reference loops and some small JAX-dispatch-heavy eager cases. NumPy and JAX were faster for many elementwise, reduction, matrix multiplication, larger activation, and autograd workloads. See benchmarks/results.md for the full table, platform details, and exact timings.

Snapshot from that local run:

operation	shape	TensorStudio	NumPy	JAX CPU dispatch	TS vs NumPy	TS vs JAX
sigmoid	(32,)	0.0173 ms	0.0047 ms	0.0719 ms	0.2724x	4.1608x
mean	(32,)	0.0157 ms	0.0082 ms	0.0119 ms	0.5208x	0.7587x
sum_axis1	(16, 16)	0.0159 ms	0.0031 ms	0.0131 ms	0.1924x	0.8231x
chain_relu	(128,)	0.0992 ms	0.0063 ms	0.1113 ms	0.0636x	1.1219x
matmul	(256, 256)	2.5261 ms	0.3848 ms	0.2288 ms	0.1524x	0.0906x
conv2d_3x3_padding1	(1, 1, 8, 8)	0.2120 ms	1.2975 ms	0.0959 ms	6.1191x	0.4524x
max_pool2d_2x2	(1, 1, 16, 16)	0.0286 ms	0.1613 ms	n/a	5.6321x	n/a
avg_pool2d_2x2	(1, 1, 16, 16)	0.0304 ms	0.5601 ms	n/a	18.4457x	n/a
elementwise_backward	(1024,)	2.7150 ms	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a

Speedup is competitor median / TensorStudio median, so values above 1.0x favor TensorStudio.

Do not treat these results as universal. TensorStudio does not claim to be faster than NumPy, TensorFlow, PyTorch, or JAX overall.

Save And Load

import tensorstudio as ts
from tensorstudio import nn

model = nn.Linear(2, 1)
ts.save({"model": model.state_dict()}, "checkpoint.tsmodel")
checkpoint = ts.load("checkpoint.tsmodel")

Serialization uses pickle. Loading pickle files from untrusted sources is unsafe because pickle can execute arbitrary code.

For safer tensor and state_dict interchange, use TensorStudio's non-pickle NPZ helpers:

state = model.state_dict()
ts.save_npz(state, "weights.tsnpz")
model.load_state_dict(ts.load_npz("weights.tsnpz"))

ONNX Export

TensorStudio can export a supported nn.Sequential graph to ONNX when the optional onnx extra is installed:

import tensorstudio as ts
from tensorstudio import nn

model = nn.Sequential(
    nn.Conv2d(1, 2, kernel_size=3, padding=1),
    nn.ReLU(),
    nn.MaxPool2d(2),
    nn.Flatten(),
    nn.Linear(2 * 2 * 2, 3),
)

ts.export_onnx(model, "classifier.onnx", input_shape=(1, 1, 4, 4))

The exporter supports Linear, Conv2d, Flatten, ReLU, Sigmoid, Tanh, MaxPool2d, and AvgPool2d. It is an exporter, not an ONNX runtime or importer.

Development

python -m pip install -e ".[dev,docs]"
python test_all.py --skip-build
ruff check .
mypy python/tensorstudio
pytest -q
python -m build
python -m twine check dist/*

The native extension module is tensorstudio._C, built with CMake, pybind11, scikit-build-core, and C++20.

Release Checklist

• python test_all.py passes locally.
• ruff check . passes.
• mypy python/tensorstudio passes.
• pytest -q passes on Windows, Linux, and macOS.
• python -m build passes.
• python -m twine check dist/* passes.
• Benchmarks are generated and performance claims match the data.
• Clean wheel installs pass on Windows, Linux, and macOS.
• Clean sdist installs pass on Windows, Linux, and macOS.
• Examples run on all platforms.
• Docs match the implemented feature set.
• No PyPI tokens are committed or printed.
• TestPyPI is verified before a real PyPI release.

Publishing

GitHub Actions build wheels with cibuildwheel. The publish workflow is designed for PyPI trusted publishing with id-token: write; it should not hardcode PyPI tokens or print secrets.

Current Limitations

• CPU backend only.
• Eager execution only.
• No CUDA or Metal backend yet.
• Optional BLAS-backed matrix multiplication depends on the build environment exposing a compatible CBLAS/Accelerate interface; otherwise TensorStudio uses a portable C++ fallback.
• No graph compiler or distributed runtime.
• Convolution and pooling support are currently limited to CPU NCHW conv2d, max_pool2d, and avg_pool2d style workloads.
• Vision covers local image-classification utilities, metrics, visualization, and compact CNNs. It is not an OpenCV replacement and does not include pretrained model zoos, detection/segmentation training stacks, video IO, or GPU image kernels yet.
• ONNX support is export-only for a limited set of TensorStudio modules.
• Reductions support all-element, single-axis, and tuple/list-axis reductions for sum, mean, max, and min.
• Arg reductions support all-element flat indices or one axis at a time for argmax and argmin.
• Selection helpers where, maximum, and minimum are native C++ tensor ops with broadcasting and autograd support for floating-point branches.
• Basic integer/slice indexing is supported as native C++ views with autograd scatter-back. Advanced list, tensor, and boolean-mask indexing are not implemented yet.
• Dtype casting is basic and does not include a full promotion/casting policy.
• Experimental performance; benchmarks are local references only.
• Pickle serialization is for trusted TensorStudio objects only.

Roadmap

• CUDA backend
• Graph/JIT mode
• Broader convolution ops, adaptive/global pooling, and image-model examples
• Richer dataset utilities
• Model zoo examples
• ONNX import and broader export coverage
• Runtime-dispatched SIMD kernels
• Better non-BLAS matrix multiplication tiling
• More threaded backward kernels

License

TensorStudio is licensed under the MIT License.