Thank you very much for sharing your views on this. It was really insightful.
Few points i want to reply as below: [quote="masahi, post:7, topic:6129"] First of all, compared to other framework like PyTorch, the number of Chainer user had been very tiny even during Chainer was in active development. Now that Chainer development is in maintance mode, I would estimate the number of active Chainer users is close to zero. So “bringng Chainer users to TVM” doesn’t really appeal to us. [/quote] Response: I agree Chainer has very less no of users compared to Pytorch. But maintenance phase does not mean user count is 0, however i cant put an official statement to it, as there is no record of showing how many user currently using it. Deciding which frontend to support based on no of users, i believe should not be done, as there are various other dynamics to it. However i leave it to TVM members consensus. [quote="masahi, post:7, topic:6129"] Note that if you use tracing, by definition you lose control flow and tracing only frontend is not really interesting. Preserving control flow is highly non trivial, you need to start by parsing Python source code to get an Python AST. (This is what Torchscript and chainer-compiler above do to preserve control flow) Are you prepared for this? Even if you are, it is out of scope from TVM anyway. [/quote] Response: Thanks for the advice! But don't you think the **"out of scope from TVM"** is applicable for all frontends. As all frontends first need to beakdown the model received and put all the pieces together to in terms of TVM. [quote="masahi, post:7, topic:6129"] If you really want to develop this frontend, you can develop it as a utility library building on top of TVM. It doesn’t have to live inside TVM repo, since everything frontend code need is available in “userland”. [/quote] Response: I am really not sure what you are trying to communicate here. As i understand the TVM architecture and use cases. Frontends are never meant for TVM. Even without Frontends TVM core exists. TVM core never gains any benefit from adding new frontends except the points i mentioned in my second post. As i understand the Frontends are mere gateways for other framework users to enable them availing the prominent benefits of TVM. As you mentioned utility part here, i believe that is applicable for all frontends then. My point here is TVM frontend should be open to all kind of users. More frontends shows more strength of TVM. And Chainer is not just a random experimental framework, it was released officially and used by multiple organizations as well. I leave it to TVM member consensus , if they think there is no room any more for new frontend. Thanks! --- [Visit Topic](https://discuss.tvm.ai/t/introduce-new-frontend-for-chainer/6129/8) to respond. You are receiving this because you enabled mailing list mode. To unsubscribe from these emails, [click here](https://discuss.tvm.ai/email/unsubscribe/2be1bd64d21a530cf17a2bc882675f59ec7a0eaf0dedb4310b451820da5dc859).
