MLI: An API for Distributed Machine Learning

Evan R. Sparks, Ameet Talwalkar, Virginia Smith, Jey Kottalam, Xinghao Pan, Joseph Gonzalez, Michael J. Franklin, Michael I. Jordan, Tim Kraska

Published 2013-10-21, updated 2013-10-25Version 2

MLI is an Application Programming Interface designed to address the challenges of building Machine Learn- ing algorithms in a distributed setting based on data-centric computing. Its primary goal is to simplify the development of high-performance, scalable, distributed algorithms. Our initial results show that, relative to existing systems, this interface can be used to build distributed implementations of a wide variety of common Machine Learning algorithms with minimal complexity and highly competitive performance and scalability.