v0.96

============================== Release Notes: v0.96 ==============================

Support for new layers:

• Log softmax
• Basic math functions
• Weights layer, which outputs a weights tensor
• L2 norm squared
• Binary cross entropy loss and sigmoid binary cross entropy loss
• Boolean accuracy, Boolean false negative rate, Boolean false positive rate
• Bilinear resize
• Variance and covariance
• Dilated and grouped convolution (GPU only)

Performance optimizations:

• Optimized GPU model-parallel softmax layer

Model portability & usability:

• Option for weight initialization with user-provided list of values
• Callback to save any layer output as an image

Internal features:

• Provide compile time option to selectively disable OpenMP for data fetching loop
• Thrust calls no longer involve the default CUDA stream

I/O & data readers:

• Reworked jag_conduit data reader:
  • Support the updated JAG simulation data output format
  • Use direct HDF5 I/O for on-demand data loading with Conduit
  • Ingest a unique set of data files per instance
  • Allow exclusive data partitioning among multiple trainers
  • Multi-channel images
  • Normalization of JAG data
  • Interface to select images of specific views and time indices
  • Interface to describe how to slice JAG data
  • Avoid redundant fetching and incoherent random number pulls in the group of local data readers
• Improved threading performance by preallocating scratch space for loading samples

Build system:

• Support cross-compilation configurations in superbuild and SetupProtobuf