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TensorFlow VS Apache Spark

Compare TensorFlow VS Apache Spark and see what are their differences

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TensorFlow logo TensorFlow

TensorFlow is an open-source machine learning framework designed and published by Google. It tracks data flow graphs over time. Nodes in the data flow graphs represent machine learning algorithms. Read more about TensorFlow.

Apache Spark logo Apache Spark

Apache Spark is an engine for big data processing, with built-in modules for streaming, SQL, machine learning and graph processing.
  • TensorFlow Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-19
  • Apache Spark Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-12-31

TensorFlow features and specs

  • Comprehensive Ecosystem
    TensorFlow offers a complete ecosystem for end-to-end machine learning, covering everything from data preprocessing, model building, training, and deployment to production.
  • Community and Support
    TensorFlow boasts a large and active community, as well as extensive documentation and tutorials, making it easier for beginners to learn and experts to get help.
  • Flexibility
    TensorFlow supports a wide range of platforms such as CPUs, GPUs, TPUs, mobile devices, and embedded systems, providing flexibility depending on the user's needs.
  • Integrations
    TensorFlow integrates well with other Google products and services, including Google Cloud, facilitating seamless deployment and scaling.
  • Versatility
    TensorFlow can be used for a wide range of applications from simple neural networks to more complex projects, including deep learning and artificial intelligence research.

Possible disadvantages of TensorFlow

  • Complexity
    TensorFlow can be challenging to learn due to its complexity and the steep learning curve, particularly for beginners.
  • Performance Overhead
    Although TensorFlow is powerful, it can sometimes exhibit performance overhead compared to other, lighter frameworks, leading to longer training times.
  • Verbose Syntax
    The code in TensorFlow tends to be more verbose and less intuitive, which can make writing and debugging code more cumbersome relative to other frameworks like PyTorch.
  • Compatibility Issues
    Frequent updates and changes can lead to compatibility issues, requiring significant effort to keep libraries and dependencies up to date.
  • Mobile Deployment
    While TensorFlow supports mobile deployment, it is less optimized for mobile platforms compared to some other specialized frameworks, leading to potential performance drawbacks.

Apache Spark features and specs

  • Speed
    Apache Spark processes data in-memory, significantly increasing the processing speed of data tasks compared to traditional disk-based engines.
  • Ease of Use
    Spark offers high-level APIs in Java, Scala, Python, and R, making it accessible to a broad range of developers and data scientists.
  • Advanced Analytics
    Spark supports advanced analytics, including machine learning, graph processing, and real-time streaming, which can be executed in the same application.
  • Scalability
    Spark can handle both small- and large-scale data processing tasks, scaling seamlessly from a single machine to thousands of servers.
  • Support for Various Data Sources
    Spark can integrate with a wide variety of data sources, including HDFS, Apache HBase, Apache Hive, Cassandra, and many others.
  • Active Community
    Spark has a vibrant and active community, providing a wealth of extensions, tools, and support options.

Possible disadvantages of Apache Spark

  • Memory Consumption
    Spark's in-memory processing can be resource-intensive, requiring substantial amounts of RAM, which can drive up costs for large-scale deployments.
  • Complexity in Configuration
    To optimize performance, Spark requires careful configuration and tuning, which can be complex and time-consuming.
  • Learning Curve
    Despite its ease of use, mastering the full range of Spark's features and best practices can take considerable time and effort.
  • Latency for Small Data
    For smaller datasets or low-latency requirements, Spark might not be the most efficient choice, as other technologies could offer better performance.
  • Integration Overhead
    Though Spark integrates with many systems, incorporating it into an existing data infrastructure can introduce additional overhead and complexity.
  • Community Support Variability
    While the community is active, the support and quality of third-party libraries and tools can be inconsistent, leading to potential challenges in implementation.

TensorFlow videos

What is Tensorflow? - Learn Tensorflow for Machine Learning and Neural Networks

More videos:

  • Tutorial - TensorFlow In 10 Minutes | TensorFlow Tutorial For Beginners | Deep Learning & TensorFlow | Edureka
  • Review - TensorFlow in 5 Minutes (tutorial)

Apache Spark videos

Weekly Apache Spark live Code Review -- look at StringIndexer multi-col (Scala) & Python testing

More videos:

  • Review - What's New in Apache Spark 3.0.0
  • Review - Apache Spark for Data Engineering and Analysis - Overview

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to TensorFlow and Apache Spark)
Data Science And Machine Learning
Databases
0 0%
100% 100
AI
100 100%
0% 0
Big Data
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare TensorFlow and Apache Spark

TensorFlow Reviews

7 Best Computer Vision Development Libraries in 2024
From the widespread adoption of OpenCV with its extensive algorithmic support to TensorFlow's role in machine learning-driven applications, these libraries play a vital role in real-world applications such as object detection, facial recognition, and image segmentation.
10 Python Libraries for Computer Vision
TensorFlow and Keras are widely used libraries for machine learning, but they also offer excellent support for computer vision tasks. TensorFlow provides pre-trained models like Inception and ResNet for image classification, while Keras simplifies the process of building, training, and evaluating deep learning models.
Source: clouddevs.com
25 Python Frameworks to Master
Keras is a high-level deep-learning framework capable of running on top of TensorFlow, Theano, and CNTK. It was developed by François Chollet in 2015 and is designed to provide a simple and user-friendly interface for building and training deep learning models.
Source: kinsta.com
Top 8 Alternatives to OpenCV for Computer Vision and Image Processing
TensorFlow is an open-source software library for dataflow and differentiable programming across a range of tasks such as machine learning, computer vision, and natural language processing. It provides excellent support for deep learning models and is widely used in several industries. TensorFlow offers several pre-trained models for image classification, object detection,...
Source: www.uubyte.com
PyTorch vs TensorFlow in 2022
There are a couple of notable exceptions to this rule, the most notable being that those in Reinforcement Learning should consider using TensorFlow. TensorFlow has a native Agents library for Reinforcement Learning, and Deepmind’s Acme framework is implemented in TensorFlow. OpenAI’s Baselines model repository is also implemented in TensorFlow, although OpenAI’s Gym can be...

Apache Spark Reviews

15 data science tools to consider using in 2021
Apache Spark is an open source data processing and analytics engine that can handle large amounts of data -- upward of several petabytes, according to proponents. Spark's ability to rapidly process data has fueled significant growth in the use of the platform since it was created in 2009, helping to make the Spark project one of the largest open source communities among big...
Top 15 Kafka Alternatives Popular In 2021
Apache Spark is a well-known, general-purpose, open-source analytics engine for large-scale, core data processing. It is known for its high-performance quality for data processing – batch and streaming with the help of its DAG scheduler, query optimizer, and engine. Data streams are processed in real-time and hence it is quite fast and efficient. Its machine learning...
5 Best-Performing Tools that Build Real-Time Data Pipeline
Apache Spark is an open-source and flexible in-memory framework which serves as an alternative to map-reduce for handling batch, real-time analytics and data processing workloads. It provides native bindings for the Java, Scala, Python, and R programming languages, and supports SQL, streaming data, machine learning and graph processing. From its beginning in the AMPLab at...

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Apache Spark should be more popular than TensorFlow. It has been mentiond 70 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

TensorFlow mentions (7)

  • Creating Image Frames from Videos for Deep Learning Models
    Converting the images to a tensor: Deep learning models work with tensors, so the images should be converted to tensors. This can be done using the to_tensor function from the PyTorch library or convert_to_tensor from the Tensorflow library. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Need help with a Tensorflow function
    So I went to tensorflow.org to find some function that can generate a CSR representation of a matrix, and I found this function https://www.tensorflow.org/api_docs/python/tf/raw_ops/DenseToCSRSparseMatrix. Source: almost 3 years ago
  • Help: Slow performance with windows 10 compared to Ubuntu 20.04 with TF2.7
    Can anyone offer up an explanation for why there is a performance difference, and if possible, what could be done to fix it. I'm using the installation guidelines found on tensorflow.org and installing tf2.7 through pip using an anaconda3 env. Source: almost 3 years ago
  • [Question] What are the best tutorials and resources for implementing NLP techniques on TensorFlow?
    I don't have much experience with TensorFlow, but I'd recommend starting with TensorFlow.org. Source: about 3 years ago
  • [Question] What are the best tutorials and resources for implementing NLP techniques on TensorFlow?
    I have looked at this TensorFlow website and TensorFlow.org and some of the examples are written by others, and it seems that I am stuck in RNNs. What is the best way to install TensorFlow, to follow the documentation and learn the methods in RNNs in Python? Is there a good tutorial/resource? Source: about 3 years ago
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Apache Spark mentions (70)

  • Every Database Will Support Iceberg — Here's Why
    Apache Iceberg defines a table format that separates how data is stored from how data is queried. Any engine that implements the Iceberg integration — Spark, Flink, Trino, DuckDB, Snowflake, RisingWave — can read and/or write Iceberg data directly. - Source: dev.to / 27 days ago
  • How to Reduce Big Data Analytics Costs by 90% with Karpenter and Spark
    Apache Spark powers large-scale data analytics and machine learning, but as workloads grow exponentially, traditional static resource allocation leads to 30–50% resource waste due to idle Executors and suboptimal instance selection. - Source: dev.to / 29 days ago
  • Unveiling the Apache License 2.0: A Deep Dive into Open Source Freedom
    One of the key attributes of Apache License 2.0 is its flexible nature. Permitting use in both proprietary and open source environments, it has become the go-to choice for innovative projects ranging from the Apache HTTP Server to large-scale initiatives like Apache Spark and Hadoop. This flexibility is not solely legal; it is also philosophical. The license is designed to encourage transparency and maintain a... - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • The Application of Java Programming In Data Analysis and Artificial Intelligence
    [1] S. Russell and P. Norvig, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach. Pearson, 2020. [2] F. Chollet, Deep Learning with Python. Manning Publications, 2018. [3] C. C. Aggarwal, Data Mining: The Textbook. Springer, 2015. [4] J. Dean and S. Ghemawat, "MapReduce: Simplified Data Processing on Large Clusters," Communications of the ACM, vol. 51, no. 1, pp. 107-113, 2008. [5] Apache Software Foundation, "Apache... - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • Automating Enhanced Due Diligence in Regulated Applications
    If you're designing an event-based pipeline, you can use a data streaming tool like Kafka to process data as it's collected by the pipeline. For a setup that already has data stored, you can use tools like Apache Spark to batch process and clean it before moving ahead with the pipeline. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing TensorFlow and Apache Spark, you can also consider the following products

PyTorch - Open source deep learning platform that provides a seamless path from research prototyping to...

Apache Flink - Flink is a streaming dataflow engine that provides data distribution, communication, and fault tolerance for distributed computations.

Scikit-learn - scikit-learn (formerly scikits.learn) is an open source machine learning library for the Python programming language.

Hadoop - Open-source software for reliable, scalable, distributed computing

Keras - Keras is a minimalist, modular neural networks library, written in Python and capable of running on top of either TensorFlow or Theano.

Apache Storm - Apache Storm is a free and open source distributed realtime computation system.